The man who killed WPC Yvonne Fletcher
The Guardian
Published June 1991 No comments... »
On Tuesday morning, April 17 1984, a 35-year-old decorator left the Rio Tinto Zinc building where he was working in St James Square, London to go to the bank to get some change for his parking meter. As he strolled across the road, he passed several dozen police officers clustered in one corner of the square and he caught the eye of a young woman constable.
“Look at all these police,” he said. “And all I want is 50 pence for the meter.”
She grinned at him. By the time he strolled back a few minutes later, the square was alive with noise. Dozens of demonstrators were shouting slogans in English and Arabic and the police had formed a cordon to keep them away from a grandiose residence in the corner, the Libyan People’s Bureau. The decorator stopped to watch.
As he stood there, another man who had stopped beside him suddenly nudged him, pointed up at a first floor window of the Bureau and said: “Fuck me, he’s got a gun.” For a couple of seconds, the decorator took in the scene: three men standing by the window, the sub-machine gun which one of them was holding, the face of the young man with the gun. He looked like Anthony Quinn, only thinner. Then the firing started and the demonstrators began to scream and the young policewoman who had grinned at him a few minutes earlier collapsed in the road.
The very public murder of WPC Fletcher caused a ten-day siege of the People’s Bureau and the end of diplomatic relations between Britain and Libya. When the Government decided to let the killers walk away from their crime, the then Home Secretary Leon Brittan dampened public anger by telling the House of Commons that although the police lacked hard evidence, “they are of the view that the murder was committed by one of two people who were in the Bureau. Both of them possessed diplomatic immunity.”
But that is not true. Which is why there was a flicker of embarrassment behind the stern face which the Foreign Office turned towards Colonel Gadafy last week when the Libyan leader finally apologised for the killing. The Foreign Office say Gadafy must hand over the killers, but if he does that, the truth finally will be put on public display.
The truth is that as a result of a bizarre police operation and with the help of the observant decorator from St James Square, the man who shot Yvonne Fletcher was rapidly idenfitied. And he is not a diplomat. He is one of eight Libyans who were trapped in the Bureau who had no diplomatic immunity and who could have been arrested quite legally as the siege ended.
Throughout the siege, the police had been arguing with the diplomats about how to handle the crisis. The police wanted to raid the Bureau and had even started analysing all the sewage from the building in an attempt to work out how many people were in the building. The police argued that the 1964 Vienna Convention allowed them to enter diplomatic property in hot pursuit of a criminal. But the Foreign Office said No. They feared that Gadafy would take revenge on British citizens and property in Libya, but since this policy was the sort of concession to terrorists which the Prime Minister had banned, they had to insist that Scotland Yard had got its law wrong.
The Foreign Office secretly tried to organise a face-saving compromise, sending a message to Gadafy which asked him to announce that the killer was a madman and to lock him up in an asylum. When Gadafy failed to play the game, the Foreign Office insisted that there was no alternative: behind the screen of diplomatic law, they must allow the killers and everyone else in the Bureau to walk free. The police obeyed their orders but secretly set out to catch the killer.
The Libyans refused to allow their possessions to be searched, so the police gave them see-through bags to carry them in. The police then persuaded them that they could prove to the British people that they were unarmed by agreeing to be frisked in St James Square as they left the Bureau. The officers who did the frisking were instructed to work from the back of each Libyan; a police photographer hidden on the far side of the square then quietly captured every face.
The police also persuaded the Libyans that for their own safety they should be taken to the Civil Service College at Sunningdale until their plane was ready. There, they were offered speedy interviews with immigration officers at tables with plastic covers. They all provided their names, addresses and dates of birth. In between interviews, the covers were changed and handed to fingerprint officers. Just in case any of the prints failed to come out, the police offered the Libyans a halal meal and then kept every plate and every stick of cutlery for scientifc examination.
Armed with this information, the police then set to work on the Bureau. On the carpet underneath a first floor window at the front of the building, they found spent 9mm parabellum cartridges of the sort which had killed Yvonne Fletcher and residue of explosives from the gun fire.
They checked the window, which according to witnesses had been opened for the first time in months for the gunman to shoot through.
On the frame, they found a fresh palm print and so Ali Jalid, a Bureau press officer, became wanted as an accessory to murder.
They still needed to identify the gunman himself.
By a means which remains secret they received a sudden flood of intelligence about activities inside the Bureau in the 24 hours leading up to the shooting.
Crucially, they heard, there had been a meeting chaired by the Bureau’s senior military intelligence officer, Moustafa Mgirbi, at which it was decided to fire on the next day’s demonstrations and to send out snatch squads to drag some of the demonstrators into the Bureau.
Mgirbi, the police learned, had given the role of gunman to a man named Abdel Gader Tuhami.
But this was not evidence that could be used in court.
It was then that the police heard of the decorator who had seen the gunman seconds before he opened fire.
They showed him their covert mugshots and without hesitation he pointed to a man with a thin face and a black moustache, a 25-year-old student with no diplomatic cover, named Abdel Gader Tuhami, who was by then safely home in Tripoli.
“Look at all these police,” he said. “And all I want is 50 pence for the meter.”
She grinned at him. By the time he strolled back a few minutes later, the square was alive with noise. Dozens of demonstrators were shouting slogans in English and Arabic and the police had formed a cordon to keep them away from a grandiose residence in the corner, the Libyan People’s Bureau. The decorator stopped to watch.
As he stood there, another man who had stopped beside him suddenly nudged him, pointed up at a first floor window of the Bureau and said: “Fuck me, he’s got a gun.” For a couple of seconds, the decorator took in the scene: three men standing by the window, the sub-machine gun which one of them was holding, the face of the young man with the gun. He looked like Anthony Quinn, only thinner. Then the firing started and the demonstrators began to scream and the young policewoman who had grinned at him a few minutes earlier collapsed in the road.
The very public murder of WPC Fletcher caused a ten-day siege of the People’s Bureau and the end of diplomatic relations between Britain and Libya. When the Government decided to let the killers walk away from their crime, the then Home Secretary Leon Brittan dampened public anger by telling the House of Commons that although the police lacked hard evidence, “they are of the view that the murder was committed by one of two people who were in the Bureau. Both of them possessed diplomatic immunity.”
But that is not true. Which is why there was a flicker of embarrassment behind the stern face which the Foreign Office turned towards Colonel Gadafy last week when the Libyan leader finally apologised for the killing. The Foreign Office say Gadafy must hand over the killers, but if he does that, the truth finally will be put on public display.
The truth is that as a result of a bizarre police operation and with the help of the observant decorator from St James Square, the man who shot Yvonne Fletcher was rapidly idenfitied. And he is not a diplomat. He is one of eight Libyans who were trapped in the Bureau who had no diplomatic immunity and who could have been arrested quite legally as the siege ended.
Throughout the siege, the police had been arguing with the diplomats about how to handle the crisis. The police wanted to raid the Bureau and had even started analysing all the sewage from the building in an attempt to work out how many people were in the building. The police argued that the 1964 Vienna Convention allowed them to enter diplomatic property in hot pursuit of a criminal. But the Foreign Office said No. They feared that Gadafy would take revenge on British citizens and property in Libya, but since this policy was the sort of concession to terrorists which the Prime Minister had banned, they had to insist that Scotland Yard had got its law wrong.
The Foreign Office secretly tried to organise a face-saving compromise, sending a message to Gadafy which asked him to announce that the killer was a madman and to lock him up in an asylum. When Gadafy failed to play the game, the Foreign Office insisted that there was no alternative: behind the screen of diplomatic law, they must allow the killers and everyone else in the Bureau to walk free. The police obeyed their orders but secretly set out to catch the killer.
The Libyans refused to allow their possessions to be searched, so the police gave them see-through bags to carry them in. The police then persuaded them that they could prove to the British people that they were unarmed by agreeing to be frisked in St James Square as they left the Bureau. The officers who did the frisking were instructed to work from the back of each Libyan; a police photographer hidden on the far side of the square then quietly captured every face.
The police also persuaded the Libyans that for their own safety they should be taken to the Civil Service College at Sunningdale until their plane was ready. There, they were offered speedy interviews with immigration officers at tables with plastic covers. They all provided their names, addresses and dates of birth. In between interviews, the covers were changed and handed to fingerprint officers. Just in case any of the prints failed to come out, the police offered the Libyans a halal meal and then kept every plate and every stick of cutlery for scientifc examination.
Armed with this information, the police then set to work on the Bureau. On the carpet underneath a first floor window at the front of the building, they found spent 9mm parabellum cartridges of the sort which had killed Yvonne Fletcher and residue of explosives from the gun fire.
They checked the window, which according to witnesses had been opened for the first time in months for the gunman to shoot through.
On the frame, they found a fresh palm print and so Ali Jalid, a Bureau press officer, became wanted as an accessory to murder.
They still needed to identify the gunman himself.
By a means which remains secret they received a sudden flood of intelligence about activities inside the Bureau in the 24 hours leading up to the shooting.
Crucially, they heard, there had been a meeting chaired by the Bureau’s senior military intelligence officer, Moustafa Mgirbi, at which it was decided to fire on the next day’s demonstrations and to send out snatch squads to drag some of the demonstrators into the Bureau.
Mgirbi, the police learned, had given the role of gunman to a man named Abdel Gader Tuhami.
But this was not evidence that could be used in court.
It was then that the police heard of the decorator who had seen the gunman seconds before he opened fire.
They showed him their covert mugshots and without hesitation he pointed to a man with a thin face and a black moustache, a 25-year-old student with no diplomatic cover, named Abdel Gader Tuhami, who was by then safely home in Tripoli.
