Thursday, June 14, 2007

Commission to review Woolmer investigations

KINGSTON, Jamaica, June 13 (Reuters) - The Jamaica government will set up a commission to review the investigations into the death of former Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer, the island's minister of national security said on Wednesday.

"Given the high degree of public interest which the case has generated at home and abroad... I have considered it desirable to commission a review," Minister Peter Phillips announced in parliament.

"An assessment must also be carried out concerning the techniques and the standards of professionalism employed by the police investigators as well as the medical and other professional personnel.

"The exercise is to be completed within six weeks and I expect a report no later than July 31."

On Tuesday, police confirmed that Woolmer had died of natural causes and was not murdered as earlier announced, ending an embarrassing, three-month investigation that gripped the cricket world.

Woolmer was found unconscious in his hotel room in Kingston on March 18 after his highly rated team lost to little fancied Ireland in the Cricket World Cup, and police launched a murder investigation after a pathologist said he had been strangled.

The murder suspicions triggered speculation he had been killed by an irate fan or an illegal gambling syndicate.

However, police reversed course after reports from three independent pathologists and a toxicology test said the former England international cricketer died of natural causes and had no poisons in his body.

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