The prime suspect in the 1984 murder of PC Yvonne Fletcher was allegedly allowed to settle in the UK and buy a £400,000 house with cash because he was spying for Britain.
Saleh Ibrahim Mabrouk returned home to Britain in 2009, many years after Fletcher was killed by a sniper at the Libyan Embassy in London. He was allowed to live in Reading, despite being the main suspect.
He was arrested in 2015 in connection with Fletcher’s murder but was told two years later the case would not go forward on national security grounds even though police said they had sufficient evidence to bring him to court.
Mabrouk may have been allowed to return home to Britain, and may have escaped prosecution. His links to Muammar Gadafi’s regime of Libya has made him a state asset.
According to the Telegraph, he was an “agent of influence” who was believed to have been involved with talks that led Gaddafi to agree to end Libya’s weapons-of-mass destruction program in December 2003.
Saleh Ibrahim Mabrouk, (pictured) the prime suspect in the 1984 murder of PC Yvonne Fletcher was allegedly allowed to settle in the UK and buy a £400,000 house with cash because he was spying for Britain
Mabrouk was a senior figure in the’revolutionary’ committee that ran the Libyan embassies at the time Fletcher was assassinated in 1984.
After the incident, he was expelled from Britain and allowed to return to Libya in 1999 after Tony Blair restored diplomatic relations.
He received many visas over the years and was issued a “comfort letter” in 2002, which prevented border officials from questioning him every time he arrived.
In 2009, Mabrouk purchased a £385,000 house in Reading, where he would live for the next 10 years after claiming asylum in the UK in 2011.
Unidentified sources claimed he was able to get around the UK’s strict money laundering laws to buy the Berkshire house because of his usefulness to the British state and that a ‘deal’ that allowed him to return was ‘part of the reconciliation with Libya’.
Another senior officer stated that Mabrouk could not have brought cash into the UK and settled here without someone in authority…
Police Constable Yvonne Fletcher was shot dead by a sniper outside the Libyan Embassy in London in 1984
Fletcher was shot in the stomach by a sniper in front of the St James’s Square address, London, in 1984. Mabrouk is the prime suspect, but he has never been charged in the murder.
According to the source, “My understanding is that Yvonne Fletcher was the killer.”
“We started recruiting people to Libya, and at most one of the people they are after is involved in the murder of an officer.
‘I was told that Mabrouk was on the books at that time. That was the problem with the criminal investigation.
“They won’t admit this, but there’s no way someone like that can bring all that wealth into the country without contributing something.”
Criminal investigations into the murder were dropped in 2017, despite the Metropolitan Police telling the Home Officer they believed they had enough evidence to bring someone to court.
Met Police stated: “Our investigation has identified enough material for us to identify the perpetrators of WPC Fletcher’s murder, if we could present it to a court.”
“However, the key material was not made available to court in evidential format for national security reasons.
Mabrouk will face a civil suit this year by John Murray, a retired officer of police who held PC Fletcher as she died in his arms.
Next month, a High Court hearing will likely focus on Fletcher’s death, evidence about Mabrouk’s involvement, and discuss the alleged state asset designation of the prime suspect in the case.
However, Mabrouk was forbidden from returning to the UK by the Home Office last year. This raises concerns that Mabrouk will not be tried in the Yvonne Fletcher murder trial.
Mabrouk was informed that he was ‘excluded from Britain’ in January 2019, six weeks after Mr Murray began civil action against him.
The letter stated that your presence would be detrimental to the public’s good due to your involvement in war crimes in Libya and crimes against humanity in Libya.
Mr Murray said that the Home Office had gotten blood on its hands by allowing the Libyan to be barred from the UK following the decision.
Although criminal investigations into the murder were dropped, Mabrouk will now face a civil lawsuit being brought by John Murray (pictured), a retired police officer who held PC Fletcher as she died in his arms.