Lindsey Hilsum meets Omar al Sodani in a Libyan prison, a man accused by Libyan rebels of beling involved with killings in Benghazi, but more noyably for British journalists, a man linked to the shooting of PC Yvonne Fletcher 27 years ago in Belgravia, London.
It was a chaotic situation in the prison where we saw Omar al Sodani. We saw 55 prisoners of war – some Libyan soldiers, some Africans who their captors accuse of being mercenaries. Then Sodani was brought into the courtyard. Journalists crowded round him. At first I thought he was under duress, but when he spoke he seemed keen to talk both in Arabic and English, apparently wanting to clear his name. In Benghazi he is well known as a senior member of Colonel Ghaddafi’s Revolutionary Committees as well as a doctor at the Benghazi Medical Center. He said he’d been picked up from his office there three days earlier. I could see marks on his wrists, with scabs which looked older than that. I asked if he had been mistreated but he said no. His captors were all around him so I cannot say if his denial was genuine.
Libyan journalists wanted to ask him about killings in Benghazi in which they say he was allegedly involved. He denied it all. British journalists wanted to ask him about Yvonne Fletcher. He was clear that he was indeed attached to the Libyan People’s Bureau in London in 1984, but denied that he was in the building when PC Fletcher was shot. Scotland Yard have never named the chief suspects in the police constable’s murder, but it seems likely that he could be a potential witness at the very least. He was expelled from the UK along with the other People’s Bureau staff after the seige.
But we may have to wait a long time to hear his full version of events. Eastern Libya is a chatoic half-state, with Colonel Ghadaffy still in power in Tripoli. It’s run by a council of people some of whom don’t dare reveal their names, beacuse they still have relatves in the part of the country Ghaddafi controls. Justice for PC Yvonne Fletcher’s family is a long way off.
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