AP Features, June 8th, 2007
Jamaican police should face legal action for declaring Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer's death a homicide, the team's World Cup spokesman said Friday, alleging the high-profile case unfairly cast suspicion on the country's players.
"The name of Pakistan has been maligned and the names of Pakistani cricketers have been maligned, because everybody became a suspect," spokesman Pervez Jamil Mir told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Pakistan.
Several media outlets have reported that Jamaican police will announce they believe the 58-year-old Woolmer died in his hotel room in Jamaica of natural causes after his team's upset defeat to Ireland in the cricket World Cup. Police have said he was strangled.
Jamaican Police Commissioner Lucius Thomas said Wednesday his office has new information in the case and will make an announcement in coming days, but refused to comment on the reports.
Woolmer's body was found in his Kingston hotel room March 18 and later pronounced dead at a hospital. A government pathologist, Dr. Ere Sheshiah, initially called the burly Englishman's death "inconclusive" but four days later ruled he was strangled.
Three Pakistan team members, including squad captain Inzamam ul-Haq, were fingerprinted and swabbed for DNA as part of the investigation, although police said they were never officially suspects.
But Mir said those acts along with repeated police statements that Woolmer was strangled only fed speculation that Pakistan team members were somehow involved.
"I will be recommending whatever legal actions (the Pakistan Cricket Board) needs to take because basically it was the Pakistan team on trial," Mir said from Karachi, Pakistan. He did not give details.
Mir said he also wants a public apology from Jamaica's police, claiming its spokesman, Karl Angell, told him and other team members two days after Woolmer's body was found that authorities believed he died from hypertension.
Angell denied making the statement when reached for comment.
