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Yvonne Fletcher
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WPC Yvonne Joyce Fletcher (1959–17 April 1984) was a British Police officer who was shot and killed in London's St James's Square while on duty during a protest outside the Libyan embassy. Her death resulted in a police siege of the embassy, which lasted for eleven days.
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Encyclopedia
WPC Yvonne Joyce Fletcher (1959–17 April 1984) was a British Police officer who was shot and killed in London's St James's Square while on duty during a protest outside the Libyan embassy. Her death resulted in a police siege of the embassy, which lasted for eleven days. The shooting also caused the breakdown of diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom and Libya. Her death was the third murder or manslaughter of an on-duty mainland British policewoman, only 18 months after the first.
Fletcher was born in Wiltshire and joined the Metropolitan Police in 1977. At 5ft 2¾in (159cm) tall, she was believed to be Britain's shortest police officer (at the time, police officers were generally subject to minimum height requirements).
Nobody has ever been convicted of her murder, though after 15 years the Libyan government finally accepted responsibility for her death and agreed to pay compensation her family.
The protests
On the day of her death, WPC Fletcher was one of a detachment of thirty officers sent to Saint 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 specifically to protest the execution of two students who had criticised Gaddafi in Tripoli. The Libyan embassy, known as the Libyan People's Bureau, was located in the square, and since February 1984, it had been staffed by Gaddafi loyalists rather than professional diplomats. The loyalists 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.
The shooting
At 10:18 on the morning of 17 April 1984, shots were fired into the group of protestors, striking eleven people, including WPC Fletcher. The unarmed officer died of a stomach wound approximately an hour after arriving at hospital.
It is generally accepted that WPC Fletcher was killed by someone who opened fire on the protestors with a Sterling submachine gun from inside the Libyan embassy at Number 5 Saint James's Square.
WPC Fletcher’s hat and four other police officers' helmets were left lying in the square during the subsequent siege, 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 policewoman in 18 months.
The siege
Following the shooting, the bureau 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 (on the day of Fletcher's funeral) and then expelling them from the country. The government of the United Kingdom then broke off diplomatic relations with Libya.
Subsequent events
In July 1999, the Libyan government publicly accepted 'general responsibility' for the murder and agreed to pay compensation to WPC 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 Fletcher's 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.
Gaddafi was said to have later retracted Ghanem's claims.
Controversy
The official and generally accepted view that WPC Fletcher was fired upon and killed by someone in the Libyan embassy has been disputed by a number of experts, including army ballistics officer George Stiles 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 crucially referring to Fletcher's murder in the following extract:
- "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 at Saint James. Television speculation is one thing, but this was rather more than that, because on film was George Stiles, 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 Murder at Saint James, highlighted such issues as the velocity of the bullet and the angle at which it entered WPC Fletcher's body. The programme suggested a contentious theory which alleged that elements of British MI5, American CIA and Israeli Mossad intelligence, installed in a penthouse above Number 8 Saint James's Square, used a high-velocity weapon such as the Heckler and Koch G3-A4ZF (with telescopic sight) to fire a 3-shot burst at their target. According to this theory, WPC Fletcher was murdered to portray Gaddafi's Libya in a bad light, and perhaps to provoke the severing of bi-lateral diplomatic relations. Forensic evidence does not support the use of a high velocity weapon, however.
Fletcher's murder would later become a major factor in prime minister Margaret Thatcher's decision to allow U.S. President Ronald Reagan to launch the USAF bombing raid on Libya in 1986 from American bases in Britain.
Murder investigation
Early reports suggested that WPC Fletcher's murderer had been hanged shortly after returning to Libya in 1984. However, 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 the recent normalisation of political ties with that country. Detectives spent seven weeks in Libya interviewing both witnesses and suspects. Yvonne Fletcher's mother, Queenie, described these latest developments as "promising".
In February 2009, Queenie Fletcher suggested that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, whose appeal against his conviction for the Lockerbie bombing is scheduled to start at the Edinburgh Court of Criminal Appeal on 27 April 2009, 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."
Memorial
Largely as a result of a campaign by film director Michael Winner, a dedicated charity, the Police Memorial Trust, was created on 3 May 1984, two months after Yvonne Fletcher's death.
A memorial to Fletcher was commissioned by the Police Memorial Trust. In a display of political solidarity, the leaders of all the main political parties attended the unveiling in Saint James's Square on 1 February 1985, which was performed by the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. The memorial is located on the north-east corner of the inner section of the square.
Westminster City Council slightly modified part of Saint James's Square to accommodate the memorial, placing a rounded area of pavement in front of it, extending into the roadway making an architectural feature, the centre of which was the granite and Portland stone memorial. The public showed their support of this recognition of police bravery and sacrifice by attending the ceremony in their hundreds and by placing flowers at the memorial every day since it was unveiled. A twenty-year anniversary memorial service was held in April 2004.
In memory of over 1,600 British police officers killed on duty, a national memorial was erected in London opposite Saint James's Park at the junction of Horse Guards Road and The Mall. The National Police Memorial was unveiled by Queen Elizabeth on 26 April 2005.
See also
External links
Footage
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