THE 27-year controversy surrounding the shooting of WPC Yvonne Fletcher was thrust back into the spotlight yesterday during the Police Federation conference in Bournemouth.

Yvonne, 25, from Semley, near Shaftesbury, was killed in a hail of bullets as she policed a demonstration outside the Libyan Embassy in April, 1984.

It has long been thought that the bullets were fired from inside the Embassy by a Libyan agent aiming at anti-Gaddafi demonstrators.

Although Libya publicly admitted responsibility in 1999, no-one has been brought to justice for WPC Fletcher’s murder.

Yesterday, Police Federation chairman Paul McKeever slammed the Home Office, branding their policy of granting visas to Libyan police officers to study in the UK ‘shameful’.

He added: “And at a time when family and friends of PC Yvonne Fletcher are still waiting for justice, 27 years after she was brutally gunned down by Gaddafi’s thugs on the streets of our own capital city.”

Before Home Secretary Theresa May’s keynote speech at the BIC, Mr McKeever told her: “We appear to have a Home Office policy that can simply be defined as ‘be kind to criminals, kick a cop’.”

He added that government cuts were ‘revenge’ rather than reform. While Mr McKeever won applause from delegates, the silence was deafening following the Home Secretary’s address.

Unlike past years when her racy footwear raised eyebrows, her red pointed court shoes failed to spark interest among delegates or fashion pundits. She denied that plans to cut the police budget were an attack on the force, adding: “It isn’t revenge, it’s a rescue mission to bring our country back from the brink.”

PC David Rathband, the police officer blinded by Raoul Moat, joined in the heated debate over police pay and conditions when he challenged the Home Secretary over whether she thought his £35,000 salary was too much.