ATTACK ON LIBYA: LIBYAN REBELS yesterday presented a captured regime loyalist they allege was involved in the killing of British police constable Yvonne Fletcher in 1984.
Ms Fletcher was shot by a gunman believed to have been firing from inside the Libyan embassy in London.
Khalid Mohammed, an opposition representative who accompanied journalists to the compound where the loyalist is being held along with several members of regime security forces and suspected mercenaries, alleged that medical professor Omar al-Sudani was the man who shot PC Fletcher. “This is well known in regime circles,” he said.
Mr al-Sudani denied involvement in the shooting but acknowledged he had been working at the embassy in London at the time.
“I was [in London] but I was not at the scene when the shooting took place,” he told reporters at the former military police base turned detention centre where he has been held since he was captured on Sunday.
The killing of Ms Fletcher, who was policing a protest outside the Libyan embassy when she was shot, prompted a 10-day siege at the embassy and led Britain to sever diplomatic links with Libya. No arrests have ever been made over the murder.
Mr al-Sudani claimed he was in police custody at the time of the shooting because of a previous “quarrel” with another police officer.
He said he did not have an official position at the embassy at the time, but had previously served as medical and cultural attache there.
Asked why he thought he had been captured and detained by the rebels, Mr al-Sudani replied it was because he is a member of the Gadafy regime’s leejan al-thowria, or revolutionary committee, in Benghazi. Members of these committees, which form the backbone of the regime, are embedded in communities and workplaces across Libya to help enforce the regime’s ideology.
Speaking fluent English, Mr al-Sudani, while protesting that his role in the leejan al-thowria amounted to little more than “publicity” for the regime, acknowledged he is a figure of some notoriety in Benghazi.
“Yes, people are frightened of me,” he said, adding that his notoriety springs from claims he was involved in the killing of Yvonne Fletcher and other incidents. “My name is famous . . . anything that happens, they say I was involved in it.” He mused that this may be due to a mix-up with his brother who, he said, was a senior military figure.
Mr al-Sudani said he was captured in the director’s office of the Benghazi Medical Centre, one of the largest hospitals in the city. Asked if he had changed his mind about Gadafy since the uprising began last month, he claimed he had changed his mind about the Libyan leader “in the mid-1990s” yet had continued to be a leading figure in the Benghazi leejan al-thowria.
Khalid Mohammed said al-Sudani was the second-highest profile regime figure captured in Benghazi so far. The other is a high-ranking security official apprehended on Saturday whom Mr Mohammed declined to name.
Mr Mohammed said the rebel Libyan National Council, which is headquartered in Benghazi, had obtained a list of 8,000 leejan al-thowria members from a government building in the city.
Fears remain in Benghazi that these regime loyalists, some of whom have carried out shootings, will instigate further attacks within the city.