WPC Yvonne Joyce Fletcher (15 June 1958 – 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.
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 to her family.
On the day of her death, WPC Fletcher was one of a detachment of thirty officers sent to St 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 organised by the Libyan National Salvation Front (LNSF), and was in protest at the execution of two students who had criticised Gaddafi in Tripoli.
The Libyan embassy, known as the Libyan People's Bureau, was located at 5 St James's Square and, since February 1984, had been staffed by "revolutionary committees" or students that had taken over, rather than professional diplomats, with tacit approval from the Libyan government.
Gaddafi loyalists at the embassy 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.
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.
Meanwhile, Libyan radio reported that the embassy was stormed and that those in the building fired back in self-defence against "a most horrible terrorist action".
The subsequent inquest into her death was told that WPC Fletcher was killed by shots from two Sterling submachine guns from the first floor of the Libyan embassy.
WPC Fletcher’s hat and four other police officers' helmets were left lying in the square during the ensuing siege on the embassy, 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 police officer in 18 months.
Following the shooting, the embassy was surrounded by armed police for eleven days, in the longest police siege in London's history.
Meanwhile, Gaddafi claimed that the Embassy was under attack from British forces, and Libyan soldiers surrounded the United Kingdom's embassy in Tripoli in response.
The British Government eventually resolved the incident by allowing the embassy staff to depart the bureau and then expelling them from the country. The UK then broke off diplomatic relations with Libya.
At a meeting with the British ambassador to Egypt in 1992, Libyan colonel Abdul Fatah Younis apologised on behalf of the Libyan government, and offered to extradite her killers.
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 her 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.
The official and generally accepted view that WPC Fletcher was fired upon and killed by someone on the second floor of the Libyan embassy has been disputed by a number of experts, including army ballistics officer Lt-Col George Styles 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 also referring to Fletcher's murder:
"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 In St. James's.
Television speculation is one thing, but this was rather more than that, because on film was George Styles, 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."
Her 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 the United Kingdom.
Early reports suggested that WPC Fletcher's murderer had been hanged shortly after returning to Libya in 1984 though it was not confirmed.
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 normalisation of political ties with the country.
Detectives spent seven weeks in Libya interviewing both witnesses and suspects.
WPC Fletcher's mother, Queenie, described these developments as "promising".
In February 2009, Queenie Fletcher suggested that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who at the time was appealing against his conviction for the Lockerbie bombing, should be moved to a prison in Libya, on condition that the Libyan government co-operate 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."
In October 2009 The Daily Telegraph revealed that the Crown Prosecution Service had been told by an independent prosecutor that there was sufficient evidence to prosecute two Libyans.
A report from April 2007 concluded that the two men, who are now senior members of the Libyan regime, played an "instrumental role" in the killing.
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 weeks after her death.
A memorial to WPC 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.
The Police Memorial Trust later commissioned the National Police Memorial, which was unveiled by Queen Elizabeth II on 26 April 2005.
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