Widow guilty in Earl murder case

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Jamila M'Barek's brother Mohammed was also convicted of carrying out the premeditated murder for her.

They were both jailed for 25 years after being found guilty by 10-1 majorities by the jury in Nice, in the south of France.

The badly-decomposed body of Anthony Ashley-Cooper, the 10th Earl of Shaftesbury, was found in a remote ravine in the foothills of the Alps in April 2005, five months after he went missing from his £130-a-night hotel on the French Riviera.

Jean-Louis Moreau, the state prosecutor, said Jamila M'Barek, 45, a former nightclub hostess who became Lord Shaftesbury's third wife in 2002, paid her brother 150,000 euros (£105,000) to murder him.

She wanted her estranged husband dead so that he could not divorce her and deny her the chance to inherit valuable properties in France and Ireland.

Her 43-year-old brother killed the 66-year-old peer during a drunken row in November 2004, but claimed throughout his trial that he strangled him "accidentally".

Nicholas Ashley-Cooper, the late peer's second son and now the 12th Earl of Shaftesbury, said he did not believe Ms M'Barek ever loved his father.

He said: "I believe that she is manipulative and scheming, and ultimately an evil person," adding: "You caused the death of an innocent man and you caused my family a lifetime of hurt."

The 29-year-old, who sat in court throughout the four-day hearing with his mother Christina Cassell and aunt Lady Frances Ashley-Cooper, rejected the apology Mohammed offered the family in court earlier this week, saying: "I do not forgive him, and will never forgive him as long as he does not admit to the murder of my father."