At that time, a Prison Service spokesman said no Semtex was found during the operation.
In the past, money raised in America and elsewhere has ended up buying bullets and semtex.
Libya, which had provided the IRA with tonnes of weapons, including the military explosive Semtex, also withdrew its support.
The cargo included Semtex, surface to air missiles and 1, 000 AK47 assault rifles.
This includes guns and Semtex explosives, but only a small number of RPGs have been recovered from dissident groups.
BBC: Worn and rusting rocket launcher still capable of killing
He admitted possessing sulphur powder and potassium nitrate and a book on Semtex.
He was carrying 200g of modelling clay - which resembles the explosive semtex - batteries and set of wires.
But the discovery comes less than a month after traces of a component used in Semtex explosives were found in the cells of republican prisoners during searches.
The materials Mr France were carrying "couldn't have been anything other" than a bomb, the only difference being he had modelling clay instead of semtex, said Mr Dudman.
It is, as I said on Newsnight last night, like pass the parcel with a stick of financial Semtex: Greece as the detonator, Italy as the explosive mass.
For Northern Ireland, normal politics is apparently to mean nobody getting shot or bombed for the moment, but with the guns and Semtex kept handy just in case.
However, if you read de Chastelain's words across into the IRA's armoury, it is probably safe to assume that he was talking about mortars, rockets, machine guns, rifles and Semtex.
BBC: NEWS | UK | Northern Ireland | Analysis: Why deal stalled
As part of the plan to free them Mr Darcy is alleged to have then disclosed to a Daily Mirror reporter, that he had buried Semtex explosives at Haydock Racecourse and planted weapons.
"I am confident that his moral and logistical backing for the British victims of Libyan Semtex will ensure that they now receive justice and compensation, as did the US victims when they received the support of their president, " he said.
But the end of communism also made it easier to start terrorist movements without government help, as a significant part of the Warsaw Pact's arsenal tonnes of Semtex, the Czech-made explosive, and tens of thousands of Kalashnikovs found their way on to the international black market.
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