On 17 April 1984, PC Yvonne Fletcher was shot from inside the Libyan embassy as anti-Gaddafi demonstrators she was policing came under fire.
Conservative home secretary Leon Brittan’s statement about her killing being a “barbaric outrage” was quoted in our front page story.
On the inside pages, Michael Zander wrote a background piece explaining why Libya’s political war had come to Britain. Michael Walker explained diplomatic immunity.
A Guardian leader column condemned both the killing of a police officer and the wounding of demonstrators, saying: “we cannot harbour a diplomatic mission which shoots from behind its privileged curtains into British streets”
Coverage in the foreign news section suggested that troubled regimes like Libya have a history of carrying out attacks abroad to distract dissenting voices at home.
The paper also carried a profile of Yvonne Fletcher.
