Appeal by Earl of Shaftesbury’s wife rejected

Jamila M’Barek, a former nightclub hostess, and her brother Mohammed were convicted in May 2007 of strangling Anthony Ashley Cooper, 66, in his luxury Cannes apartment in November 2004. Jamila, who was then 45, was found guilty of arranging it and her brother, 43, who had a history of mental illness, of carrying out the premeditated murder for her. The case revolved around her worries over what she would or would not inherit. 

Jamila was the Earl’s third wife, although the couple had been separated for seven months and had started divorce proceedings when the Earl went missing in early November 2004 from the Noga Hilton Hotel in Cannes where he was staying. It later transpired that he had died during a struggle with Mohammed at the luxury apartment in Cannes which the couple had shared before the marriage broke down.

The Earl’s badly decomposed body was found in undergrowth near Théoule-sur-Mer in April 2005, by which time the siblings protests of innocence were already being questioned. Two years later they were both handed sentences of 25 years each. Jamila's has been commuted to 20 years.

The collision between English aristocratic privilege and the tawdry underbelly of hostesses and prostitutes on the glamorous Côte d’Azur caused a sensation at the time of the trial. CL