As the international community unites over its pressure on Colonel Gaddafi to relinquish power in Libya, leaders the world over are voicing strong statements warning those Libyans still loyal to the ailing regime that violence and human rights abuses against anti-government protesters will not be tolerated: the world is watching. Speaking today at a meeting of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Foreign Secretary William Hague pronounced: ‘crimes will not be condoned, will not go unpunished and will not be forgotten’.
In the spirit of not forgetting, our author Daniel Kawczynski reminded us on today’s Start the Week that the killer of WPC Yvonne Fletcher – fatally shot by a submachine gun whilst on duty policing a demonstration outside London’s Libyan Embassy on 17 April 1984 – has still not been brought to justice. Kawczynski’s book, Seeking Gaddafi, sheds some light on why this may be, chronicling the difficulties faced by the Metropolitan Police in trying to investigate the murder and exploring the conspiracy theories sounding Fletcher’s death. Kawczynski, speaking today to Andrew Marr, hopes that the dawn of a new Libya in the weeks and months ahead will allow UK teams to re-enter Libya to resume investigations.
Describing Gaddafi as a ‘butcher’ who ‘makes [Romanian dictator] Ceaușescu look positively sanguine’, Kawczynski discusses Libya’s tortuous history and Gaddafi’s vision of a unified pan-Arab (and later pan-African) state with himself at the helm.
This, and more, in Seeking Gaddafi, priced at £19.99 (unless of course you can persuade the author to give you one for free - according to a report by ePolitix.com, Speaker Bercow managed it this aftenoon).