Agroup of victims of IRA terrorism are quietly rooting for Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC) to take power with its leadership intact and no significant challenges to its authority.
It is not just solidarity with Libyan victims of Colonel Gadaffi's dictatorship that motivates them. It's because they have in their possession a potentially valuable document signed by the chairman of the NTC. The document doesn't just apologise for "the pain suffered by British victims as a consequence of IRA acts of violence that were supported by the Gadaffi regime in contravention of international law". It also offers compensation coupled with an "appropriately resourced humanitarian fund", with a particular focus on victims in Northern Ireland.
Entitled "Statement of Reconciliation to the Victims of Gadaffi Sponsored Terrorism", it was brought back from the rebels' headquarters at Benghazi last April by Jason McCue, a lawyer. McCue is best known for taking a compensation case against alleged Real IRA leaders for the victims of the Omagh bombing of 1998, but he has also started proceedings against Gadaffi for 147 IRA victims in America.
Recovering damages from individuals is likely to be difficult. Oil-rich Libya may be a different proposition. If liability can be proved, or if it is accepted voluntarily, the money is there.
McCue and a group of lawyers and parliamentarians had already been in contact with Saif Gadaffi, Muammar's son, asking for compensation dressed up as a voluntary gesture of reconciliation.
A $1.5 billion (almost £1 billion) payment for development projects in Northern Ireland, including encouraging agricultural exports to Libya, is said to have been discussed along with $300m for projects to benefit victims and the community.
These would all have been in addition to compensation for individual victims of terrorism. The gold standard in compensation was set by the nominally ex-gratia payment made by the Libyan government to the families of the American victims of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988. Each family received more than $7.5m.
The NTC document doesn't promise quite that much. However, it does hint obliquely at a figure of $3m each for 147 people injured by Libyan-supplied explosives and weaponry and who are bringing a case in the US. Americanborn victims, including Mark McDonald, who was wounded in the Harrods store bombing in London in 1983 and is the lead litigant, have already been offered that sum. The Libyan document expresses a "sincere desire" to settle claims from UK and Irish victims "on a parity and non-discrimination basis, in line with other US victim claimants in the same action".
Of course, political parties make promises in opposition that are not always followed through in government, and revolutionary movements must be subject to the same temptations once they take power and look at the public finances.
Still, there is no denying that this document holds out the possibility of a potentially huge cash injection into Northern Ireland, and a lesser one into other parts of the UK.
Willie Frazer of Fair, a victims' group, said: "Gadaffi persecuted his own people as well as people from other countries, so this is not financial. It is what we can do as victims to help each other. What better way to put them on the map clearly than by making redress for what Gadaffi has done? It would send a clear message that Libya has changed."
Frazer is in touch with the Foreign Office's Libya unit about visiting the country to meet the new government once order is restored. Last month, it asked him to nominate three victims who might accompany him. They are Michelle Williamson, who lost her parents in the IRA's 1993 Shankill bombing; Ishan Bashir, whose brother Inam died in London's 1996 Canary Wharf attack, and Jonathan Ganesh, who was injured in the same blast. The Shankill and London bombings are believed to have been initiated using Libyan-supplied Semtex.
The supply of large quantities of the Czech-made, military-grade explosive was probably Gadaffi's most important contribution to the IRA's terrorist campaign.
Quantities of his Semtex still remain in the hands of dissident groups such as the Real IRA, who used it in the Omagh bombing.
The origins of Gadaffi's interest in Ireland can be traced back to a day in August 1971. On that day, Gadaffi turned on his television to assess world events. He was greeted by a clip of Joe Cahill, an IRA leader, hosting a press conference on West Belfast's Ballymurphy estate. Cahill was pouring cold water on the previous day's internment swoops by the British Army in Northern Ireland.
"We have lost one brigade officer, one battalion officer, and the rest are volunteers or, as they say in the British Army, privates," Cahill was telling the press.
Gadaffi was impressed by Cahill's composure. He was even more impressed when, under Cahill's leadership, the IRA's campaign escalated. Contacts were quickly established between Gadaffi's regime and the IRA. Cahill visited Tripoli and in March 1973 was arrested by the Irish navy aboard the MV Claudia with five tonnes of Libyan weapons.
The most successful period of arms supply followed the 1986 bombing of Tripoli by America in revenge for a Libyan-sponsored attack on a Berlin nightclub.
Gadaffi claimed his daughter Hanna was among the dead following the US attack, but last week evidence emerged suggesting that she survived, studied medicine, and even learnt English on a British government-sponsored course.
Four arms shipments got into Ireland before the fifth, and largest, aboard the Eksund, was seized by the French authorities in 1987.
Gadaffi's flirtation with Irish republicanism is long over. He gave details of his contacts with the IRA, including an inventory of arms shipped, during his recent attempt to improve links with Britain, which included the consideration of payments to victims.
Last February, Gerry Adams gave his unequivocal backing to the demonstrators against Gadaffi, saying "what is happening in the Arab world and in north Africa is a popular outcry for democracy and political reform which should be supported by the international community.
Sinn Féin supports the right of all people to democratic rights". Martin McGuinness said that Gadaffi's past support for Irish republicanism was irrelevant.
It would be ironic if the tab for the Libyan dictator's murderous acts of solidarity with the IRA was eventually picked up by the ordinary people of Libya, who suffered under his rule and fought to overthrow him. But it may well happen.
