Murder Clues

Secrets of the Libyan embassy

Home Secretary Leon Brittan was halfway through a speech to the House of Commons last week when an aide slipped him a piece of paper. Brittan had been delivering a report on the peaceful conclusion to the siege of St. James's Square, where two weeks earlier an unidentified gunman inside the Libyan embassy had fired an automatic weapon at a crowd of Libyan dissidents outside, killing Constable Yvonne Fletcher and wounding eleven demonstrators. After glancing quickly at the message, Brittan declared that police had a few moments earlier found handguns and ammunition in the vacated embassy. More significant, he also announced the discovery of "firearms residue," on a carpet, as well as a spent cartridge case near the upstairs window from which police believe the gunman fired.

The search of the embassy had begun a day earlier in an atmosphere of extreme caution. Fearful that the departing Libyans had left time bombs or booby traps behind, police used a remote-controlled shotgun to blast open a rear door of the building. Searchers crawled through the Victorian sewers beneath the square to make sure that the Libyans had not disposed of gelignite they were thought to possess by flushing it down a toilet. By nightfall, all 70 rooms in the embassy had been examined and no explosives found. Detectives speculated that the murder weapon and any unused ammunition for it had been removed by the departing Libyans in diplomatic bags, which under the Vienna Convention of 1961 cannot be searched.

Next day, in a more thorough examination, police discovered the spent cartridge case almost hidden in a corner near the window overlooking the square. They also found seven handguns, two ammunition clips and two pistol grips for a submachine gun, as well as twelve bulletproof vests and an assortment of ammunition. The discovery was made in the presence of a Saudi Arabian diplomat accompanying the searchers as an independent observer.

Nonetheless, Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi, who had insisted from the beginning that the shots were fired from outside the embassy, accused the British of falsifying the evidence. Not surprisingly, Libya announced that pistols and ammunition had been discovered in the British embassy in Tripoli, a charge Britain denied. Gaddafi repeated his previous threat to resume Libyan aid to Irish Republican Army terrorists as a means of punishing Britain for expelling his diplomats, but promised that there would be "no danger at all" to the Britons living in Libya.

In his Commons statement, Brittan disclosed that the government had narrowed its list of suspects in Constable Fletcher's murder down to two of the 30 Libyans in the embassy. Nonetheless, he emphasized, there was insufficient proof to name the killer and, in any event, the suspect would have been able to claim diplomatic immunity from prosecution. Brittan announced that the government would be taking steps to restrict the entry of Libyan citizens into the country and to keep closer tabs on the 6,500 already there. In addition, the government is expected to take a careful look at the 270 Libyans enrolled in a British Airways engineering course at London's Heathrow Airport. Heathrow was the scene of an unexplained bomb blast last month during the height of the siege at St. James's Square.

Though she had remained on the sidelines throughout the crisis, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher defended herself and her government in the House of Commons last week. When opposition members called for an outside inquiry into the embassy siege, the Prime Minister flatly refused. Said she: "It would compromise the sources and damage the effectiveness of our intelligence services."

With the Libyan crisis apparently behind her, Thatcher chose the fifth anniversary of her 1979 election victory to announce that she plans to lead her party into the next general election, which must be held by 1988 . No Prime Minister has won a third straight term since William Pitt the Younger did it in 1796. Thatcher remains confident despite a poor showing by the Conservatives in last week's local elections. A public opinion poll published by the Sunday Observer found that 79% of those interviewed were willing to describe Thatcher as the country's "toughest Prime Minister since Churchill," though at the same time 62% agreed with the statement that "she acts too much like a dictator."