The mysterious death of an Egyptian billionaire whose body was found below his Mayfair, London, flat just weeks after accusations that he had spied for Mossad is being investigated by a new team of murder detectives following complaints from family members that key evidence had disappeared.
Scotland Yard’s elite Specialist Crime Directorate is now overseeing Ashraf Marwan’s alleged murder, after it emerged that shoes worn when he fell five floors to his death could not be found by a previous inquiry team.
The development will only deepen speculation over his death. Israeli commentators say Egyptian intelligence officers murdered him for being the Jewish state’s most important agent in the run-up to the Yom Kippur war in 1973. Egyptian commentators say Mossad murdered him as he prepared to expose Israel’s secrets in an explosive book.
A police source said that the case has been transferred from detectives in Westminster, central London, following fevered international speculation over Marwan’s death and the admission that key evidence could not be found.
“It was decided to move this because of the intricate and public nature of the case. We need to be seen to get this right from here on in,” the source said.
A family member claimed that a new set of detectives has taken over the case because of criticism over lost evidence.
“Scotland Yard should have changed their tactics much earlier,” he said.
Marwan, 62, a businessman and son-in-law of former Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser and a former political and security adviser to former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, died on June 27 last year after falling from his luxury flat in Carlton House Terrace.
Historians have described him as the “most infamous spy in the Middle East,” who had worked closely with security agencies including the UK’s MI6, the CIA and the KGB.
His family say that the only known copy of his nearly finished memoirs — which he had been researching for several years — disappeared from his house on the day he died.
One witness has told police that in the moments after Marwan’s death two men of “Mediterranean appearance,” both wearing suits, were seen peering over a balcony at his body as it lay sprawled in a private garden.
The witness, who asked not to be identified, said last week: “I saw two men standing on a balcony. They were doing nothing, just looking down. Their calmness struck me as unusual. A lady was screaming in the garden. People were rushing around trying to help or call. But these two men were just standing there.”
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