Agencies

KINGSTON/LONDON, March 29: The investigation into Bob Woolmer’s murder has received a boost with closed circuit television images clearly identifying people entering and leaving the Jamaica hotel corridor even as a British newspaper claimed today that there was an Al-Qaeda link to the Pakistan coach’s death in his room there, reports PTI. A Pakistan-based bookie was thrown out of Woolmer’s room after a “blazing row”, London’s mass circulation tabloid The Sun reported from Jamaica quoting “sources” which it did not identify.

The match-fixer is an associate of Dawood Ibrahim, who is wanted in Al-Qaeda funding and the Bombay blasts, the daily said.

Sun went on to quote “intelligence officials who tour with Indian cricket team” to say that the bookie was at the World Cup in Jamaica with Anees Ibrahim, Dawood’s brother.

Jamaican government officials said that Pakistani players had told the police of the row between their “mild-mannered coach” and the bookie. Two players were said to have spoken of a “furious bust-up” in statements to the police, the report said.

Meanwhile, Mark Shields, Jamaica’s Deputy Commissioner of Police in charge of the investigation into the coach’s murder 11 days ago, told reporters in Kingston that about 28 hours of CCTV footage from two cameras at either end of Woolmer’s hotel corridor on the night he died clearly identified people entering and leaving.

The CCTV footage had been digitally enhanced and “there are some people in the footage that I had met in the week after the murder of Bob Woolmer that I could clearly and easily identify”, Shields said.

“I looked at a few still images myself and I am satisfied that I can easily identify people,” he said.

The Sun report said the issue of the murder having links with Dawood had come up earlier but the police had not been able to substantiate it.