PC Fletcher pal in £1 battle for truth
Scottish ex-cop’s quest to bring unheard details of officer’s 1984 shooting into public domain
A SCOTS former police officer yesterday began his court bid to identify the killer of his friend Yvonne Fletcher.
John Murray promised colleague Yvonne he would get justice for her as she lay dying in his arms 37 years ago.
PC Fletcher, 25, was shot while policing a demonstration against Colonel Gaddafi outside the Libyan embassy in central London.
Yesterday, Murray, 66, listened intently on day one of Saleh Ibrahim Mabrouk’s civil trial at the High Court.
He is suing the former Libyan minister for £1 and hoping to merely publicise previously unheard evidence about the case, forcing the CPS into reopening it.
The court heard witnesses were warned “we have guns” by the chief suspect accused of ordering the murder.
Workers putting up security barriers on the day of the shooting claim Mabrouk told them: “There is going to be fighting. We are not going to be responsible for what happens today.”
Hours before the shooting, John Sullivan and a colleague were erecting barriers in St James’s Square.
He said a man who looked like Mabrouk warned them there would likely be violence involving guns.
Murray’s barrister, Phillippa Kaufmann QC, said her client’s “primary aim” is to bring evidence to find out if Mabrouk was “liable” for the murder. He is not being accused of being the gunman and was being held in custody at the time PC Fletcher was shot.
He had made that point in letters, adding: “Nor did I instruct anyone to kill her, nor did I encourage anyone to kill her.”
But it is claimed that in 1984, he told a Libyan student group that Gaddafi had instructed him and others to “teach the British a lesson for letting the opposition work freely in the UK”, using the embassy as a base for “bombings and murders”.
Mrs Kaufmann told the court it was “inconceivable that the individuals who fired from the firstfloor window were not acting under his direction”.
The three-day hearing continues.