Pakistan's cricketers to return home after DNA tests

Pakistan’s cricket team prepared to return home from Jamaica today, a day after submitting DNA samples to police probing the grisly murder of national coach Bob Woolmer.

Jamaican authorities gave permission for players and team members to leave the island but ordered that Woolmer’s body remain pending a coroner’s inquest into a killing that has cast a pall over cricket’s prestigious World Cup.

Deputy Police Commissioner Mark Shields said yesterday that authorities obtained DNA samples from the Pakistan squad. The Pakistan team, who had already supplied fingerprints to investigators, flew to Montego Bay on the north-western coast on Thursday to rest after giving statements to police.

Pakistan team manager Talat Ali said his players were “relieved” to go home being holed up in a swanky hotel in this Caribbean resort town.

“They’re looking forward to going home. And I think that Bob will always be missed by the players as well as the Pakistan Cricket board. You know, he did a tremendous job for us,” Ali said.

Mystery has swirled around the murder of Woolmer, a burly and avuncular 58-year-old Englishman who lived in South Africa and formerly had led South African cricketers through one of the game’s worst scandals.

The international governing body of cricket said it would investigate whether match fixing was a motive for the murder that shocked the world of cricket and exposed its sinister underside.

Woolmer was strangled on Sunday in his Kingston hotel room. Police desperately sought leads, asking witnesses to come forward who may have seen anything suspicious in the upscale Jamaica Pegasus Hotel where Woolmer and the rest of the Pakistan squad had been staying.

“With that many people in the hotel it’s no doubt that somebody saw something,” Shields said.

Woolmer went to his room on Saturday night after the Pakistan team, normally a world powerhouse, suffered a humiliating loss to underdog Ireland, which assured Pakistan’s first-round elimination from the Cricket World Cup. The world championship is being played on nine West Indian islands, with the final on April 28.

That was the last time Woolmer was seen alive by anyone but his killer, or killers.

He was found by a maid the next day, laying half out of his bathroom and dressed in boxer shorts. One witness reporting seeing blood and vomit splattered in the room, but another said he saw vomit only in the toilet. Police have not released details about the crime scene.

Shields, a former Scotland Yard detective who was brought to Jamaica in 2005 to help the Caribbean nation get its spiralling crime rate under control, said police were investigating whether more than one person was involved.

“Because Bob was a large man, it would have taken some significant force to subdue him, but of course at this stage we do not know how many people were in the room,” he said. “It could be one or more people involved in this murder.”

Whoever killed the affable coach gained access to the 12th floor room without forcing the door open – suggesting Woolmer may have known the person – and attacked him without people in neighbouring rooms noticing anything amiss. Access to the floors containing guest rooms is restricted at the hotel – only a card key will operate the elevators to those floors.

John Issa, chairman of the board of directors of the hotel, said on Friday that there are no records of anyone else entering Woolmer’s room with a card key.

“The records show that no one entered because the keys are electronic and we would have seen this,” he said. Police are reviewing closed-circuit videos from the hotel.

After feverish speculation, Police Commissioner Lucius Thomas confirmed Thursday that the pathologist had declared the cause of death “asphyxia as a result of manual strangulation”. Police said they were reviewing security cameras at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel and urging witnesses to come forward.

“We have some theories of what may have happened, but it’s too early to go public with them,” Shields said on Friday.

Former Pakistan fast bowler Sarfraz Nawaz has claimed that Woolmer, a former player for England, was killed because he was writing a book that would expose illegal gambling in the sport.

Pakistan team spokesman Pervez Jamil Mir told reporters that Woolmer was upset that proofs of his book had gone missing.

“Bob told me the proofs had been misplaced and he was very disturbed.” Mir said. “I don’t know what was in the book but that was his only copy at the time.”