Fatima Kama was born in Morocco in 1971. In 1990, at the age of 19, she moved to
Montreal with her parents, where she gained Canadian citizenship in 1997.
She had studied accountancy, but her true passion was to sing. This is the path
Fatima chose to follow, and eventually she became a well loved cabaret singer,
performing at hotels, restaurants and weddings. 1998 and '99 was a busy period
for the now lively 28-year-old. She had spent 8 months of that time in Lebanon,
singing at weddings and private functions. Then in July of '99 Miss Kama
travelled to London on an Air Canada flight for a planned week-long visit.
It was her second visit to the city in the last 12 months. She arrived on July 10th
with a planned return to Montreal on the 17th. She was a regular visitor to
the West End of London where she was said to have many wealthy friends and
admirers willing to help her in her career, and to fulfill her dream, which
was to record an album. During her time there she stayed at a flat at Portsea Hall
just off of Edgware Road, in the Marble Arch area.
She began renting this property in May of '99 during her first day in the city
that year. The owner and landlord was a 24-yea- old Lebanese man named Abdel
Wahid. Very little is known about Fatima's time in London during her July stay.
The week passed and Fatima's return date of the 17th came and went.
Her parents back in Canada eagerly awaited their daughter's return, but she never
showed up. The truth is Miss Kama was at Heathrow
Airport on the day of her return flight, but under circumstances her family would
not be able to comprehend. On the evening of Saturday July 17th, 1999 an unattended
suitcase was found by members of the public on the third floor of the
airport's Terminal 3 carpark. The three foot by two point nine foot
suitcase, which bore the label black poor New York, had been left there on a
trolley. Security staff were called and they opened the case. Inside they found
the body of a woman curled up in a fetal position. Her throat had been deeply cut
and she had been stabbed several times. A post-mortem examination at the Ealing
Hospital mortuary revealed that she had suffered at least ten stab wounds and
had been sexually assaulted. Two days would pass before the body was
identified as Fatima Kama. It wasn't until they had received
reports of her disappearance from friends in London and family in Canada
that London's Metropolitan Police put two and two together. When detectives
entered the flat at Portsea Hall they were faced with an apparently
undisturbed scene. There were no signs that a struggle had taken place,
everything looked normal. Unsatisfied they looked closer,
carrying out a careful examination of the property. They found traces of
diluted, splattered blood on the carpets and skirting boards. The pattern of the
blood splatter suggested that a murder had almost certainly taken place and
someone had attempted to clean it up. The obvious suspect was Abdel Wahid
the owner of the flat. At around 10:00 p.m. on Monday July the 20th Wahid
was apprehended and taken into custody. It looked like an open-and-shut case.
The police appeared to have their man and they thought it was just a matter of
time before justice was served. The thing was, Abdul Wahid was not the only other
person with access to the Portsea Hall dwelling. It transpired that on
her arrival in London on July the 10th, Miss karma was told that she would have
to share the flat with the landlord's brother, 29-year-old Kuwait Airways
steward, Youssef Wahid. When questioned about Youssef's whereabouts, the younger
brother Abdel had little or no information to give. But police soon
discovered that Youssef Wahid had left London just hours after Fatima's body
was found. He had flown from Heathrow Airport bound for Lebanon on a
one-way ticket, paid for in cash. At this point I should mention that Abdel Wahid,
Youssef's brother and owner of the flat, although charged with assisting an
offender and then making an appearance in court on Friday July the 23rd, was
quickly found innocent of any involvement in the murder.
Fatima Kama and Youssef Wahid had little in common. Fatima was an outgoing
young woman with a dream. Wahid, on the other hand, was described as
a sullen and quiet individual. It was also said that Youssef may have shown a
romantic interest in Fatima. An interest that was not mutually felt. The first
overwhelming piece of evidence turned up in the form of a series of security
camera videos. It showed Youssef Wahid traveling through Paddington Station on
July 17th, bound for the Heathrow Express train which brings passengers into the
airport. He was then seen struggling to get a
large suitcase off of a train at Heathrow. The airport surveillance cameras then
caught him making his way through the airport, pushing the same suitcase. He was
finally seen on level 2 of the airport's Terminal 3 carpark, but abandoned the
suitcase on level 3 where there were no security cameras at the time.
The Metropolitan police quickly tracked down Wahid in his home village of Rmadiyeh
near the coast of southern Lebanon, but he denied any knowledge of the murder.
London made a request to the Lebanese police force to question him in Beirut
but permission was not granted. They were told, however, that they could be present
when he was questioned by them. This was not good enough for the London police,
and as there was no treaty in place for offenders to be extradited from Lebanon
to the UK, London needed time to present a solid case in order to do so.
They replied to the Lebanese invitation on July 31st, 1999 saying:
This was a devistating move by the London police for the family of Fatima Kama,
but one that, given the complex legalities involved in an extradition, was necessary.
Up until now no criminal had ever been successfully extradited back to the UK
from the Middle East. Scotland Yard knew they had a lengthy process ahead of them.
The Lebanese continued to investigate the case on their own though, and in 2001
they found Wahid guilty and sentenced him to death in absentia.
But Wahid did not settle on Lebanese soil. Knowing that Lebanon or Britain could
catch up with him at any time he remained on the move, traveling from one
Middle Eastern country to another, eventually abandoning his passport in
Saudi Arabia. It was inevitable, though, that one day he would either return to
his home in Lebanon or settle elsewhere, and eventually become complacent over time.
And that he did. Fatima's family were not prepared to wait though, and in
2002 her father traveled to London in a bid to open a fresh appeal and renew the
investigation, but sadly his efforts failed. London's police force were
presented with an opportunity eight years later in the shape of Bahrain.
Youssef Wahid, after years on the run, eventually moved there, settling into his
new life as a businessman. Relations between the UK and Bahrain were stronger
than with Lebanon and an extradition agreement was made between the two
nations in 2010. On August 24 2010, the now married father of two at the
age of 41 was arrested. He was then flown back to London on September 8th, where he
was apprehended by London police at the same airport he had left Fatima Kama's
body eleven years before. Wahid tried to argue that his
extradition had been unlawful. In fact it was one of historical significance, as it
was reportedly the first successful extradition from a Middle Eastern
country to the UK. £50,000 worth of money and jewelry, thought to have been
stolen by Wahid after Fatima had withdrawn it from a safety deposit box
was never recovered. Miss Kama had also been raped, but
police were unclear whether the initial motive had been money or lust.
They thought it likely that one had led to the other as the opportunity arose.
It also transpired that Wahid had brazenly returned to the city for a
short while after abandoning Fatima's body. There, he shaved his mustache and
prepared for his flight, before returning to Heathrow and boarding his plane.
At first he denied ever being in Britain, but changed his mind when presented with
fingerprints matching his that were taken from the crime scene. If this
wasn't enough, his DNA also matched semen samples taken from Fatima's body.
His trial took place at the Old Bailey in August of 2011, and he stood before Judge
Paul Worsley. He changed his defending lawyer several times, making life
difficult for them by refusing to enter the court after the prosecution case.
He eventually turned down legal representation altogether, wrongly
believing that this would invalidate his trial. He did, however, return to court to
hear the guilty verdict, and requested his legal representation be reinstated
for the sentencing hearing, which took place on October the 3rd. After just two
and a half hours he was found guilty by an eleven to one jury and was sentenced
to life in prison. He would have to serve 24 years before being eligible for
parole. He denied murdering the 28-year-old
singer and former accountancy student right up until he was led away from the
courtroom. A 12-year manhunt had come to an end.
Detective Chief Inspector John McFarlane, who had headed the investigation, summed
it up when he faced the press following the trial. He said:
But nothing the police
or anyone else could say could make life easier for Fatima's family. Her father,
66-year-old Bouchaib Kama, said that her mother had cried non-stop for three
years following their daughter's death. He praised the Metropolitan Police
though, admitting that he thought justice would never be done.