1984 shooting of a British police officer
The murder of Yvonne Fletcher, a Metropolitan Police officer, occurred on 17 April 1984, when she was fatally wounded by a shot fired from the Libyan embassy on St James's Square, London, by an unknown gunman. Fletcher had been deployed to monitor a demonstration against the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, and died shortly afterwards. Her death resulted in an eleven-day siege of the embassy, at the end of which those inside were expelled from the country and the United Kingdom severed diplomatic relations with Libya.
Between 1980 and 1984 Gaddafi had ordered the deaths of several exiled opponents of his regime; bombings and shootings, targeted at Libyan dissidents, occurred in Manchester and London. Five Libyans thought to be behind the attacks were deported from the UK. During the anti-Gaddafi protest on 17 April 1984, two gunmen opened fire from the first floor of the embassy with Sterling submachine guns. In addition to the murder of Fletcher, eleven Libyan demonstrators were wounded. The inquest into Fletcher's death reached the verdict that she was "killed by a bullet coming from one of two windows on the west side of the front on the first floor of the Libyan People's Bureau". Following the breaking of diplomatic relations, Libya arrested six British nationals, the last four of whom were released after nine months in captivity.
Two years after Fletcher's murder, the event became a factor in the decision by the British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, to allow the US bombing of Libya from bases in the UK. In 1999, a warming of diplomatic relations between Britain and Libya led to a statement from the Libyan government admitting culpability in Fletcher's shooting, and the payment of compensation. British police continued their investigation until 2017. Although sufficient evidence existed to prosecute one of the co-conspirators, no charges were brought as some of the evidence could not be raised in court due to national security concerns. As at 2025 no one has been convicted of Fletcher's murder, although in 2021 the High Court of Justice determined that Gaddafi's ally Saleh Ibrahim Mabrouk was jointly liable for Fletcher's murder.
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Background.
Yvonne Fletcher.
Yvonne Joyce Fletcher was born on 15 June 1958 in the Wiltshire village of Semley, to Michael Fletcher and his wife Queenie ("née" Troke). Yvonne was the eldest of the couple's four daughters. At the age of three she told her parents that she wanted to join the police. By the time she was eighteen and a half—the minimum entry age into the Metropolitan Police Service—she was tall, shorter than the required. She applied to several police forces but was turned down on the basis of her height, and considered applying for entry to the Royal Hong Kong Police Force.
Despite the height restriction, in March 1977 Fletcher was accepted onto the Metropolitan Police 20-week training course. She passed and was placed on the standard two-year probation period with the warrant number 4257; she was posted to Bow Street police station, where she completed her probation and was confirmed as a regular Woman Police Constable (WPC). She was highly regarded by her colleagues, who nicknamed her "Super Fletch", and she became engaged to PC Michael Liddle, who also worked at Bow Street.
Relations between Britain and Libya.
From 1979 there had been no Libyan ambassador appointed to the United Kingdom. A "Revolutionary Committee" was in control of the Libyan embassy in London, located at 5 St James's Square; the embassy was renamed the "People's Bureau". In 1980 Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi—the Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council—saw many exiles from Libya as traitors and had given orders for several of them to be murdered. On his instructions, bombs were planted in London newsagents that sold newspapers critical of Gaddafi. Moussa Koussa was appointed as Secretary of the Libyan People's Bureau in London in 1979. He was expelled from the UK in 1980, after stating in an interview with "The Times" that the Libyan government planned to murder two opponents of Gaddafi's government living in the UK. The Lord Privy Seal, Sir Ian Gilmour, told the House of Commons that the government wished "to maintain good relations with Libya", but that "we are making it clear that the Libyan authorities must understand what can and cannot be done under the law of the United Kingdom, and that criminal actions in the United Kingdom must cease".
After several murders of Gaddafi's political opponents in the UK in 1980, there was a decrease in activity until 1983, when the Libyan General People's Congress—the country's legislature—began a campaign against what they saw as the bourgeois habits of staff at several of the People's Bureaux, particularly the office in London. In February 1983 the bureau chief and cultural attaché were recalled to Libya and replaced with a four-man committee of students who had all been involved in revolutionary activities in Libya. Soon after they were appointed, they gave a press conference at which they threatened action against Libyan dissidents. On 10 and 11 March 1984 there were a series of bomb attacks in London and Manchester targeted at critics of the Gaddafi regime. The Libyan government denied being involved, but on 16 March the British government deported five Libyans said to be connected to the attacks.
Vienna convention and diplomatic protection.
The protection of diplomats and their official premises is based on the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations 1961, an international treaty; it was signed by 141 countries, including the UK and Libya. It was incorporated into UK law in the Diplomatic Privileges Act 1964. Among other measures, the act protects diplomats from prosecution for any crime unless the diplomat's home country waives their right to immunity. A country can declare a diplomat from another state to be "persona non grata", and demand that they leave the country, but no other action can be taken against them. Diplomatic premises are also protected from entry by the police or security services, unless given permission by the country's ambassador.
Shooting: 16–17 April 1984.
On 16 April 1984 two students—active opponents of Gaddafi's rule—were executed in public hangings at the University of Tripoli. In response Libyan dissidents in Britain—members of the Libyan National Salvation Front (LNSF)—decided to stage a demonstration outside the People's Bureau on St James's Square. During the evening of 16 April, the People's Bureau proposed three options to Tripoli on how to deal with the demonstration: to clash directly with the demonstrators from outside the bureau, to shoot at them from inside or to prevent the event by diplomatic means. The bureau tried the third option. During the night of 16–17 April a delegation from the People's Bureau attended a meeting at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to complain about the forthcoming demonstration, and ask that it be stopped. The Libyans were told that the Metropolitan Police would be informed, but would be unable to prevent the demonstration from going ahead. 
During the night, Tripoli authorised the bureau to open fire on the protestors. The British political scientist Richard J. Aldrich writes that these messages were intercepted and decrypted by the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), but not in time to avoid the shooting. Aldrich suggests that the delay was possibly because GCHQ did not work on the intercept outside their 9:00 am to 5:00 pm office hours. The authorised history of MI5, while not specifying from where the organisation received the information, says that "it was not until after the demonstration on the 17th that the Service learned" of the three options proposed by the People's Bureau to Tripoli. On the morning of 17 April, police workmen placed crowd control barriers in St James's Square in preparation for the demonstration. One of the Libyans from the People's Bureau told a workman that there were guns in the bureau and there would be fighting that day. The workman passed the message on to police, who decided not to take action.
A detachment of around 30 police officers was sent to St James's Square to monitor the demonstration; among them were Fletcher and her fiancé. They were accompanied by members of the Diplomatic Protection Group. About 75 LNSF protestors arrived from across the country, particularly northern England; the demonstration began at around 10:00 am. The demonstrators—many wearing masks or balaclavas, to ensure photographers from the People's Bureau could not record their identities—stayed behind barriers placed opposite the Bureau; they chanted anti-Gaddafi slogans and carried banners and placards. A counter-demonstration by Gaddafi supporters had been arranged by the People's Bureau and took place outside the building. The demonstrations were filmed by several international television crews invited by the Libyans.
At 10:18 am automatic gunfire was discharged from two windows of the People's Bureau in the direction of the anti-Gaddafi demonstration. The shots wounded eleven protestors; according to the post-mortem examination report, one round entered Fletcher's back, " below the top of the right shoulder, to the right of the spine and behind the back fold of the right armpit". The bullet travelled right to left, through her thoracic diaphragm, liver and gall bladder before it was deflected by the spinal column out through the left side of the body, and then into the left elbow.
While the demonstrators were moved into Charles II Street, Fletcher was aided by her colleagues; as she lay in the road outside the People's Bureau, she advised them to "keep calm". She was moved to Charles II Street; she became unconscious and stopped breathing and a colleague gave her resuscitation. At 10:40 am an ambulance took her to Westminster Hospital. As she was being transferred from the ambulance to a hospital trolley, a single spent round of ammunition fell from her uniform. She was operated on, but died at approximately midday.
The police evacuated members of the public from the offices around the square, which they sealed off with a cordon; armed police took up positions facing the People's Bureau and on the surrounding rooftops. The garage entrance at the rear of the People's Bureau was not sealed off until at least ten minutes after the shooting, and in that time some of those inside departed the premises through that exit.
With Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister, on an official visit to Portugal, and Geoffrey Howe, the Foreign Secretary, in China, responsibility for handling the crisis fell to Leon Brittan, the Home Secretary. Events spread to Libya soon after the shooting, as around 60 members of the Revolutionary Guard Corps surrounded the British embassy in Tripoli, and put the premises under siege, trapping the staff of 25—including Oliver Miles, the ambassador. Three British nationals working in Tripoli were arrested on unspecified charges.
The post-mortem on Fletcher was undertaken in the evening of 17 April by the forensic pathologist Iain West. Examining the entry of the shot, he wrote that:
The angle of the bullet wound indicates that she was shot in the back by a person who was situated at a considerably higher level. Assuming that she was standing upright at the moment she was shot, the track would indicate that she had been shot from one of the adjacent floors of an adjacent building.
From the angle of the entry wound, and Fletcher's position in the street—captured on news cameras seconds before she was shot—West established that the shot had come from the first floor of the embassy.
Siege: 18–27 April 1984.
On 18 April, Miles was allowed to leave the British embassy to meet representatives of the Libyan government; the siege in Tripoli was lifted that day and one of the men arrested the previous day was also released. The following day Gaddafi appeared on Libyan television and blamed the British police and security forces for the attack; he said that "we are surprised how a responsible state like England carry on ["sic"] committing this crime". Over the next week five bombs were planted in London, four of which were defused; on 20 April the fifth bomb exploded in the baggage area of Terminal 2 at Heathrow Airport, for which police suspected Libyan bombers. The British government's attitude towards Libya hardened as a result of the bombs, although they were also sensitive to Libya's behaviour in previous diplomatic impasses, whereby the regime would arrest citizens of a country and hold them until the normalisation of formal relations. There were 8,000 British workers in Libya, mostly working in the oil and construction industries.
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