Sickening smirk of suspect who’ll never be tried for the shooting of PC Yvonne Fletcher
As he enjoys family life in his £600,000 home in suburbia — protected by a letter of immunity from Blair’s government ...
In this dash for cash, Yvonne was forgotten
TO THE residents of the mock Tudor cul-de-sac on the outskirts of Reading, there was nothing particularly strange or sinister about the family at number four. The head of the household, who calls himself Ibrahim Maprok, owns a smart Audi, talks of having worked in the oil trade and recently set up a property firm, seemingly to manage buy-to-let investments during retirement.
His wife, 48-year-old Kamila, is a softly-spoken former housewife who began studying for a PhD at Reading University after her children left school.
Like many liberal members of the local Muslim community, she likes to wear gold Gucci watches and expensive items of jewellery alongside fashionable silk hijabs, and is often seen drinking iced coffee with friends in the town’s waterside cafes.
One son, Osama, is a journalist for Arab news outlets and lives in London. Another, 30-something Hitem, is believed to still live at the five-bedroom, £600,000 home — which is registered in Kamila’s name and was bought for £385,000 in cash in 2009.
Though no one would have called the family super-wealthy (at least by the standards of immigrants from oil-rich Libya, their home country) and they aren’t given to displays of conspicuous consumption, their lifestyle has always seemed quietly prosperous — if perhaps a little bit dull. Until last week, that is. For on Friday, it emerged that Ibrahim Maprok is, in fact, an alias. The real name of this resident of leafy suburbia is Dr Saleh Ibrahim Mabrouk.
And to the astonishment of his neighbours, he turns out to be the chief suspect in one of the most notorious and high-profile murder cases in recent history.
Dr Mabrouk is the ‘former Libyan official’ who was until recently on bail for the killing of Yvonne Fletcher, the 25-year-old policewoman shot by a sniper outside the Libyan Embassy in St James’s Square, London, in 1984.
Scotland Yard arrested the former crony of Colonel Gaddafi on suspicion of the unsolved crime 18 months ago. It’s thought police believed that Dr Mabrouk had been the official who had ordered staff to open fire on unarmed demonstrators protesting against Gaddafi’s regime.
In addition to the murder inquiry, Dr Mabrouk was also investigated for masterminding a huge 2011 money-laundering operation, amid claims he’d helped spirit $200 million (£153 million) of public money out of the country in the dying days of the dictator’s reign.
Though detectives wouldn’t say where he lived — revealing only that he hailed from the SouthEast — they added that his wife Kamila (who they called Camilla) and son Osama had also been arrested and placed on bail for the financial crime (but not the murder of PC Fletcher).
At the time, all three denied any wrongdoing. And last week, one of the clouds on their horizon lifted when it emerged that the murder investigation into Dr Mabrouk has been dropped.
According to a neighbour, Dr Mabrouk has since ‘boasted’ to locals about this.
‘He told a friend of mine about when the police dropped the charges against him and it sounded as if he was boasting,’ said the neighbour, who did not want to be named. He said that Dr Mabrouk had ‘told the neighbours after he moved in’ about being under police investigation. ‘He was very brazen about it and seemed to be showing off.
‘He will come out of his house, fag hanging out of his mouth. He is always on the phone. He has never been to work.’
He added that the family were known for having screaming rows in the street and in their back garden: ‘They are awful people to be honest. We generally stay away from each other.’
So why was the case against Dr Mabrouk dropped?
In a controversial move, Scotland Yard revealed the Government was unwilling (or unable) to allow evidence implicating him in the 1984 murder to be put to a jury, apparently for fear of betraying intelligence sources.
‘The key material has not been made available for use in court in evidential form for reasons of national security,’ it said.
Soon afterwards, it emerged the case against Dr Mabrouk — who was granted asylum in the UK following the fall of Gaddafi — may have been further hampered by the existence of a so-called ‘comfort letter’ sent to him by British authorities in 2002, reassuring him that he was not a suspect in the murder case.
It was sent at a time when the Blair government was frantically trying to curry favour with Gaddafi’s despotic regime, hoping British firms could one day exploit Libya’s oil reserves.
‘He got a letter from the Foreign Office saying: “You are not a suspect,”’ is how his barrister, Stephen Kamlish, puts it. ‘If they ever had to disclose [in court] why they changed their position, they would have to produce chapter and verse on why they wrote that letter.’
The letter is believed to have fallen short of guaranteeing that Dr Mabrouk would never be charged. But its existence would have created serious problems for prosecutors were he to have been brought to court.
In 2014, the emergence of a ‘comfort letter’ caused the trial of suspected Hyde Park bomber John Downey to collapse.
Downey was the IRA man suspected of carrying out the 1982 atrocity in which four soldiers died. But the attempt to prosecute him fell apart after his legal team produced a letter sent during the peace process offering immunity for past crimes carried out during the Troubles.
Against this backdrop, news that Dr Mabrouk will not be facing trial has only fuelled suspicions that the Blair government was quite prepared, when it suited, to sacrifice natural justice, and the rights of victims, at the altar of self-interest. It will also raise serious questions about the manner in which the British Establishment chose to build bridges with the despotic Gaddafi regime — allowing key figures not just to take up residence in this country, but also to buy property and spend large amounts of cash here.
During the nadir of this policy, New Labour’s favourite university, the London School of Economics, was apparently happy to not just accept the murderous dictator’s son Saif as a student (he enrolled on a philosophy course), but also accept £1.5million in donations from a charity he controlled, as well as signing a £2.2 million contract to help train Gaddafi’s morally bankrupt civil service.
Seemingly forgotten in this grubby dash for cash was the murder of PC Fletcher, a heinous crime carried out in broad daylight before scores of witnesses.
Her tragic killing shocked the nation and led to an international crisis that not only saw U.S. President Ronald Reagan launch airstrikes on Tripoli in 1986, but also led to the Lockerbie bombing two years later, in which 270 died.
It occurred on April 17, 1984, when the young PC was one of 30 unarmed officers sent to police a small demonstration outside the embassy, then called the Libyan People’s Bureau, in St James’s Square.
The protest had been organised by the opposition-linked Libyan National Salvation Front after the execution in Tripoli of two students who had criticised Gaddafi. They sent 75 supporters to the scene by coach.
The job of PC Fletcher and colleagues (who included her fiance, John Murray) was to keep the peace by preventing them clashing with Gaddafi loyalists.
Everything went according to plan until 10.18am, when a volley of shots were fired into the crowd from within the embassy. Eleven protesters were injured and PC Fletcher was struck in the stomach. She died shortly afterwards at Westminster Hospital.
A photograph of the scene, carried on front pages for weeks, showed her hat and four officers’ helmets lying in the square.
The embassy was surrounded by armed police for 11 days afterwards — one of the longest sieges in British history.
Thirty of its occupants (including Dr Mabrouk) were then deported to Libya as their presence in the UK was deemed ‘not conducive to the public good’. Britain then suspended diplomatic relations with the Gaddafi regime.
Crucially, before the diplomats were expelled, they were taken for interview at the Civil Service College in Sunningdale.
There, they were given food and drink, allowing detectives to take fingerprints and DNA evidence that would later identify Dr Mabrouk as a suspect.
Fast forward to 1999, and with the Blair government itching to rebuild relations with the oil-rich state, Libya publicly
Someone has got away with murder
accepted responsibility for the atrocity, agreeing to pay PC Fletcher’s mother, Queenie, £250,000 in compensation.
By 2002, Dr Mabrouk, who in the intervening years had run Gaddafi’s Higher Education and Academic Research Academy, had been allowed to return to the UK. In return for being allowed to come and go at will, he is believed to have been an occasional source for British intelligence.
Despite having no obvious job and never being registered at any UK address under his real name, Dr Mabrouk and his family appear to somehow have been able to live comfortably in Britain for the ensuing 15 years.
In 2009, his wife was able to buy their home with cash. And for the past 18 months, he has apparently been able to afford the fees of his barrister, a leading QC.
Meanwhile, the British police have continued their efforts to bring those responsible for PC Fletcher’s death to justice. A prosecution report written in 2007 had named him as prime suspect for ordering junior embassy staff to open fire on the crowd, in what was referred to as a ‘pre-arranged shooting’, though his presence in Britain remained secret.
In 2011, following the Arab Spring, Gaddafi was removed from office and killed, allowing Dr Mabrouk to apply for asylum in the UK on the grounds that (as a loyal follower of the late despot) his life would be in danger were he to return to Libya.
Despite being a suspect in an active murder investigation, his application was quietly accepted.
Not long afterwards, Libya’s National Transitional Council, which succeeded Gaddafi, claimed Dr Mabrouk had fled the country with $200million (£153million) in cash, days before rebel forces swept into the capital.
They said he’d been asked to use the cash to hire mercenaries in the Balkans to support the dictator’s regime. Dr Mabrouk denied the charge, saying he’d visited Croatia and Serbia on a peace mission.
‘I challenge them [to prove] I even have $20,000 let alone the $200 million they are talking about,’ he told Radio 4. ‘Let them produce proof. They haven’t caught me withdrawing cash from a bank or in an airport with cash on me.’
Since then, Dr Mabrouk appears to have done little (though the murder charge has apparently been withdrawn, he and his wife and son remain on bail accused of money laundering).
Early last year, he set up his firm, Profitable Property, though the extent of his holdings is unclear and the company has since been dormant.
Meanwhile, his wife has attended a number of pro-Gaddafi demonstrations. Her Facebook page contains a number of posts in Arabic criticising the Israeli government, along with others supporting Libya’s former despot.
As to PC Fletcher, it should, of course, be stressed that he vigorously denies her murder.
Specifically, he says that he was at Bow Street police station at the time of the shooting, having been arrested earlier in the day.
‘They [the police] are now saying there is evidence too sensitive to use, but we do not accept there was any evidence, usable or unusable,’ says his QC.
‘At no stage have the police produced any evidence against my client. Not a shred.’
The prosecution case, meanwhile, is that while Dr Mabrouk never pulled the trigger, he was the senior embassy official who effectively ordered her killing.
However, the decision to drop the case against him means that whatever evidence they did have will never be revealed.
So it goes that this prosperous resident of leafy suburbia must henceforth be regarded as entirely innocent of killing PC Yvonne Fletcher. But the awkward fact remains that someone, somewhere, has got away with murder.
AdditionAl reporting: AlEX WARd and REBECCA CAMBER.