'Murdered and betrayed': earl's son vents anger as jury retires

The 10th Earl of Shaftesbury's youngest son and heir yesterday described the brother and sister on trial for his killing as "cold, deceitful and without compassion for a man they murdered and betrayed".

Turning on his stepmother, Jamila M'Barek, at a court in Nice, he told her: "Jamila, I do not believe that you ever loved my father and I believe that you are manipulative and scheming, and ultimately an evil person." Ms M'Barek, 45, a former escort girl, is accused of being an accomplice to premeditated murder while her brother Muhammad M'Barek, 43, is accused of killing the peer.

Last night the jury retired to consider its verdict in a case that reads like the plot of a cheap paperback thriller with its heady mix of glamour, vice, drugs and aristocracy.

Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 66, disappeared on November 5 2004, after meeting his estranged wife to discuss their divorce. He had announced his intention to marry another young escort girl. His decomposed remains were found five months after he disappeared. Pathologist reports said the injuries suffered by the earl, including a double fracture of the larynx, suggested strangulation.

At first police feared the British aristocrat had fallen foul of the underworld mafia controlling local prostitutes that he "frequented assiduously".

But Ms M'Barek became the prime suspect after investigators bugged her conversations while she was in a psychiatric hospital where she had been admitted following the murder. In one conversation, investigators claimed, she told her sister Mr M'Barek had strangled the peer. In another she allegedly mentioned giving Mr M'Barek €150,000 (£100,000) in cash.

Inside the modern courtroom in Nice's Palais de Justice on the Cote d'Azur, the story of Lord Shaftesbury's decline and demise unfolded with a mixture of pathos, sordid revelations, histrionics and drama that at times became surreal.

The earl, born into an illustrious family whose forefathers had founded the Whig party and helped outlaw child labour in Britain, had declined a long way from the 3,642-hectare family seat in Wimborne, Dorset, where he was remembered as a man who liked bats and birds.

To the jury he was portrayed as a sad and lonely figure, addicted to drink and sex-enhancing drugs, who cruised the Riviera's nightclubs and bars picking up prostitutes.

It was through a Geneva-based escort agency that he allegedly met mother-of-two Ms M'Barek. The couple married on November 5, 2002 to the dismay of his family, and Jamila M'Barek became the Countess of Shaftesbury, a title that she admitted "did not displease her".

Exactly two years later to the day, the earl was dead. By this time he had bought his wife a flat in Cannes, a windmill, and was giving her a generous monthly allowance.

However, he was also planning to divorce her and marry another young escort with whom he hoped to have a daughter .

Nobody, except the murderers, knows exactly what happened on the morning of November 5 2004.

The police accused Ms M'Barek of luring the peer to her flat "consciously and without constraint to accomplish his assassination".

Later that day, they say the earl's body was loaded into the back of Mr M'Barek's car, driven a few miles into the hills and dumped in a remote spot used by fly tippers.

Ms M'Barek had at first claimed that before that tragic day, she had never been to the place where the peer's remains were found five months later.

But the judge revealed that antenna near the spot had picked up her mobile telephone two days before her husband's murder.

Muhammad M'Barek, described by psychiatric reports as "a psychopathic personality, egocentric and incapable of empathy", insisted the earl's death had been an accident and did his best to take the blame.

"I am the only one responsible. My sister is innocent," he told the court. He added: "I didn't strangle him, I hit him, he fell, he was dead of a heart attack."

The court had heard from Murray Hallan, Lord Shaftesbury's London lawyer, who told the jury that Lord Shaftesbury wanted his title and family estate to go to his eldest son. He added: "His land in Northern Ireland, his family furniture in Versailles, his interests in various British companies and his pensions would go to his widow." He said Ms M'Barek had stood to inherit more than £2m plus interest on investments and pensions. "She already had, furthermore, the apartment in Cannes and a mill in the Gers," he said.

The judge, Nicole Besset, wanted to know if Ms M'Barek knew this. "I think so," replied Mr Hallan. Would the will fall, ipso facto, in case of a divorce, he was asked. "Yes," he replied.

The prosecution then claimed that in June 2004, five months before the earl's killing, Ms M'Barek had visited London to find out about British divorce law.

Most of the women who trooped through the Nice court described him as a big-hearted man who was looking for love. They told him - and the court - that they had given him what he was seeking.

But the most telling remark came from the earl's last mistress who tearfully declared she had loved Anthony Ashley-Cooper "very much".

In almost the same breath she added: "He was like a cash machine."

And that said it all.

The leading players

Jamila M'Barek, 45, mother-of-two born in France, one of seven children of a Tunisian mother and Moroccan father, a miner described as an alcoholic who was violent to his children. They separated in 1967 and the children returned with their mother to Tunisia. Jamila met Anthony Ashley-Cooper after he called an escort service. They married in November 2002. Police suggested Jamila paid her brother €150,000 (£100,000) to kill her husband.

Mohammed M'Barek, 43, Jamila's brother. A twice married father-of- three, who lived alone in Munich. He worked in a cosmetics factory and was said to be in financial straits following divorce. He originally claimed he was in Germany at the time of the murder but later confessed he had driven to Cannes. He said the money from Jamila was to buy a home for their mother.

Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 10th Earl of Shaftesbury. Eton and Oxford educated peer inherited title and 9,000-acre Shaftesbury estate in 1961 at age 22 on his grandfather's death. His father had died at 47, prompting his French mother to move back across the Channel. Had two sons with Swedish-born second wife but in 2000 left her and moved to Hove. He later returned to France and began frequenting Riviera bars.

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