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Saudi billionaire's son died after drugs binge
Paul Cheston, Courts Correspondent16 Jul 2008
A Saudi billionaire's son died from a drugs overdose at his London home weeks before his wife gave birth to twins, an inquest heard today.
Tarek Juffali, 40, was a heavy heroin and cocaine user and also took Rohypnol and smoked 30 cannabis joints a day, but was trying to beat his addiction before his wife, Jamie, gave birth, Westminster coroner's court was told.
Philanthropist Mr Juffali, who gave £10 million to charities in the past three years alone, was found dead in his bed by servants at his Belgravia home after apparently bingeing on medication.
His blood contained four times the fatal dose of morphine which, combined with another prescribed drug, affected his breathing and killed him, the inquest heard.
Mr Juffali, originally from Saudi Arabia, was described as an industrialist and a major shareholder in one of the country's biggest firms, EA Juffali and Brothers, where he was an executive.
The court heard Mr Juffali had a "long history of drug abuse" but went to see Dr Ronald Tovey, the medical director at Stapleford Centre Rehab Clinic, in March. Dr Tovey said: "He wanted to be clean for the birth of his children or just after the birth."
Mr Juffali was prescribed morphine and chloral hydrate to wean him off narcotics. He also cut down from smoking "30 super skunk spliffs" a day to three to four a day.
However, on 30 May Mr Juffali was found dead in his bed. Toxicology tests found he had 0.96mg per litre of morphine in his blood and 44.6mg per litre of chloral hydrate.
Of the morphine reading, toxicologist Professor David Holt said: "This is so enormously high, three to four times above what one might consider a survivable concentration."
Recording a verdict of death by misadventure, coroner Dr Paul Knapman said: "We have a situation where we have a synergetic effect probably between very high levels of morphine and substantial levels of chloral hydrate."
Mrs Juffali gave birth to twins earlier this month.
