Beware the Men in Suits, Part 1: Stray Dogs | Investigation
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in their position. This is True Spies. For several seconds, John recalls looking at the crowd and thinking, what's going on? Why is everything so quiet? All the police officers who were standing, totally ignorant of what was going on, they heard this sound and thought, that's a firecracker. I'm Daisy Ridley, and this is True Spies from Spyscape Studios.

Beware the men in suits. Part 1: Stray dogs. It's the 17th of April, 1984. On the streets outside the Libyan embassy on St James's Square, London, police are preparing for a demonstration.

Police were used to dealing with those kind of demonstrations, particularly police officers who worked in the Westminster area because demonstrating in central London was commonplace. Demonstrations tend to be noisy, they tend to be vocal, but violence was quite a rarity.

Even so, the Libyan situation at this moment is particularly tense. What was happening is that around the world, Colonel Gaddafi, the leader in Libya, had become agitated and quite tired

of the anti-Qadhafi sentiment that was being expressed by the expatriate Libyans who were living in places around Europe in particular. And a lot of them were in the UK. And so he decided that he was going to take steps to effectively eliminate this opposition to him. And he sent assassins around Europe and to the UK

whose job it was to target people who he called the stray dogs. A rogue army of Gaddafi's most loyal spies are roaming the cities of Europe, hunting down dissidents.

And these people covertly imported weapons and explosives under the cover of diplomatic protection using diplomatic bags. And these weapons and these explosives were brought into the UK and they started a campaign in 1983 bombing and shooting people.

There were people shot outside the London Mosque in Regent's Park. There were bomb explosions in Manchester in late 1983 and early 1984. Shocking acts of terror on UK soil. Acts that Colonel Gaddafi hoped would serve as a warning to stray dogs everywhere. But his plan wasn't working. For every strike he made, the cries of dissent only grew louder.

The natural target of this dissent is the Libyan embassy, or the People's Bureau, as it is referred to by the Gaddafi supporters who occupy it. Whenever there is an act of oppression, at home in Libya or abroad, it is here that the stray dogs gather to protest. As a constable based out of Euston, a couple of miles north of St. James's Square, Matt Johnson is, for the moment, blissfully ignorant of all of this context.

But his superiors in the Metropolitan Police are aware of all of this. They were aware that there was a history between the pro-Qadhafi contingent and the anti-Qadhafi contingent. And that had resulted in some very unpleasant scenes of anger between the two contingents. And so they were aware there was a potential for disorder to break out. And so, in April 1984, additional precautions are taken.

So they came up with this clever plan to actually create steel barriers which would protect the pro-Qadhafi and the anti-Qadhafi contingent. And they employed more police officers than they would normally do. There was a total, in fact, of about 60 police officers to police the equivalent number of anti-Qadhafi demonstrators and about 20 to 30 anticipated pro-Qadhafi supporters.

The idea being that there would be a line of officers between the two different contingents. It would be noisy, they would get their point made and then gradually, once they'd been there for a while and let off steam, they would all head off home. The plan's a sound one, but it's going to require some additional manpower. And so extra police constables are drafted in, at the last moment, for support. Constables like John Murray.

John Murray's partner on patrol, today and every day, is a young, enthusiastic constable called Yvonne Fletcher.

At five foot nothing, she'd been turned down by her own local force in rural Wiltshire for being too small, and so she thought to try her luck in London. The Metropolitan Police at that particular time wanted as many people as possible, so I think, as I say, they bent the rules and let her in. As patrol officers in Soho, London's famed nightlife district, John Murray and Yvonne Fletcher walked a colourful and varied beat.

Being drafted in as additional manpower at a political demonstration wasn't part of their typical route. But what does typical mean at the heart of one of the most vibrant cities on earth? In central London, there were political demonstrations nearly every day, which we were used to. And as far as we were concerned, and I think I speak for most officers there, it was just going to be one of those, you know, the demonstration will take place, everybody will be happy and off they go.

So, that's the only thought in Yvonne Fletcher and John Murray's heads as they arrive in St James's Square on the morning of the 17th of April. Just another day in London.

We were there probably about half an hour to an hour before the anti-Qadhafi demonstrators arrived. We stood facing St James's Square itself with our back towards the People's Bureau. And then the coaches arrived with the anti-Qadhafi people in them. Most of them were dressed in green and their staffs on or face masks on. They were very vocal but very friendly.

The protesters are directed to their contained demonstration area. And they filed behind the barriers and we talked to them like we normally do. Good morning and they'd speak back to us. It was all very friendly, loud, but very friendly and jovial and everybody seemed quite happy.

Then, behind the wall of police officers and another column of barriers, the pro-Gaddafi contingent emerges from the People's Bureau. It was when that happened that you could tell the mood had changed slightly. You know, it was a bit more vocal, a bit more louder and a little bit more volatile, but nothing too much. So far, everything is going exactly to plan.

Two physical barriers and a line of police officers separate the two groups of protesters. No matter how heated the demonstration gets, violence is not an option. Slightly removed from the thrum of the protest, the senior police officer on site, one Alex Fish, observes the scene with a measure of satisfaction: an unpredictable situation, well handled.

The majority of police officers had their back to the embassy, but because Alex Fish was in a supervisory role, he was walking around looking at what was going on. He looked up at the first floor window where he'd noticed that one of the windows in particular was open, which was unusual. And as he looked up, he saw what appeared to be the barrel of a gun pointing out of the window. But of course, he thought,

No, it couldn't possibly be a gun. And it was only when that gun opened up and he heard the noise and he saw the flame appear from the barrel that he realized what it was. All of a sudden, reality is suspended. It's the moment John Murray, with his back to the embassy, will never forget.

I thought initially that someone had thrown a firecracker. That's what I thought it was. And initially the reaction for several seconds was one of stunned silence. Everything went quiet. The demonstration was completely subdued. And then, of course, people started to fall in front of them and people started to scream in pain and injured. And it was a matter of seconds when Yvonne fell to the floor.

Immediately, John Murray is at Yvonne's side, on the very spot that she fell. He, like all constables present, is unarmed. If there is more gunfire, he is entirely exposed, but his attention stays with his fallen friend.

John cradles Yvonne, willing her to hold on.

A few minutes later after the shooting, we carried her around into a side street of St James's Square called Charles II Street. You know, we gave her CPR and mouth-to-mouth and we actually brought her back, you know, in our arms. Then an ambulance arrived and she was put in the ambulance and I went in the ambulance with her. At which point, a collision of worlds occurs. Enter the fray, Police Constable Matt Johnson.

At this particular time in April 1984, I was working at a police traffic unit based at Euston in North London. On this particular morning, I was on a routine patrol covering the area and a call came up on the police radio network asking for a traffic car to do an ambulance escort, to pick up an ambulance at St James's Square at Charles II Street.

and to take that ambulance to the Westminster Hospital. Matt Johnson picks up the ambulance and races towards Westminster Hospital, parting the waves of London traffic with a blaring siren. He has no idea of the desperate scene taking place in the vehicle just metres behind him, no sense of the ways in which it will shape his life for decades to come. Nor, for that matter, does John Murray.

In the ambulance, there was not only myself and Yvonne, but there were three or four other Libyans in there as well who were sitting on the floor who'd been badly wounded and were bleeding everywhere. And it was in the ambulance when I was talking to Yvonne and, you know, she said to me what happened and I tried to explain, but she couldn't really take it in. I couldn't really take it in. But it was in the ambulance that I promised her that I would find out why and who and I made her that promise.

There are single moments on which a life can hinge. For John Murray, this is that moment. These two questions: Why did this happen? Who is responsible? will haunt him like a ghost. They will chase him through the ensuing decades, driving him from the community police work that has, until now, been his calling, deeper and deeper into a different world entirely.

A dark community of spooks and rogues, where those who profess to be on your side are even less trustworthy than those who openly seek to do you harm. If he is to fulfill his promise, John Murray will need to leave all that he knows behind. And he will do it. He will do it all for the friend bleeding in his arms as the sirens wail all around them.

We arrived at Westminster Hospital. She was taken straight through into resource and I was placed in a separate little room. About half an hour later, roughly, a doctor came in with the gowns and the mask on and he said, Mr Murray, Yvonne's been shot. She's been shot in the side. It's gone through into her internal organs, but she should be OK. We're taking her to theatre now and I'll come back and tell you how we get on.

At this point, this all might still have had another ending: a shaky hospital bed reunion, scar tissue and a dramatic story, to be retold time and time again at the pub opposite Bow Street police station. But that wasn't to be.

And then roughly an hour, hour and a half later, I'm still in the room and the same doctor came back. He walked in and he was trying and he said to me, I'm so sorry, we've lost her. You know, the internal injuries were just too much. You know, as soon as I heard that news, I mean, you know, I broke down. I just couldn't believe it. You know, why did this happen? And, you know, I...

I remember saying to myself at that particular time, it wasn't the first time I thought of this, I thought, why Yvonne and not myself?

Meanwhile, news of the incident at the Libyan embassy began to ripple through the network of the Metropolitan Police and the significance of his morning escort job began to dawn on Matt Johnson. We realised that perhaps it was the ambulance that we'd escorted to the hospital that might have contained that officer. And eventually we heard that a WPC had been killed. She hadn't been named.

I finished work later on that afternoon. I got home just in time to hear the six o'clock news coming on the BBC. And Yvonne Fletcher's picture came up on the television, which was particularly harrowing for us because Yvonne had been a friend of ours. She'd been at our house warming party in our new home no more than a few weeks prior to that day. Imprinted in Matt's memory is the footage from the incident.

A news crew had been present at the embassy and had captured the deafening crack of the gunshots and the moment that Yvonne fell to the ground. In that footage, John Murray can be seen rushing to Yvonne's side.

This was the first time that TV cameras had actually captured the murder of a police officer live on camera. Never been seen before. It was transmitted all over the world. People saw this poor girl collapsed on the floor having just been shot with a machine gun. That image of a young woman in uniform felled on a regal square in central London represented a watershed moment, a first.

An event which the British public could never unsee. There was an overwhelming sense of shock. We didn't have armed officers to deal with situations like that. We didn't have body armour. We didn't have self-protection mechanisms, weaponry of that kind of thing. It just didn't happen. Policing was by consent. People worked with the public.

For those like Matt Johnson and John Murray, who had come into contact with the day's events, the 17th of April was nothing short of life-changing. The effect was one of a sobering realisation of your own fragility and the fact that the blue cloth, the uniform that you wear, is not going to protect you.

That sobering thought never quite left Matt Johnson's mind. It was doubtless one of the factors that contributed to him leaving the force more than a decade later. I

Left the police, diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and as part of my therapy or PTSD, I undertook a course in creative writing. That led eventually to my counsellor saying to me that I ought to write a book. Many years later, I decided that I would give it a go. I got very lucky. I managed to get myself an agent to represent me. I managed to get myself a publisher.

and ended up becoming a novelist. Matt Johnson's first novel was dedicated to the memory of Yvonne Fletcher, who still lingered in his mind all those years later. And now with several novels behind me, I found myself in this situation where I'm approached to write my first non-fiction book, which is what No Ordinary Day is. No Ordinary Day is the story of Yvonne Fletcher and the events of the 17th of April, 1984.

the man who approached Matt to write it, none other than John Murray himself. Because this is his story too. A story that began that day under the numbing cloud of disbelief and would quickly grow to take over everything. John has no idea just yet of the manhunt he is about to embark on, of the places he will travel, of the dark forces he will confront. All of that still lies ahead.

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I went back to the police station after the incident and I was sent home. I had one day off for the next day and I was straight back to work the day after.

Meanwhile, at the Libyan embassy, a dangerous standoff is developing.

What happens in the immediate aftermath of the shooting is there's a massive evacuation from all the surrounding buildings and from the streets surrounding the Libyan embassy in St. James's Square. With the shooters still inside the Libyan embassy, armed units of the Metropolitan Police Force are quickly deployed to the area in a bid to contain the situation.

Over the course of the next few hours, the containment of the embassy is strengthened to the point where the building is safe. But there's a serious caveat to that because the police very quickly realise that they are facing the risk of a breakout.

And they're realizing that if the Libyans who have fired automatic weapons at the police outside and at the demonstrators decide that they're going to effect their escape and use force to do so, that the firepower that the police have available to contain them is inadequate.

An elite, armed unit of the British Army, known as the Special Air Service, better known as the SAS, is quickly summoned. This is exactly the kind of scenario they are trained for. And so begins the siege of the Libyan embassy. This is now a military situation. The mechanisms of negotiation take place well beyond the reach of beat police constables like John Murray.

But that doesn't happen. The days go on and the embassy remains under siege.

At the time, there's a real mystery because the police want to arrest and prosecute those responsible for the shooting and particularly those responsible for the murder of Yvonne. The politicians seem to want the matter done and dusted

everybody responsible sent home under the cloak of diplomatic privilege. And the police are confused by this because they realise that there is a large number of people inside the Bureau, many of whom are not entitled to diplomatic privilege, many of whom could be quite properly arrested and prosecuted.

In the background, the siege is complicated further by a potentially explosive political situation in Libya. Now clearly the government were under pressure because what had happened in Tripoli is there'd been a strong reaction to what had happened in London and there'd been a very, very serious misreporting.

It had been reported, for example, that the police in large numbers had launched an attack upon the Libyan People's Bureau in London. Completely inaccurate.

There are still British diplomats on the ground in Tripoli, and ensuring their safe removal from the country becomes a pressing concern for the Foreign Office. Large number of demonstrators arrived outside and were demonstrating against what they believed had happened in the UK. The UK diplomats based in Tripoli and the people living in the embassy grounds and the people who are working there, are under great threat.

They reported that they did not feel safe. There were threats made to burn the UK embassy to the ground. And so this was a very real problem that the UK government faced. While tense negotiations between UK and Libyan diplomats played out behind closed doors, the police had to go about the business of grieving for one of their own, with the fundamental circumstances of her death and the identity of those responsible still shrouded in secrecy.

Yvonne's funeral took place 10 days after the shooting, on the 27th of April at Salisbury Cathedral. We went down to Salisbury Cathedral. I mean, I was privileged enough to carry Yvonne's coffin. And I always remember walking down the aisle in Salisbury Cathedral and I was at the front, you know, I was by her head in the coffin. And I was talking to her. I was talking to her on the way down, trying to tell her what was going on and all sorts of things.

I'd never seen so many people at a service funeral. And it just showed you the amount of respect they had for her and also for the rest of us. On the very same day as Yvonne Fletcher's funeral, the siege at the Libyan embassy was reaching its uneasy conclusion.

The 30 people who had been holed up in the building since the shooting were quietly escorted from the premises, patted down for weapons and driven to a facility for brief questioning. None were arrested. At 8pm that evening, they were placed on a flight to Tripoli. When the news reached John Murray that evening, on the very day he had buried his friend, he was crushed. Perhaps for the first time, the truth of the situation began to dawn on him.

The answers he'd promised Yvonne as she lay dying, the why and the who of the incident, may not be forthcoming. And he, like many others of the time, were thoroughly confused as to what the heck was going on when all these people who were clearly not entitled to diplomatic immunity were being allowed to leave the country and not be arrested and prosecuted. Why had this been allowed to happen?

All John knew was that the decision had been made at a level far above his head and beyond his comprehension. This was apparently the jurisdiction of men in expensive tailored suits, not the blue cloth he'd worn so proudly for years. The police investigation was officially still open, but gradually, in the weeks after the siege, the news cycle moved on.

Attention drifted elsewhere. I mean, the investigation went on for some time. I was still serving then and I tried to find out what's going on, but nobody would speak to me. Nobody would tell me anything about it at all. It was all hush-hush. The answer was always the same. The investigation is ongoing. When we've got something to tell you, we will tell you. But that never happened.

John Murray retired in 1997, still no closer to the truth of Yvonne's murder.

By the time I left the service, which was about 10 years later, I still hadn't heard anything. And I thought, this can't be right. You know, with the massive resources the Metropolitan Police have, they're dealing with, you know, the murder of one of our own. Surely things must be moving forward. But that didn't seem to be happening. And I thought, no, there's something not quite right here. I'll have to do something about this.

Shortly after his retirement, John managed to secure a meeting with one John Greave, commander of the Met's anti-terrorist squad. I spoke to a very, very senior officer at Scotland Yard who actually took me out for a coffee because, believe it or not, we couldn't speak in his office. And we had a long conversation and there wasn't a lot he could tell me. But his parting words to me, and it's something I'll never forget, were,

John could have no idea at the time just how prescient that advice would turn out to be. The commander hadn't told him much, but he'd signalled to the retired PC that he was right to be mistrustful of the official investigation into Yvonne's murder.

If John wanted answers, he would have to find them for himself. And now, with his retirement stretching out before him, he could do exactly that. I started doing my own research and asking various questions of various people. And slowly but surely, the little bit of the jigsaw started to click into place.

For a long time, John's method is to simply keep the pressure on the investigation in any way that he can, appearing on radio or TV to talk about his campaign for justice.

Finally, in the year 2005, this method yields a major breakthrough when one of his impassioned appeals catches the attention of the right person. I think Asher had obviously seen something that I was doing and he got in touch and we had a meeting and that kickstart quite a lot of things for me. Asher Shamis had also been outside the Libyan embassy on that day in 1984, mere feet from the site of Yvonne's murder.

He was one of the organisers of the anti-Qadhafi protest. We had to meet very quietly and very confidentially and not tell anybody about it because as far as he was concerned, he had a death threat against him. Bearing in mind what happened to other people under Qadhafi, he took that very seriously. At this point in 2005, Colonel Qadhafi is still alive, still ruling Libya with an iron fist.

Asher Shamis is putting his own life in grave danger by approaching John Murray. But he is compelled to do so. He has information about what really happened, given to him by a source who had been inside the Libyan embassy that day. On the other side. Remember, Gaddafi had been conducting a brazen campaign against dissidents in exile. Assassinations on UK soil.

This much John knew already. But now Sham has told him the rest of the story. By 1984, the dictator was growing frustrated. This campaign being conducted by these assassins on his behalf was stalling and it wasn't going as quickly and as effectively as he wanted.

So he recalled the Libyan ambassador at that time and he replaced him with a revolutionary committee to be led by two men called Saleh Ibrahim Mabrouk and Matouk Mohamed Matouk. Both of these men, Saleh Ibrahim Mabrouk and Matouk Mohamed Matouk, will play critical roles in this story. They were in charge of the so-called revolutionary committee that ran the Libyan embassy.

You'll want to remember their names. And they were charged with continuing his campaign against the stray dogs. They weren't doing very well. And so Gaddafi recalled Mabrouk to Tripoli and he gave Mabrouk a dressing down and said to him, you need to up your efforts. You need to come up with a plan to actually get attacking these stray dogs and eliminating them. And

And that was the situation as April 1984 approached. John Murray had waited 21 years to find out what had taken place behind the locked doors of the Libyan embassy that day.

And now, over a forgotten cup of coffee, Ashish Shammis was answering his prayers. What happened was Mabrouk and his revolutionary committee came up with a plan. And they put this plan to Gaddafi and said, we have got this idea. There were two particular brothers and a chap called Ashish Shammis who were very active in the National Front for the Salvation of Libya present in the UK. And they particularly wanted to target these three men.

And so they came up with a plan because they'd noticed that, for example, if something would happen in Tripoli, within a few weeks there would be a demonstration outside the Libyan embassy in St. James's Square. Previously, the assassins had been hunting the stray dogs down in the street. Wouldn't it be simpler, Mabrouk had posited, to bring them to us?

And so what was agreed when Mabrouk visited Tripoli was that Colonel Gaddafi would authorise the hanging of two students who were popular with the National Front for the Salvation of Libya. They knew that the reaction would be a demonstration would be triggered. Mabrouk also knew that police were obliged to inform the embassy any time a protest was to take place, and so they would be prepared.

They would have ready and waiting a number of snatch teams who were going to be based within the embassy. And when the demonstration took place, these men would run out into the crowd, cause a disturbance, so lots of students would end up fighting. And in that melee, the three targets, Shamis and the two other brothers, they would be snatched.

taken into the Libyan People's Bureau and then straight through the bureau into the garages at the back where there would be cars waiting, ready to take them away to a private airfield and they would be whizzed back to Tripoli to be put on trial, if we could call it that. A show trial, I think we would probably call it.

Every detail of this trap had been thought through, even the inevitable presence of police officers at the demonstration. And what they also intended to do was in order to prevent a police counter-attack and an attempt to rescue those men as they were dragged into the embassy, they decided that from the first floor they would have men ready with firearms to shoot to prevent any police counter-attack.

So, just as planned, Gaddafi set the trap. He executed the two student rebels. When the inevitable protest came, Mabrouk and his snatch squad inside the bureau would be ready.

except that on the day the police decided not to notify the occupants of the embassy that the demonstration was going to take place. And the reason that they did that was because there had been some particular unpleasant confrontations between the pro and anti-Qadhafi supporters at the previous demonstration, the previous September. They decided that in order to prevent that kind of friction,

Better to have a relatively peaceful demonstration outside, not tell the people inside the bureau what was going to happen, and then it would pass off a lot more peacefully because there would be no pro-Qaddafi supporters present. But on the 16th of April, Mabrouk's men at the embassy noticed something unusual. The parking meters on St James's Square were being covered up.

The occupants of the bureau saw this happening and thought, "Well, that only happens if there's going to be a demonstration." And so now the Libyans know that the protest is coming and they have mere hours to prepare. They rush together their plans. They bring in as many students as they can, some of them sleeping overnight.

They even try and bring in a former soldier to provide some training for the guys who are going to operate the guns from the first floor. And so they rapidly put this together. So it's all a bit rushed and a bit haphazard. Haphazard maybe, but at this point their snatch-and-go plan should still work.

And then on the morning of the demonstration, they are alarmed within the Bureau to discover that not only have the police not told them about the demonstration, but they've introduced some new safety measures. They're putting up two lines of steel barriers, one outside the embassy and one on the opposite side of the road where the demonstration against Gaddafi is going to take place. This spelled disaster for Mabrouk's plan.

And so, on the morning of the demonstration itself, he and another resident of the People's Bureau try to prevent the barriers from being erected by confronting workers in the street. They are arrested in the process. So now, with the

With the protests beginning in mere hours and the leader of the operation in police custody, there is chaos in the embassy. The idea that the snatch teams can come outside, run across the street, grab their targets and whizz them back into the embassy to be carted away in cars isn't going to work.

and so they need to come up with an alternative plan. There's a lot of communication goes on between the Bureau itself and Tripoli. Colonel Gaddafi issues a famous instruction to them where he says, "Cover the streets of London with blood." John Murray didn't need to be told the rest of the story. He'd already lived through it once. The short, sharp burst of automatic rifles, a sound he'd mistaken for firecrackers.

The collapse of Yvonne Fletcher, feet from where he stood. The ambulance ride that changed his life. Yes, he knew the rest of that story all too well. But Ashish Amis did have one last piece of information for him. His anonymous source had given him the name of one of those first story shooters. The man who pulled the trigger. The man who killed Yvonne Fletcher.

In 1984, John had made a promise to his dying friend to find out who was responsible and to find out why. One of those questions was about to be answered. The name was Salah-ud-Din Khalifa. John Murray, ever the cop at heart, took this new information to the Metropolitan Police

There was no interest there. We're in charge of the investigation, we know what we're doing, leave it to us. And I knew as soon as I said that, I had to carry on because as far as I was concerned, that wasn't the case at all. And so it is John's fate to be tantalised by the information he's been given. For the first time, he has real leads to investigate, but they are out of reach, safely cocooned in Gaddafi's military dictatorship.

He will have to wait six long years for that situation to change. But change it will. I remember crossing the border into Libya and as soon as I got there, you know, like a pope did, I went down on my knees and I kissed the ground and I thought, you know, I'm actually here. It's taken me how long to get here, but I'm actually here.

In part two of Beware the Men in Suits, John Murray goes rogue. And at one point they're actually stopped by what John believes to be an ISIS roadblock. And John is told to hide in the back of the pickup, pull a canopy over the top of him. And John thinks these are people here that if they catch me, they're going to cut my head off. But his biggest opposition may turn out to be the nefarious forces of his own government.

And so as this information was coming through, hinting that something was going to happen on the 17th of April at the Libyan People's Bureau, something quite dramatic was going to happen. This information didn't get through as speedily and as effectively it should do

Most importantly, it didn't reach the ears of the police officers, the uniformed officers who were going to be supervising that demonstration. They went out there, they stood in front of the Bureau, all those people were allowed to demonstrate and they were complete sitting ducks. I'm Daisy Ridley. Join me next week for part two of Beware the Men in Suits on True Spies.