OTwo Pakistani detectives are helping investigate the mysterious murder of the country’s World Cup cricket coach after Jamaican police failed to make a breakthrough more than three weeks later, a security official said on Wednesday.
The Pakistani investigators arrived in the capital of Kingston on Monday to help solve the murder of Bob Woolmer, who was found strangled to death a day after his squad was ousted from the sport’s premier tournament, said Gilbert Scott, permanent secretary in Jamaica’s Ministry of National Security.
”They will be here for as long as it takes,” Scott told the Associated Press. They came at the request of the Caribbean island’s government, he added.
The detectives join four Scotland Yard investigators and two forensic experts from Interpol, the France-based international police agency, who have been aiding in the probe for about two weeks.
Woolmer (58) died March 18, a day after his powerhouse squad was upset by Ireland. A Jamaican pathologist initially ruled his death ”inconclusive”, but four days later announced Woolmer was strangled.
Mark Shields, Jamaica’s deputy police commissioner, has said the foreign investigators would help with DNA analysis and also examine theories that Woolmer, Pakistan’s coach since 2004, may have been poisoned before he was strangled.
Authorities are still awaiting toxicology reports.
Security video from the Kingston hotel where Woolmer died was sent to a laboratory in the United Kingdom for review, assistant police commissioner Owen Ellington said on Tuesday.
Woolmer’s death shocked the international cricket community and cast a pall over the Cricket World Cup, being played in nine Caribbean countries through late April.
Patrick Murphy, Kingston’s coroner, said Wednesday he has not set a date for an inquest into Woolmer’s death. – Sapa-AP