the times | Thursday November 11 2021 15
News
Supporters of Muammar Gaddafi
filmed the shooting of WPC Yvonne
Fletcher outside the Libyan embassy so
he could watch footage of the murder,
the high court heard yesterday.
An aide to the former dictator is ac-
cused of masterminding the shooting
after pro-Gaddafi students seized con-
trol of the embassy in 1984.
Saleh Ibrahim Mabrouk is being sued
by John Murray, a former police officer
who had been on duty with Fletcher
and cradled her as she died.
Murray hopes the case will expose
the “full evidence” surrounding Fletch-
er’s death. There has been speculation
that Mabrouk escaped criminal prose-
cution because the British government
used him as conduit to Gaddafi.
Fletcher, 25, was shot in the back
while policing a demonstration against
Gaddafi outside the Libyan People’s
Bureau in St James’s Square on April 17.
Murray, 66, is bringing a civil claim for
a nominal amount of £1 against Ma-
brouk for the post-traumatic stress dis-
order he suffered as a result of her death.
Mabrouk, who denies wrongdoing,
was arrested in 2015 for conspiracy to
murder. Two years later the Metro-
politan Police said it could identify
those responsible but charges could not
be brought because evidence had been
kept secret to protect national security.
Murray said before the start of the
three-day trial that if he won the Crown
Prosecution Service might review a de-
cision not to proceed with a prosecution.
The retired officer, from Chingford,
east London, said he had promised
Fletcher as she was dying that he would
find those responsible. “I can recall the
events of that day by the minute... I
think about it all the time,” he said.
Phillippa Kaufmann QC, for Murray,
told the court Mabrouk had not fired
the shot that killed Fletcher. However,
she said there was overwhelming evi-
dence that he was a “leading partici-
pant” in a plan to “use extreme violence
by gunfire in response to the protest”.
She said: “In March 1979 Gaddafi open-
WPC’s shooting at
embassy ‘filmed for
Gaddafi to watch’
ly stated that Libyans abroad were con-
sidered unsupportive and ‘fair game’
and he would get them.”
The court was told that a Libyan en-
gineering student who infiltrated pro-
Gaddafi elements in Britain heard Ma-
brouk say in 1984 that the dictator had
told him to seize the embassy and “use
the facilities, the guns, all the weapons,
the money and the power of the embas-
sy” and “teach the British a lesson”.
After Mabrouk and other Gaddafi
supporters took control of the embassy
he told a meeting they had to “teach a
lesson to anti-Gaddafi people, indicat-
ed that they had a number of ‘targets’ in
the UK and asked for volunteers to help
carry out the violence”, the court heard.
The student, who has not been iden-
tified, said he was told on the eve of
Fletcher’s murder that there was “going
to be a shooting”. A pro-Gaddafi pro-
tester in the square said Mabrouk told
them “where to stand so that [we]wouldn’t get shot”, the court was told.
Another witness claimed a video was
taken inside the embassy during the
shooting to be played back to Gaddafi.
Kaufmann said that Mabrouk’s be-
haviour “demonstrates that he was
party to, and supportive of, the plan to
use violence at the protest”.
Mabrouk was expelled from Britain
but was allowed to return after Gaddafi
gave up Libya’s weapons of mass de-
struction. He settled in Britain in 2009
when he bought a £385,000 house in
Reading, Berkshire, but was asked to
leave again in 2018 and became an aca-
demic at Tripoli University.
Mabrouk is not participating in the
case but told Murray’s lawyers: “I wasn’t
present when PC Fletcher was killed,
nor did I instruct anyone to kill her, nor
did I encourage anyone to kill her.”David Brown
understand your
traumas, triggers, joys,
and routine, you will
always be able to
understand or learn
more about your pain
and how to handle it.”
Last week Nadine
Dorries, the culture
secretary, said that
tech bosses may faceT
he model
Bella Hadid
has spoken
out about
her
mental health
“breakdowns and
burnouts”, and
warned her
47 million
Instagram
followers that
“social media
is not real”
(Peter
Chappell
writes).
The 25-year-
old American
supermodel
urged anyone
struggling
mentally to
remember “you’re
not alone” in a
caption under a
series of nine photos
Weeping model rails
against social media
depression, in any
given week.
The whistleblower
Frances Haugen, who
used to work at
Facebook, said last
month that Instagram
was “unquestionably
making hate worse”.
Hadid follows several
other prominent
celebrities who have
spoken out about the
corrosive effects of
social media on mental
health. The singer
Lana Del Rey shut
down her accounts in
September, and Ed
Sheeran has not had a
social media presence
for six years.prosecution by the end
of next year if they fail
to take down harmful
content from their
platforms. She said
that she would make
senior managers of
social media platforms
criminally liable for
hateful content, as part
of the draft online
safety bill.
Referring to the
bosses of social media
companies such as
Twitter and Meta,
better known asFacebook, which owns
Instagram, she told a
select committee:
“They know what
they’re doing now, they
actually have the
ability to put right
what they’re doing
wrong now, they have
the ability now to abide
by their own terms and
conditions they could
remove harmful
algorithms tomorrow.”
The mental health
charity Mind estimates
that one in six people
in England will
experience a common
mental health
problem, such as
anxiety andBella Hadid, who has
suffered depression and
anxiety, posted pictures
of herself crying in bedp
o
t
cB
s
a
oposted to Instagram
showing her crying in
bed.
Hadid has
previously told her
young fanbase
how she has had
depression and
anxiety since
she was a
teenager. The
model took a
break from
social media
in January
to focus on
her mental
health.
“I’ve had
enough
breakdowns
and burnouts to
know this: if you
work hard enough
on yourself,
spending time
alone toJohn Murray held
Yvonne Fletcher
as she died, the
court was told