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Murdered Martine: police hunt billionaire's son who fled abroad
Justin Davenport and Benedict Moore-Bridger18 Mar 2008
Police are seeking the banker son of an Arab billionaire in connection with the murder of a wealthy student whose body was found at a private block of flats in central London.
Economics student Martine Vik Magnussen, 23, was discovered partially buried under rubble in the basement of a flat rented by Farooq Abdulhak, 26, and two friends.
Flight records show he left the country immediately after the murder in the early hours of last Friday. Detectives fear he has returned to his home country Yemen, which has no extradition treaty with Britain.
Further details emerged today of how the Norwegian student died. Police believe Miss Magnussen was strangled but were awaiting the results of further tests to establish an exact cause.
A post-mortem examination showed she had "significant injuries to her neck" and concluded her "unnatural" death was the result of "third party involvement".
Miss Magnussen was found at the apartment building in Great Portland Street on Sunday, two days after her friends reported her missing. Her father, Odd Petter Magnussen, an information consultant, and mother Kristin Vik Ronnaug, flew into London from their native Norway with their two other children immediately after learning of their daughter's murder.
Mr Magnussen, who is divorced, said his daughter was like a "ray of sunshine" to her family and friends, adding that they were distraught. They were struggling to cope, leaving Norwegian embassy staff to liaise with police, he said. The Foreign Office is now understood to be in contact with the suspect's father Shaher, a hotelier and executive with the Yemen franchise of Pepsi, who is being asked to persuade him to return to London.
Abdulhak's associates tried to contact him over the weekend but he did not reply. He is also reported to have erased his profile on social networking site Facebook, where Miss Magnussen and her friends planned parties. Abdulhak was last seen with her at the members-only nightclub Maddox in Mayfair on the morning she was killed.
Flatmates Nina Brantzeg and Thale Lassen, both 23, said the international business student at £10,000-a-year Regent's College left the club between 2am and 3am on Friday and got into a taxi with a male companion, saying they were going to a private party. The friends contacted police after she failed to return to their home in Westminster. One of Miss Magnussen's friends said she had sent a message via Facebook to an Arab businessman's page asking if he knew what happened.
She said: "I wrote: 'Do you know where she is?' I got no answer and shortly thereafter his profile was deleted."
