Spaghetti House siege

The Spaghetti House siege took place between 28 September and 3 October 1975. An attempted robbery of the Spaghetti House restaurant in Knightsbridge, London, went wrong and the police were quickly on the scene. The three robbers took the staff down into a storeroom and barricaded themselves in. They released all the hostages unharmed after six days. Two of the gunmen gave themselves up; the ringleader, Franklin Davies, shot himself in the stomach. All three were later imprisoned, as were two of their accomplices.

The three robbers had been involved in black liberation organisations and maintained consistently that they were acting for political reasons. The police did not believe them, and stated that this was a criminal act, not a political one.

The police used fibre optic camera technology for live surveillance, and monitored the actions and conversations of the gunmen from the audio and visual output. The feed was watched by a forensic psychiatrist who advised police on the state of the men's minds, and how to best manage the ongoing negotiations.