Murder of WPC Fletcher will be a private prosecution
THE police officer who cradled WPC Yvonne Fletcher as she lay dying on a London street is launching a private prosecution against the Libyan official who plotted her shooting.
John Murray is determined to fulfil the promise he made to his friend and colleague to bring her killers to justice.
On April 17 1984, WPC Fletcher was shot in the back by a bullet from an automatic weapon fired from a first-floor window of the Libyan embassy in St James’s Square. It was fired towards demonstrators protesting against the regime of now-deposed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Despite the danger to himself, Mr Murray rushed to help the stricken officer and was later present at her post-mortem.
The retired policeman is using yesterday’s 40th anniversary of WPC Fletcher’s murder to launch a campaign to fund a case against Saleh Ibrahim
Mabrouk, a former Gaddafi aide. The move comes after the High Court in 2021 found Mabrouk to be “jointly liable” for WPC Fletcher’s death, along with those who actually carried out the shooting from the embassy window.
The ruling was the first time in 37 years that anybody had been found culpable for the murder. The High Court was told that Mabrouk was “one of only three people who were able to organise and direct the shooting” after members of Gaddafi’s Libyan Revolutionary Committee took control of the embassy. Mr Murray’s lawyers said the “orchestration” of the shooting “was entirely consistent” with Mabrouk’s “official functions … under the Gaddafi regime”.
Mabrouk was arrested in 2015, but the criminal case against him was dropped in 2017 after the Metropolitan Police was prevented from using key evidence on the grounds of protecting national security.
Mr Murray said: “It means the world to me to get to the point where we are going to issue criminal proceedings against Mabrouk.”
‘It means the world to me to get to the point where we are going to issue criminal proceedings’