Yvonne Fletcher

Yvonne Joyce Fletcher (Police Constable)
Born	1959
Died	17 April 1984 (Age 24)
Victim of	murder
Yvonne Fletcher was shot dead while on duty during a protest outside the Libyan embassy on 17 April 1984, cue for the breakdown of diplomatic relations between the UK and Libya.

Official Narrative

WPC Yvonne Fletcher's death resulted in an 11-day police siege of the embassy, from where the fatal shot was fired. The shooting resulted in the expulsion of the embassy staff and the breakdown of diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom and Libya. Fletcher's murder became a major factor in Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's decision to allow US President Ronald Reagan to launch the USAF bombing raid on Libya in 1986 from American bases in Britain.

Protests

The Libyan Embassy, 5 St James's Square, London

On the day of her death, Fletcher was one of a detachment of thirty officers sent to St James's Square to monitor a demonstration by Libyan dissidents opposed to the rule of Colonel Gaddafi. The officers with her at the time included her fiancé. This particular demonstration was organised by the Libyan National Salvation Front (LNSF), and was in protest at the execution of two students who had criticised Gaddafi in Tripoli. The Libyan embassy, known as the Libyan People's Bureau, was located at 5 St James's Square. Gaddafi loyalists at the embassy had warned the police that they intended to mount a counter-demonstration.

About 75 protestors arrived by coach from the North of England for the demonstration, and the police kept them and the loyalists apart by the use of crowd control barriers. Loud music was played from the bureau in an apparent attempt to drown out the shouts of the protestors.

Shooting

At 10:18 on the morning of 17 April 1984, shots were fired into the group of protestors, striking eleven people, including Yvonne Fletcher. The unarmed officer died of a stomach wound approximately an hour after arriving at hospital.

The subsequent inquest into her death was told that Fletcher was killed by shots from two Sterling sub-machine guns from the first floor of the Libyan embassy.

Fletcher’s hat and four other police officers' helmets were left lying in the square during the ensuing siege on the embassy, and images of them were repeatedly shown on British and international television in the days that followed. The British public reacted with horror at the third murder of a British police officer in 18 months.

Siege

Following the shooting, the embassy was surrounded by armed police for eleven days, in the longest police siege in London's history. Meanwhile, Gaddafi expressed 'disgust' that his diplomats were not being permitted diplomatic immunity, and Libyan soldiers surrounded Britain's embassy in Tripoli in response.

The British Government eventually resolved the incident by allowing the embassy staff to depart the bureau and then expelling them from the country. Britain then broke off diplomatic relations with Libya.

Subsequent events

At a press conference on 5 April 1999, Foreign Secretary Robin Cook was asked (in relation to the Lockerbie breakthrough): "How quickly do you anticipate relations between the UK and Libya to get back to normal?"

Robin Cook replied:

The United Nations sanctions will now be suspended, and after 90 days will be lifted depending on Kofi Annan's support; that will resolve the international sanctions on Libya.

The United Kingdom does of course also have issues of its own bilateral concerns with Libya, notably the case of the murder of WPC Fletcher. We have said that we would wish to address those issues, and we hope to achieve cooperation with Libya in resolving those issues - hopefully with some good reasonable speed now that we have resolved the Lockerbie case.

In July 1999, the Libyan government publicly accepted 'general responsibility' for the murder and agreed to pay compensation to Fletcher's family. This, together with Libya's eventual efforts in the aftermath of the Lockerbie bombing, opened the way for the normalisation of relations between the two countries.

On 24 February 2004, the Today Programme on BBC Radio 4 reported that the new Libyan prime minister, Shukri Ghanem, had claimed that his country was not responsible for her murder (nor for the Lockerbie bombing). Ghanem said that Libya had made the admission and paid compensation in order to bring 'peace' and an end to international sanctions.

Controversy

The official view that Fletcher was fired upon and killed by someone in the Libyan embassy has been disputed by a number of experts, including army ballistics officer Lt-Col George Styles and Home Office pathologist, Hugh Thomas. Prime Minister Tony Blair was questioned on this subject by MP Tam Dalyell in Parliament on 24 June 1997. The Guardian of 23 July 1997 reported a parliamentary speech by Dalyell concerned mainly with the Lockerbie bombing, but also referring to Fletcher's murder:

"With the agreement of Queenie Fletcher, her mother, I raised with the Home Office the three remarkable programmes that were made by Fulcrum, and their producer, Richard Bellfield, called Murder In St. James's. Television speculation is one thing, but this was rather more than that, because on film was George Styles, the senior ballistics officer in the British Army, who said that, as a ballistics expert, he believed that the WPC could not have been killed from the second floor of the Libyan embassy, as was suggested.

"Also on film was my friend, Hugh Thomas, who talked about the angles at which bullets could enter bodies, and the position of those bodies. Hugh Thomas was, for years, the consultant surgeon of the Royal Victoria hospital in Belfast, and I suspect he knows more about bullets entering bodies than anybody else in Britain. Above that was Professor Bernard Knight, who, on and off, has been the Home Office pathologist for 25 years. When Bernard Knight gives evidence on film that the official explanation could not be, it is time for an investigation."

Participants who appeared in Channel 4's Dispatches documentary entitled "Murder In St James's" highlighted such issues as the velocity of the bullet and the angle at which it entered Fletcher's body. Lt-Col Styles stated that a high velocity bullet from a Sterling submachine gun would have passed straight through her body at an angle of 15°, and Hugh Thomas rebutted evidence given by Ian West, the pathologist at the inquest, that the 60° angle of entry of the bullet could be explained by Fletcher's turning to the right or left. The film went on to allege that the anti-Gaddafi organisation Al Burkan, which was allegedly funded by the Reagan White House, had obtained a gun from the Hein terrorist group in West Berlin, and used it to kill Fletcher with a single shot from the sixth floor penthouse at 3 St James's Square - the building adjacent to the embassy. According to the film, the head of Al Burkan, Ragab Zatout, planned to overthrow Gaddafi and seize control of Libya's oil wealth after the severing of diplomatic relations, but his coup attempt on 8 May 1984 was thwarted by the Libyan army.

Murder investigation

Once diplomatic relations had been restored in 1999, officers from the Metropolitan Police went to Libya on a number of occasions to pursue their investigations into her murder.

In June 2007, detectives from Scotland Yard were able to interview the chief Libyan suspect for the first time, following normalisation of political ties with that country. Detectives spent seven weeks in Libya interviewing both witnesses and suspects. Fletcher's mother, Queenie, described these developments as "promising".

In February 2009, Queenie Fletcher suggested that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, who at the time was appealing against his conviction for the Lockerbie bombing, should be moved to a prison in Libya, on condition that the Libyan government co-operates with Scotland Yard detectives investigating her daughter’s murder. Mrs Fletcher said:

"I know he is ill and I think he should be returned to a prison in Libya so his family can visit him. The appeal could still go ahead in Scotland, but he could stay in prison in Libya. It’s got to be a fair exchange, so Yvonne’s case can be closed. I’d like the police here to be given permission to interview whoever they’ve got to interview in Libya and see whoever they need to for someone to be brought to trial."

In October 2009 the Daily Telegraph revealed that the Crown Prosecution Service had been told by an independent prosecutor that there was sufficient evidence to prosecute two Libyans. A report from April 2007 concluded that the two men, who are now senior members of the Libyan regime played an "instrumental role" in the killing.

Call for Public Inquiry

On 17 April 2014, marking the 30th anniversary of WPC Yvonne Fletcher's murder, the following petition for a Public Inquiry was announced on Facebook:

This month it will mark the 30th anniversary the murder of WPC Yvonne Fletcher shot while standing opposite the Libyan embassy in St James's Sq. Diminutive in height, but large on bravery and character, Yvonne Fletcher was only accepted at 5’ 2” in the Met Police because of sheer, irrepressible enthusiasm and commitment. Are our memories so careless and short for someone who paid the ultimate price as a public servant? WPC Fletcher’s memory deserves the proper dignity and respect of a more thorough enquiry into her death. The controversy surrounding discrepancies of evidence and ballistics in particular suggest we have not served her memory well. The case should never have been closed without finding out beyond all shadow of doubt, who was responsible. We must call now for the case to be reopened and a Public Inquiry established. Please sign and share this petition.

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Terminal Velocity	article	1997	David Guyatt	Presents evidence that the shots which killed PC Yvonne Fletcher were not fired from the first floor of the Libyan embassy and that other aspects of the official narrative are anomalous. It refers to the work of Joe Vialls.
Document:Theresa May's personal role in facilitating terror attacks	video	5 June 2017	Dan Glazebrook	Theresa May and her Cabinet are complicit in murder. They are war criminals. If the principles established by the Nuremberg Tribunal after World War II were applied, they would be hung.
Document:Yvonne Fletcher - Death in St James	webpage	15 January 1996	Joe Vialls
Document:Yvonne Fletcher - Death in St James-2	webpage	15 January 1996	Joe Vialls

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External links

• BBC News (March 25, 2004), "Timeline: WPC Yvonne Fletcher"
• "The Murder of Policewoman Yvonne Fletcher" Joe Vialls on the holes in the official story
• National Police Memorial image of the Fletcher memorial
• The Guardian (July 23, 1997), speech by Tam Dalyell on Lockerbie and Fletcher's murder
• "Who Killed Police Constable Yvonne Fletcher?" Facebook Group

Footage

• Dispatches - Murder In St. James' Channel 4 Dispatches investigation (since removed by YouTube)
• BBC News footage of the family reaction
• BBC footage of the funeral
• "Yvonne Fletcher murdered by our Spooks"