Siege Libyan back in U.K.

Press, 31 January 1986, Page 8

Siege Libyan back in U.K.

NZPA-AAP London Almost two years ago millions of television viewers watched horrified as a young policewoman writhed in agony in London’s St James’s Square. A burst of gunfire from the Libyan Embassy had pitched Yvonne Fletcher to the ground. Her black-and-white cap rolled in the street while her fiance, a policeman, cradled , her, dying, in his arms. That was April, 1984. For the people of Semley, Wiltshire, Yvonne Fletcher is not yesterday’s news. Her parents, Queenie and Tim, live there. In recent days they discovered that one of the Libyan officials expelled after the shooting and today siege, had re-entered Britain several months ago and is living less than 48km away. Nobody was charged with their daughter’s death and the Home Office 1 said it could not determine who was directly responsible. - - Salah Abdessalem Rabha was one of 30 Libyans holed up in the embassy. He was a cameraman attached to the mission. Mr Rabha has an English wife and five children in Britain and five months after his expulsion he appealed to be allowed to return to them. The Home Office refused, but an Immigration Appeals Tribunal over-ruled the finding. He returned quietly to North Newton, also in Wiltshire, in October last year.

During the embassy incident the police were convinced that Rabha could identify Yvonne Fletcher’s killer because of his job at the embassy. Police groups reacted angrily to the haste with which the Libyans were bundled on to planes bound for Tripoli rather than subjected to intense questioning. Now the argument has become a dilemma for the two villages — they appear to be tom between sympathy for the Fletcher family and understanding for the Libyan’s locallyborn wife, Catherine, and their five children.

Queenie Fletcher’s feelings were plain. "How could they let this man back into the country after only 18 months. He was a cameraman and his only reason for being in the embassy that I can see would be to photograph the set-up incident that led to my daughter’s death,” she said. She was particularly upset by the stealth and secrecy surrounding Rabha’s return.