The Libyan hostage situation began on the morning of the murder of police constable Fletcher, 17 April 1984 and lasted until 5 February 1985 (294 days). In accordance with the hostage release agreement, reporting on the incident was restricted until the fall of Gadaffi in 2011.
Timeline
March 1984
Four Libyan nationals were arrested on charges following explosions at Manchester and London Heathrow in the UK and were remanded in custody.
17 April 1984
During a protest organised by the NFSL, a Libyan opposition group, police constable Yvonne Fletcher was hit by a bullet from a burst of machine-gun fire from within the Libyan People's Bureau (Libyan Embassy) in St James's Square, London. She died shortly afterwards.
That evening, Doug Ledingham, the airport manager for British Caledonian Airways at Tripoli Universal Airport, Libya, was arrested by soldiers.
17 to 27 April
There was a standoff between the Libyan and British governments over the pursuit of who shot WPC Fletcher. The standoff resulted in the breaking of diplomatic relations by Britain with Libya, and the return to Libya under diplomatic immunity of the occupants of the Libyan Peoples' Bureau in London. Rumours abounded at the time as to the fate of the person who is alleged to have fired the fatal shots from the Libyan People's Bureau. In 1986, a British businessman who had worked for Colonel Gaddafi's regime reported WPC Fletcher's killer had been hanged as soon as he returned to Libya.
Following the breaking of diplomatic relations with Libya, the British Embassy in Tripoli was evacuated by the British and ransacked by the Libyans. A skeleton staff of British diplomats took up office in the Italian Embassy.
8 May 1984
Militants from the NFSL attempted to assassinate Gaddafi at Bab Al-Aziza barracks in Tripoli. The attempt lead to several deaths in the fighting. Some 2,000 Libyans were arrested following the attack, and eight were hanged publicly.
14-16 May 1984
Four further British men in Libya were rounded up and detained as hostages against the four arrested Libyan nationals in Britain by those claiming to be officials of the Gaddafi regime. The men in order of capture were: Michael Berdinner, Alan Russell, Malcolm Anderson and Robin Plummer. At first, Allen Russell and Malcolm Anderson were held at a separate location where they were questioned and beaten. Ledingham, Berdinner and Plummer (Plummer in solitary confinement) were in the same facility, the Italian Mansion, a building approximately 400 yards distant from the Italian Embassy.
12 June 1984
A month after being taken hostage, the five men were allowed a meeting with the British Second Consul, George Anderson, who was able to offer only pastoral care and contact with home, but no suggestion of release. It was clear by this time, however, that the men were being held as hostages by one of Col Gaddafi's Revolutionary Committees, in defiance of international law. Return to their respective prisons was followed by little or no improvement in the hostages' circumstances.
19 July 1984
A second meeting with George Anderson resulted in all the hostages being put into one location, the Italian Mansion, and being fed an improved diet and given medical attention. This improvement in circumstances was accompanied by a slow but inexorable descent into gloom of the hostages isolated from all news of the outside world.
Meanwhile, in Britain, unbeknownst to the hostages, their families, notably Pat Plummer and Carole Russell, were working tirelessly with Kate Adie of the BBC and Brent Sadler of ITN to keep the hostages' plight in the media to keep the situation in the news and the profile high on the government's agenda. By now, the families were being kept up to date on a daily basis by contacts within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London as to the stalemate between Libya and Britain, with a continual decline in international relations between Libya and most of the rest of the world.
Summer 1984
In London, a committee in parliament was held to determine whether or not what the British government had done over the Libyan hostage situation was reasonable. The committee concluded that in the circumstances, the British government had done all it reasonably could in the light of what little was known at the time.
7 August 1984
The Libyans allowed family members to visit the hostages. These visits brought unofficial news of the, as yet, publicly undisclosed involvement of Terry Waite, the Special Envoy to the Archbishop of Canterbury, of the Church of England.