Ahmed Mustafa, a 32-year-old Libyan PhD student at Manchester University, was found stabbed to death in a flat in Whalley Range, Manchester, in November 1980. The case remains unsolved, with police suspecting he was a victim of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's 'Stray Dogs' hit squads, which targeted dissidents abroad. Four suspects, including the man who rented the flat, fled the UK and have never faced justice.
Discovery of the Body
Two teenage boys discovered Mustafa's body after letting themselves into their neighbour's flat to ask to watch television. They found him slumped in a blood-soaked armchair, covered in bed sheets, with his stomach slashed open and surrounded by broken bottles. 'We thought at first he was asleep,' one boy told the Manchester Evening News. 'Then we pulled off the sheets and saw he was dead. His stomach had been slashed open. We ran down the stairs because we were afraid the murderer might still be in the house.'
Victim's Background
Mustafa had arrived in the UK in April 1979 to study anthropology and sociology at Manchester University. He lived with his wife in a ground-floor flat on Birch Lane, Longsight. Nine days before his body was found, he left his home after being visited by two Libyan men, telling his wife he was going to discuss a dictionary—a claim she found odd as he already owned two. He was last seen alive that morning.
Investigation and Suspects
Police ruled out a domestic crime and focused on the political angle. The flat where Mustafa's body was found had been rented three weeks earlier by Ibrahim Muhammed Lamlum, a 27-year-old Libyan student, who was accompanied by an 'attractive French speaking Tunisian woman' he claimed was his wife. Detectives linked the murder to Gaddafi's 'Stray Dogs' campaign, a wave of state-sponsored terror against Libyan dissidents. In a speech in April 1980, Gaddafi had declared: 'If the refugees do not obey, they must be inevitably liquidated, wherever they are.'
Detective Chief Superintendent Jack Ridgway, leading the hunt, said one of the boys who found the body had heard an argument and 'sounds of violence' from the flat the night before. 'It was not a loud, shouting, slanging match, but there was obviously some type of argument taking place,' Ridgway said. The boy also heard a woman arguing, but could not understand the language.
Coroner's Inquest and Aftermath
Six months later, at an inquest, Manchester coroner Leonard Gorodkin revealed that police had sought three members of the Libyan Army in connection with the murder, including Lamlum. 'Had they not left the country, the circumstances were such that they would have been sought to stand trial in connection with the death,' Gorodkin stated. A fourth suspect, the Tunisian woman, was also sought. None have ever been brought to justice.
Mustafa's murder is one of about 200 cold cases on Greater Manchester Police's books. By the end of the 1980s, Amnesty International listed 25 similar killings by Gaddafi's hit squads, including the 1984 murder of PC Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan Embassy in London. Gaddafi was killed in 2011, but no one has ever faced justice for orchestrating the 'Stray Dogs' campaign.
