Gaddafi aide who returned to life of comfort in the Home Counties
SIXTEEN years after Saleh Ibrahim Mabrouk was expelled from the UK over the murder of WPc Yvonne Fletcher, he was back. Mabrouk, a close aide to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, had been expelled from Britain, his presence deemed to be “not conducive to the public good”.
But in 2000, Mabrouk returned. And for the next two decades, he came and went as he pleased, eventually settling in Britain for good in a mock Tudor home in a large anonymous suburb of Reading following Gaddafi’s overthrow and death at the hands of a mob in 2011.
The man that police suspected of involvement in one of the highest profile murder cases in a generation was allowed to live comfortably less than 40 miles from where WPc Fletcher had been shot and killed in 1984.
Back in Libya after the shooting, Mabrouk, always a Gaddafi loyalist, rose up to be one of his closest aides. He became the dean of Libya’s Higher Studies and Academic Research Academy, based in Tripoli. The academy’s key function, according to one former senior British diplomat, was “to groom Gaddafi protégés”.
The diplomatic source said: “It was always rumoured that if the academy needed money then Mabrouk would simply call up Gaddafi and go to lunch with him. He would then come back with a cheque.”
By 1999, Britain’s relations with Libya – frozen after WPc Fletcher’s murder – were beginning to thaw. That year, two Libyan intelligence agents Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah were extradited from Libya to the Netherlands to face trial for the Lockerbie bombing. Libya also accepted responsibility for WPc Fletcher’s murder and it paid £250,000 in compensation to her mother.
As part of that deal to improve Anglo-Libyan relations, in 2000 Mabrouk, now 62, was allowed to come back to the UK. It seems his arrival into the UK did not always go smoothly and he would be quizzed at the airport about his involvement in WPc Fletcher’s murder. By about 2002, Mabrouk seems to have solved that problem by apparently obtaining a letter from the Foreign Office that declared he should not be treated as a suspect in the case. He has always denied wrongdoing, and says he was in police custody when the shooting took place.
In July 2009, he felt so secure in the UK he even bought a house without any mortgage for £385,000. It is now worth almost double that.
Following the overthrow of Gaddafi in 2011, Mabrouk fled to his bolt-hole in Berkshire, claiming asylum in the UK. A year later, the BBC reported that Mabrouk was wanted by Libya’s transi
tional government and was number 107 on its list of individuals suspected of misusing state funds.
In Reading, Mabrouk had embarked on a doctorate. He applied for asylum in 2012 after Gaddafi’s fall but the claim was rejected by the UK in about 2015, The Sunday Telegraph understands.
Shortly after he was arrested over the conspiracy to murder WPc Fletcher and also for money laundering. No charges were ever brought.
Mabrouk lived without bother with his wife and family until his shock arrest on suspicion of conspiracy to murder in 2015. Neighbours in the quiet suburban street were dumbfounded. “What happened to that poor policewoman was terrible and the thought of one of our neighbours possibly having something to do with it was awful.”
Two years later any chance of a prosecution of Mabrouk was blocked on the grounds of national security. His lawyers said there had never been a “shred of evidence” against him. Mabrouk has dismissed the allegations as a “fraud”.
Last week, his wife confirmed that Mabrouk had left the UK. It is understood he returned to Libya in July 2018. “We are separated now. He has his life in Libya and I have my life in Reading.”
Libyan authorities questioned him on his return over alleged war crimes but decided not to bring charges. Mabrouk has always maintained the allegations made against him were brought as part of a political witch hunt against him.
‘We are separated now. He has his life in Libya and I have my life in Reading’