Police constable Yvonne Fletcher was fatally shot outside the Libyan embassy in London in April 1984. The bullets that killed her and injured 10 protesters came from inside the building.
Libyan exiles in the UK had been protesting outside the embassy against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi who came to power in 1969. Shortly after 10.15 am on 17 April, automatic gunfire from the embassy struck 11 protesters and Pc Fletcher. The 25-year-old officer died later that day at Westminster hospital. Her fiancé, 22-year-old Michael Liddle, also a police officer, was at her side.
Fletcher’s death triggered an 11-day siege of the embassy and the UK cutting all diplomatic ties with Libya. In response, there were threats to burn down the British embassy in Tripoli, and British citizens were refused permission to leave the country; a British Caledonian airline manager was detained as a hostage.
Libyan diplomats were eventually allowed to leave the embassy after 11 days and escorted to Heathrow, where they were allowed to fly home to Tripoli.
Until now, no one has ever been charged with her murder but a Libyan man in his 50s was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to murder Fletcher, Scotland Yard said on Thursday.
Investigations into, and speculation about, the killing of Fletcher have continued since 1984. In 1999, Libya accepted responsibility and paid compensation to her family, a gesture that preceded the resumption of diplomatic relations between Tripoli and London.
At the time of the siege, Margaret Thatcher’s government accepted it would have to allow Fletcher’s “murderer to go free” by allowing the diplomats to leave the embassy, according to documents released to the National Archives last year.
Records of the telephone conversation between Thatcher and her home secretary, Leon Brittan, on 20 April state: “The home secretary said that arguably we should not be too concerned if the Libyans used the device of the diplomatic bag to take their arms and explosives out of the country. We had after all accepted that we would have to allow a murderer to go free. The PM did not dissent from this view”.
After Gaddafi’s regime was toppled with the help of a Nato bombing campaign, British police were allowed to travel to Libya in 2012 to investigate Fletcher’s killing. The officers – a detective superintendent and a detective inspector – gave regular updates about the visit to Fletcher’s family.
One of the suspects in the killing, the diplomat Abdulqadir al-Baghdadi, who later became chairman of the Libyan revolutionary committees, was found dead at his home in a suburb of Tripoli in May 2011, after the fall of the Gaddafi regime.
Those seeking justice for Fletcher have also claimed that a junior diplomat, Abdulmagid Salah Ameri, was seen firing a gun from inside the embassy. Libya’s transitional goverment said it knew the location of a third suspect implicated in Fletcher’s killing, Matouk Mohammed Matouk.
In an interview with the Guardian in May 2012, Libya’s interim prime minister, Abdurrahim el-Keib, said Gaddafi’s intelligence chief, Abdullah al-Senussi, was the key to solving Fletcher’s murder. “He’s the black box,” Keib said. Senussi, who was captured in September 2012, was sentenced to death by a court in Tripoli in May.
Earlier Keib said: “The Fletcher case is a case that is close to my heart personally. I had friends who were demonstrating that day next to the embassy. It is a sad story. It is very unfortunate that it has anything to do with the Libyan people.”
At 5ft 2in, Fletcher was believed to be the shortest police officer in the country at the time of her death. The police force waived its then minimum height restriction because she was such a promising recruit, her mother, Queenie, told reporters at the time.
“Police work was Yvonne’s life... She said if anything happened to her we should remember that it was her life ... She just wanted to serve the community and help other people.”
