Probe has not proved murder: Investigator

CRICKET: The probe into the death of Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer is "inconclusive" and has not proved that he was murdered, a Pakistani investigator said Monday.

The comments by Mir Zubair Mahmood, a senior Karachi detective who was sent to Jamaica to help in the investigation into the death of the former England test player, casts doubt over earlier assertions by police there that Woolmer was murdered.

Jamaican police have said that Woolmer was found strangled in his room in an upscale hotel in Kingston on March 18, a day after his Pakistan squad was eliminated from the World Cup by minnows Ireland in an upset defeat.

But Mahmood said that the cause of the coach's death has yet to be determined. "We have gone through all the confidential investigation which I cannot share with you because it would be unethical, but I can say that at this point no one can say that it was a murder or a natural death," Mahmood told The Associated Press.

"Several tests have been sent to Scotland Yard and the results are awaited and the most I can say (is) that the investigation in Bob Woolmer's case is inconclusive," he said. Mahmood is a respected detective who was involved in the probe into the killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and beheaded in Karachi in 2002. Mahmood returned from Jamaica last week with a fellow investigator from Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency. He praised the efforts of Jamaican police and their cooperation.

A senior Jamaican investigator said last week that they are trying to identify dozens of people captured by security cameras at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel, where Woolmer, a 58-year-old Briton, was found dead.

About 80 unidentified people were filmed on Woolmer's floor during the days he and his team stayed at the hotel, Deputy Police Commissioner Mark Shields, who is heading the probe into Woolmer's death, told AP last week. Police have made no arrests.

At the weekend, The Sunday Times newspaper in Britain cited a source close to Jamaican police as saying Woolmer had ingested enough herbicide to kill him. That followed a report from the British Broadcasting Corp. that a toxicology test on Woolmer's body showed the presence of a drug that would have incapacitated him.

British police refused to comment on the reports, but Shields said that investigators were looking into the possibility Woolmer had been poisoned and were awaiting analysis of toxicology tests from a British lab.

KARACHI, Pakistan, Tuesday, AP