Transnational Repression 73 his violent intentions toward Libya’s “stray dogs” a secret (Bassiouni 2013; Pargeter 2012). Vowing that the regime would “follow these people even if they go to the North Pole” (Hilsum 2012: 81), revolutionary committee thugs “were hunting down and killing ‘enemies of revolution’ at home and abroad” by 1980 (Wright 2012: 208). Moussa Koussa, Libya’s Intelligence chief and ambassador in London at the time, was expelled that year by British authorities after telling The Times of London that two dissidents had been murdered in the United Kingdom and that more killings were planned. By 1984, the regime was planting bombs at London shops run by Libyans who were “selling newspapers critical of the Qaddafi government” (Nordheimer 1984). Even after Libyan activism for groups like the NFSL died down over time, retribution remained a constant threat. As Mohamed of London recounted, the murder of former NFSL activist Ali Abuzaid in 1995 shook the community to its core. Ali’s daughter Huda found her father’s body in the early morning in the family’s grocery store, where he had been stabbed and mutilated. “He was killed in the most gruesome way,” Mohamed winced. It was obvious the murder was to send out a message. It wasn’t a robbery because nothing was stolen. It wasn’t a shooting because that would be too clean [for Gaddafi]. We realized in the community, it was an assassination. Because similar murders happened in Malta where somebody would be killed and pretty much decapitated and left in the street. To make a show of it, a bit like the Mexican cartels. In the United States, at least one murder was attempted in Colorado by a hired gun. Interviewees also attributed a second murder of a Libyan American dissident in California to Gaddafi’s henchmen (Hilsum 2012). Speaking of his longtime friend who was killed in mysterious circumstances while working at the gas station, Gaddor recalled, “The word among Libyans here is that Gaddafi killed him.” The incident was intended to look like a robbery, but nothing was stolen. “That story is well-known here,” Gaddor told me with a grimace. The Gaddafi regime also reacted violently to protest events abroad. On April 17, 1984, a group of peaceful demonstrators gathered outside the Libyan embassy in London, dubbed the “People’s Bureau,” to protest the hangings of students back home. These protesters, numbering seventy-two individuals according to The New York Times, wore masks to protect their identities (Nordheimer 1984). Suddenly, at least one official from inside the embassy leaned out of the window and shot at the demonstrators in broad daylight, killing a policewoman named Yvonne Fletcher and injuring almost a dozen protesters. Mahmud, who had become active in the anti-Gaddafi National Democratic Party after coming to Britain, was shot in the leg, and the few photographs I could locate of this shocking event show him being carted off into an ambulance while hiding his face under a mask. After a days-long standoff between the Bureau and British forces, Libyan officials were expelled and the embassy was closed. The incident severed diplomatic ties between the regime https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press