Pakistani Fans Sought in Woolmer Inquiry

Jamaican police investigating the murder of the cricket coach Bob Woolmer are appealing for information about three Pakistani fans who have disappeared from the hotel where he died.

Mark Shields, Jamaica's second highest ranking police officer who is leading the inquiry, said the focus was on foreigners because a local would favour firearms or knives as a weapon."The fact that it was manual strangulation, asphyxiation, doesn't really fit the profile of somebody locally," Mr Shields told Sky News.

One complication is that Woolmer and his team mixed freely with fans, including the small community of Pakistanis living in Jamaica. Some would provide the practising Muslims on the team with halal meat, which is hard to find in Jamaica. Detectives continued to examine CCTV footage of the lift and service areas of the 12th floor of the Pegasus hotel, where Woolmer was killed in room 374.

Mr Shields dismissed claims that the investigators had taken so long to analyse the film because it was such poor in quality, saying it had taken a long time to find state-of-the-art equipment to transfer video to digital images.

After a weekend of contradictory reports about the possible reason for Woolmer's murder, the Pakistani government yesterday urged media restraint and sensitivity towards its "traumatised" team.

"There are lots of speculations and rumours, some of them very malicious, and we expect the media, the international media particularly, to show some sensitivity," said Tasnim Aslam, spokeswoman for the Pakistan's foreign ministry.

In London, where the Pakistani team was staying until flying back to Lahore today, team spokesman Pervez Jamil Mir stressed the "fantastic" relationship Woolmer had had with the players.

Mr Mir said he would release private footage of the team with its coach to dispel rumours of friction.

He described Woolmer as a "father figure" and dismissed suggestions of a strained relationship with Pakistani captain Inzamam ul-Haq.

Speaking outside the Holiday Inn hotel in Heathrow, Mr Mir said: "There is disagreement in every team. But to highlight that and make it a media trial is not a fair thing to do. He was more than a coach. He used to help the boys."

He said it was wrong to focus on match-fixing as a possible motive.

"When a man has been murdered, to divert a murder inquiry into a match-fixing inquiry, that's not fair, because we have to find the killers, then we will know what happened," he said.