A London police officer was killed and 10 people were wounded as submachine-gun fire from the Libyan Embassy raked a group of Libyans protesting the government of Muammar el-Qaddafi. The police, who said the shots were fired by a lone gunman without warning, surrounded the building. The gunman and staff members of the embassy remained behind locked doors and shuttered windows into the night. It was later determined from Libyan cables decrypted by MI5 that the shooting had been authorized from Tripoli.
A detachment of around 30 police officers had been sent to St James’s Square to monitor the demonstration; among them were WPC Yvonne Fletcher and her fiancé. They were accompanied by members of the Diplomatic Protection Group. About 75 LNSF protestors arrived from across the country, particularly northern England; the demonstration began at around 10:00 am. The demonstrators — many wearing masks or balaclavas, to ensure photographers from the (Libyan Government) People’s Bureau could not record their identities — stayed behind barriers placed opposite the Bureau; they chanted anti-Qaddafi slogans and carried banners and placards. A counter-demonstration by Qaddafi supporters had been arranged by the People’s Bureau and took place outside the building. The demonstrations were filmed by several international television crews invited by the Libyans.
At 10:18 am automatic gunfire was discharged from two windows of the People’s Bureau in the direction of the anti-Gaddafi demonstration. The shots wounded eleven protestors; according to the post-mortem examination report, one round entered Fletcher’s back, “10 inches (250 mm) below the top of the right shoulder, 5½ inches (140 mm) to the right of the spine and 3¼ inches (83 mm) behind the back fold of the right armpit”. The bullet travelled right to left, through her thoracic diaphragm, liver and gall bladder before it was deflected by the spinal column out through the left side of the body, and then into the left elbow.
While the demonstrators were moved into Charles II Street, Fletcher was aided by her colleagues; as she lay in the road outside the People’s Bureau, she advised them to “keep calm”. She was moved to Charles II Street; she became unconscious and stopped breathing and a colleague gave her resuscitation. At 10:40 am an ambulance took her to Westminster Hospital. As she was being transferred from the ambulance to a hospital trolley, a single spent round of ammunition fell from her uniform. She was operated on, but died at approximately midday.
Following the breaking of diplomatic relations, Libya arrested six British nationals, the last four of whom were released after nine months in captivity. Two years after Fletcher’s murder, the event became a factor in the decision by the British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, to allow the US bombing of Libya from bases in the UK. In 1999, a warming of diplomatic relations between Britain and Libya led to a statement from the Libyan government admitting culpability in Fletcher’s shooting, and the payment of compensation. British police continued their investigation until 2017. Although sufficient evidence existed to prosecute one of the co-conspirators, no charges were brought as some of the evidence could not be raised in court due to national security concerns. As at 2024 no one has been convicted of Fletcher’s murder, although in 2021 the High Court of Justice determined that Gaddafi’s ally Saleh Ibrahim Mabrouk was jointly liable for Fletcher’s murder.
The Polish authorities today derided recent calls by underground Solidarity leaders for a boycott of May Day celebrations and local elections in June and warned that “illegal actions will always meet with a firm response.” “Boycott work, boycott May Day celebrations, boycott elections — boycott everything that is Polish and Socialist, that serves to develop democracy and overcome the crisis,” the Communist Party newspaper Trybuna Ludu chided. “This is the ‘positive’ program of opposition groups and the subversive centers which are supporting them with the aim of sowing unrest.”
Portugal’s Parliament approved the setting up of a national intelligence service, the first since the restoration of democracy a decade ago. The ruling coalition of Socialists and Social Democrats, as well as the opposition Christian Democrats, voted for the bill, which now goes to a committee for drafting a final version. The Communists opposed it as anti-democratic. Previous attempts to establish a national intelligence service foundered over bitter memories of the dreaded secret police under the rightist dictatorship ousted in 1974.
A Pan American World Airways jetliner lost part of an engine cowling as it flew near London with 295 people aboard. No one was injured by the large pieces of metal that scattered over a square mile on the outskirts of Reading, about 40 miles west of London, crashing through a house roof and smashing into a car. The Boeing 747 had just taken off from London’s Heathrow Airport en route to Washington and Tampa. The plane returned to Heathrow.
A top-level dispute at The Observer, Britain’s oldest Sunday newspaper, has erupted over competing interests of business and journalism. Employees of the paper said the dispute between the new owner and the editor, Donald Trelford, could end in Mr. Trelford’s dismissal or with a change in the paper’s ownership.
The wife of Andrei D. Sakharov, the Soviet physicist and dissident, returned urgently to Gorky from Moscow last week after receiving a telegram that Mr. Sakharov might require surgery for phlebitis, friends of the Sakharovs reported. Dissident sources subsequently said the operation had been performed and was successful, but the information could not be confirmed. Yelena G. Bonner, Mr. Sakharov’s wife, came to Moscow last week on one of her periodic visits to maintain contacts with friends and to gather food and medicine not easily available in Gorky, the city to which Mr. Sakharov has been restricted since January 1980. Last Thursday, her friends said, Miss Bonner received a telegram from her husband saying that the phlebitis had worsened and that doctors had advised him to have an operation. Miss Bonner promptly returned, but since then her friends have not heard from her directly.
The Vatican newspaper today condemned the process used to conceive a child from a frozen embryo. The first birth resulting from that method was announced last week in Australia. “One understands the desire by sterile couples to have children, but one must realize that not everything one desires can be right,” L’Osservatore Romano said in an editorial by a theologian, Gino Concetti. He said the new technique is unacceptable because it requires the act of masturbation to obtain sperm. The Roman Catholic Church considers masturbation “a deviation” and a grave sin and it has condemned artificial insemination. On April 10, Australian scientists announced the birth of a healthy girl named Zoe. She had been delivered two weeks earlier by doctors at Monash University in Melbourne.
Militiamen battled for two hours today in and around the Lebanese capital of Beirut, but a cease-fire was then put into effect. The police said Muslim and Christian militiamen clashed with mortars, bazookas, antiaircraft guns and heavy machine guns in the commercial district near Beirut’s closed port at 2 PM. The fighting spread to residential neighborhoods along the Green Line that separates Muslim West Beirut and Christian East Beirut and to suburbs to the southeast, the police said. Army units loyal to President Amin Gemayel traded artillery and tank fire with Syrian-backed Druze militiamen around the town of Souk al Gharb on the ridge east of Beirut at midafternoon, the authorities reported. The police said they had no reports of casualties from the fighting. A security committee representing the army as well as Christian, Druse and Shiite Muslim militiamen met at Beirut’s mid-city racetrack and called a cease-fire for 4 PM. Fighting gradually tapered off afterward.
Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang said “great progress” has been made in negotiations with Britain on the future of Hong Kong and that an agreement soon is “highly possible.” He spoke after talks with visiting British Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe, whose spokesman cautioned that although differences between the two countries have been substantially cleared up, “it is too early to judge when a satisfactory agreement can be reached.” Britain governs the Crown colony under a long-term lease that expires in 1997, and the Chinese are pressing for the territory’s return.
President Reagan receives a briefing on various Chinese leaders he will meet on his upcoming trip to the People’s Republic of China.
The police found the bodies of two women and a man near the Sikh holy city of Amritsar today, the latest victims of the split in the ranks of Sikh extremists. The authorities also said Sikh gunmen killed a Hindu politician and two others as a new wave of terrorism swept northern Punjab state. The police found the body of the woman in a gunny sack in a village outside Amritsar. They did not release her name, but said she may have been involved in the shootout at the temple last Saturday when Surinder Singh Sodhi was gunned down by a rival Sikh gang. A Sikh lawyer, Gurbachan Singh Sandhu, and his wife also were reported killed by Sikh rivals in Billa village outside Amritsar. The police said two Sikh terrorists riding motorcycles threw hand grenades that killed Inderpal Gupta, local president of the Hindu Protection Council, in a market at Chandigarh, 140 miles southeast of here. They fired guns at a crowd while escaping and wounded seven people. About 150 people have been slain in Punjab in the last two months.
The World Court in The Hague opened deliberations on Nicaragua’s complaint against the United States, but it failed to agree on when it would hear arguments from the opposing sides. The day before the Nicaraguan complaint was filed on April 9, the State Department said the United States would reject the court’s jurisdiction in Central American disputes for a period of two years, thus revoking a 1946 pledge that Washington would respect the court’s authority. However, the court’s procedure still provides for hearings on Nicaragua’s complaint, based primarily on the mining of Nicaraguan harbors by U.S.-backed rebels.
The CIA directed a sabotage raid against the key Nicaraguan port of Corinto last October, destroying 3.2 million gallons of fuel and forcing the town’s evacuation, according to Congressional informants. They said that, like the mining of Nicaragua’s harbors that began in January, the Corinto raid was carried out by Latin mercenaries working for the CIA who reached the port by speedboat from an offshore mother ship where American intelligence agents directed the operation.
Salvadoran rebels are now receiving mostly ammunition, not weapons, from Nicaragua, according to the military commander of an area in which the guerrillas have been active.
The President defended his policy in Central America, saying that debate on it had “strayed too far from reality” and asserting that more United States military aid to the region was urgently needed. Mr. Reagan made the remarks to a group of prominent Hispanic Americans at a White House luncheon.
State Department spokesman John Hughes said the United States is somewhat encouraged by South Africa’s decision to liberalize its policy of forced resettlement for some blacks. Hughes noted that Pieter Koornhof, minister of cooperation and development, announced that the black settlement of St. Wendolin’s in Natal province is to become a black town with “freehold rights” that eventually I will have its own local authority, and that in the Cape Town area, there is no intention to force blacks to move to other townships.
Nigeria published a tough press law giving it the power to close newspapers and radio stations and imprison journalists. The law puts the burden of proof on those charged with publishing a false report or any story bringing ridicule on government officials. Trial will be by a special tribunal that includes three senior military officers. There will be no right of appeal. An individual found guilty could receive a prison sentence of up to two years. News organizations face fines of at least $13,000, and the government can close newspapers or radio stations for 12 months.
Liberian leader Samuel K. Doe said the United States is interfering in Liberian affairs and he will return a grant of $350,000 it provided to aid in the return to civilian rule. Doe, who seized power in a military coup in 1980, said State Department officials summoned Liberian diplomats in Washington last week for questioning about his decision to set back the date for civilian rule from April, 1985, to January, 1986.
Surprise searches for illegal aliens were upheld by the Supreme Court in a 7-to-2 ruling. The Justices, overturning a lower court’s decision, ruled that immigration officials looking for the aliens may conduct unannounced raids on factories and businesses.
President Reagan participates in a Cabinet Meeting on Agriculture.
President Reagan signs a proclamation making May 23rd, “Military Spouses Recognition Day.”
Vietnam’s mixed-race children are beginning to enter the United States in significant numbers for the first time because the Vietnamese Government has begun to cooperate with the United Nations in locating the children of American fathers and Vietnamese mothers and getting rid of them. Most of the children are coming to the United States with their mothers, who plan to trace the fathers despite expectations of rejection.
John Z. DeLorean was rebuffed by a federal bankruptcy judge in Detroit. The judge denied Mr. DeLorean’s claim to about $900,000 from the estate of his bankrupt auto company before a panel of unsecured creditors received any money from its liquidation.
The independent counsel investigating Edwin Meese 3rd was asked by Senator Edward M. Kennedy to examine whether the Presidential Transition Foundation Mr. Meese headed in 1980 and 1981 had complied with Federal tax laws.
More stringent pollution controls to reduce the discharge of toxic substances into water supplies will be adopted by the oil industry under a settlement with an environmental group and the Environmental Protection Agency. The settlement of a suit brought by the environmental group, the Natural Resources Defense Council, requires that refineries reduce toxic pollution discharges by nearly 400,000 pounds a year.
A Nebraska meatpacker, his cousin and five other men pleaded innocent in Denver to charges they defrauded the government by selling tainted beef for use in the country’s free school lunch program. Rudolph (Butch) Stanko, of Scottsbluff, Nebraska, and his cousin, Henry L. Stanko, of Broomfield, Colorado, and the others were variously involved in the now-closed Cattle King Packing Co. A federal grand jury investigated Cattle King after NBC News broadcast interviews with employees saying the company brought dead cattle into the processing area and supplied substandard meat to the government.
Former Chicago Assistant City Attorney James Canoff became the first person to plead guilty to charges stemming from Operation Greylord, the FBI’s investigation of corruption in Chicago’s courts. Canoff, 68, who pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to 18 counts of mail fraud, one count of racketeering and one count of obstruction of justice, was accused of soliciting and receiving $5,800 in bribes to fix traffic tickets in Cook County Circuit Court between 1978 and 1983. He faces up to 120 years in prison and $293,000 in fines. He will be sentenced on June 7. Deputy Traffic Court clerk Harold Conn was convicted in March of extortion and racketeering for accepting $1,610 in bribes. He was to be sentenced today.
Civil rights activist Jesse Jackson and his wife, Jacqueline, reported the lowest 1983 income among the three Democratic presidential candidates, paying $30,635 in federal income taxes on earnings of $115,109. Former Vice President Walter F. Mondale and his wife, Joan, had the highest income of the three, $316,330, and paid $97,481 in federal income taxes. Colorado Senator Gary Hart released a summary of his return showing that he and his wife, Lee, paid $36,426 in taxes on an income of $125,474.
Twenty-five of 28 unidentified Air Force Academy seniors, who were turned in for apparently cheating on a physics exam, must go before the Cadet Honor Board, a spokesman at the Colorado school said. Three cadets have been cleared so far in the probe, the most serious since 1972, when 39 cadets were dismissed for cheating. The scandal surfaced after a student told officials that cadets who had taken a physics exam were discussing it with cadets yet to take it. If not granted discretion, those found guilty will either be forced to resign or be disenrolled, the school said. Discretion would allow for a lesser penalty, such as suspension, if a cadet was found guilty under extenuating circumstances.
Mayor W. Wilson Goode has ordered an investigation into charges that a group of Philadelphia K-9 unit police officers failed to control their dogs or commanded them to attack and maul unarmed people over four years. “We really need to have some standards, some criteria, the same as in deadly force,” Mayor Goode said Monday. The K-9 unit’s 125 officers now have sole discretion to determine if an attack is warranted. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Sunday that a three-month investigation had found a few K-9 officers accounted for a disproportionate number of attacks and dog bites.
A family of three amateur archeologists who entered Saudi Arabia illegally were back on U.S. soil after spending 75 days in Saudi custody, accused of being Israeli spies. “My God, am I happy to be home,” Ronald Wyatt of Madison, Tennessee, said as the group arrived at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport from Jordan. Wyatt said he and his two sons were arrested January 28 at a customs office near the Jordanian-Saudi border on the Gulf of Aqaba. Wyatt, 51, said they had been in Saudi Arabia for one day and were on their way back to Jordan when they were stopped by police. “At one point in the interrogation, a Saudi commandant put an automatic weapon in my back and pulled back the hammer,” Wyatt said.
A 12-year-old Massachusetts boy was arraigned today on charges that he sexually assaulted a girl on a pool table while other children watched. Officials said he might have taken the idea from watching the Fall River rape trial on television. “The kid unfortunately watched too much stuff on TV,” said Jack McMahon, head of the attorney general’s juvenile prosecution unit. The victim was described as 10 years old. The unidentified Pawtucket youth pleaded not guilty to first-degree sexual assault in Family Court and is undergoing counseling, Mr. McMahon said. Trial was set for May 21. Detective Stephen West said the boy was accused of making the girl perform an oral sex act and then forcing her onto a pool table and further assaulting her. The attack was said to have taken place on March 26, the day four men were sentenced on charges of aggravated rape at a trial in Fall River, Massachusetts. The defendants were accused of raping a woman on a tavern pool table while customers watched. The trial was televised on Cable News Network.
Members of the Daughters of the American Revolution declined today even to consider a proposal to impeach their executive officers in a dispute that arose over a black woman’s application for chapter membership. The matter was raised at the society’s annual Congress, but after a tense minute or two, no one proposed impeachment and the 3,200 attending stood and sang “God Bless America.” Joyce Finley, the member who had called for impeachment is not a delegate and was not at the convention. She could not be reached at her home. Mrs. Finley’s call came after Lena Ferguson, a descendant of a white man who fought in the Revolution, said she was denied membership in the Mary Washington chapter because she was black.
General Mark W. Clark died of cancer and heart disease at a Charleston, South Carolina, hospital at the age of 87. General Clark’s capture of Rome in 1944 highlighted a sometimes-controversial career spanning both world wars and the Korean War.
The first Sumerian dictionary is being prepared by scholars at the University of Pennsylvania. The team of specialists in the cuneiform writing of ancient Mesopotamia will issue the first volume next month. When completed, the Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary is expected to revolutionize the study of the world’s first great civilization, which created the first written language.
Commissioner Bowie Kuhn suspends Braves pitcher Pascual Perez until May 15th as a result of his off-season drug arrest in the Dominican Republic, but an independent arbitrator will overturn the suspension because of lack of evidence.
Bryn Smith (3-0) scatters 5 hits and Gary Carter hits a grand slam as the Expos roll to a 10–0 win over the Mets.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1164.57 (+4.29).
Born:
Jed Lowrie, MLB shortstop, second baseman, and third baseman (All-Star, 2018; Boston Red Sox, Houston Astros, Oakland A’s, New York Mets), in Salem, Oregon.
C.J. Watson, NBA point guard (Golden State Warriors, Chicago Bulls, Brooklyn Nets, Indiana Pacers, Orlando Magic), in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Died:
Mark W. Clark, 87, American general in Italy, the European Theater of Operations during World War II.
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