French detectives are searching for the missing 10th Earl of Shaftesbury along the network of roads between France and Germany after his estranged wife allegedly revealed that his body had been dumped by her fleeing brother.
Jamila M’Barak (37) was on Monday in the secure wing of a hospital in Nice after suffering a nervous breakdown four months after her husband — an eccentric English aristocrat who had a fondness for bargirls and nightclubs — disappeared.
The earl, 66, was last seen at the Noga Hilton in Nice in early November last year. The hotel occupies a prominent place on the Croisette, a millionaire’s playground beside the Mediterranean.
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, as he was born, was a flamboyant figure who frequented hostess bars and other attractions along the seafront.
The peer, whose family estate is in Wimborne, Dorset, had travelled to the south of France to sort out affairs with Jamila, including, it is alleged, what divorce settlement she would get from his £10-million fortune.
M’Barak, his third wife, had repeatedly denied any involvement with his disappearance but last Friday she was arrested in Cannes on suspicion of his murder. She is said to have blamed her brother for the killing at her home in Cannes on November 5 last year.
She allegedly told police her brother, Mohammed M’Barek (40) murdered the earl during a violent row and dumped his body somewhere near the French-German border.
According to police sources, M’Barek claimed the fight broke out after her estranged husband arrived to discuss the terms of their divorce.
Tunisian-born Mr M’Barek is alleged to have put the earl’s body in the boot of his car and dumped it while driving back to his home in the suburbs of Munich, where he was arrested on Saturday. He is under official investigation for the murder.
Ms M’Barek (37) a Dutch national of Tunisian descent, was being treated for nervous depression at a psychiatric hospital in Nice last week, when she was interviewed by police and reportedly confessed.
On Saturday, she appeared in court in Grasse where judge Catherine Bonici put her officially under investigation for complicity in murder.
A police source said she had blamed her brother for the killing, but officers are investigating the possibility that she may have lured the earl into a fatal trap. She has not given any clues as to where the body was dumped.
A formal police inquiry into the disappearance of the Eton and Oxford educated earl, who spoke fluent French, was opened in late November.
He divided his time between his residences in London, Hove and the French Riviera and was due to return to Britain a few days after his disappearance.
When he vanished, senior detectives from Sussex travelled to the Côte d’Azur to help their French counterparts try to reconstruct his last movements.
A few days before this weekend’s arrests, the earl’s sister Lady Frances Ashley-Cooper, who also lives in the south of France, told a French newspaper she was convinced he had been murdered.
She had spoken to her brother three days before he disappeared and he had been good spirits. ”He was jolly and enthusiastic. There was nothing to give the impression that he was about to suddenly disappear,” she said.
”I don’t believe he’s run off or that he’s committed suicide. I think he’s been assassinated. By whom and why I have no idea. He is careless and naive and has probably got himself mixed up with a dangerous set against which he was not prepared.”
The worst thing was not knowing the whereabouts of her brother’s body. ”He’s perhaps in a ravine, at the bottom of the sea, in a rubbish tip or anywhere. It’s terrible.
”I can’t believe that someone can get rid of the body of a human being like that, like throwing something in the bin. Everyone has the right to a funeral, a ceremony, to respect.”
In the interview with France Soir, Lady Ashley-Cooperwas asked to explain why he spent his time in the Cote d’Azur frequenting nightclubs and associating with bargirls.
She replied: ”Since his childhood he had always suffered from a lack of love, a feeling which was accentuated with the death of our mother five years ago. It was tragic for him and from then on he lost direction.
”He was depressed and drinking more and more. I tried to warn him but he didn’t seem to have the strength to live any other way. He had ups and downs and was sensitive and fragile.”
Asked about her sister-in-law, Ms M’Barek, she said: ”He loved girls, but he gave me the impression of having found happiness with his third wife Jamila who he met a few years ago in a discotheque at Versailles where she was working as a hostess. They got married discreetly in Holland in November 2002.
”I met her once with my brother. She was enticing, seductive. She had everything to please a man and she knew how to please them.
”My brother gave her a villa in Cannes as well as a mill in the Gers. Each month he gave her a large sum of money.” The paper reported the amount as â,¬7 000 a month.”
Mohammed M’Barek is due to be transferred to France for questioning shortly. – Guardian Unlimited Â