‘Killer not from Jamaica’
London, PTI
Woolmer was upset that several members of the Pakistani team were followers of the Tablighi Jamaat, a Muslim revivalist movement, Pakistani media manager Pervez Mir indicated on Tuesday during the BBC’s Panorama programme.
A fatwa angle has emerged in the mysterious murder of Bob Woolmer, with the disclosure that the Pakistan coach was reportedly unhappy with the time spent by players on prayers.
Woolmer was upset that several members of the Pakistani team were followers of the Tablighi Jamaat, a Muslim revivalist movement, Pakistani media manager Pervez Mir indicated on Tuesday during the BBC’s Panorama programme, which focused on Bob Woolmer’s murder in a Jamaican hotel six weeks ago.
Focus on religion
According to Mir, Woolmer felt that the players were focusing more on their religion than on the game. He went on to claim that Woolmer could have even invited a fatwa had he gone public with his feelings about the players’ focus on prayer.
Recalling an incident, Mir said, “A Tablighi CD was being played and Bob, who was sitting behind me, said, ‘Why don’t you tell them to stop? If they want to listen to that, they can do that on their iPods or personal devices’. He thought that he shouldn’t be subjected to all that, and I agreed with Bob.”
Mir said Woolmer had apprehensions about the players’ dwindling focus on cricket.
“He wasn’t particularly pleased when players went out to pray in the middle of the game.. and substitutes kept coming in again and again. He was totally against it,” he said.
Mir’s observation that Inzamam-ul Haq and his teammates prayed more and played less irked quite a few back home and the media manager had to flee Pakistan after a fatwa was issued against him.
Mir had no doubt that “there would have been a fatwa against him (Woolmer) as well, had the coach made his observations public.”
The BBC programme said Inzamam and other key players of the Pakistani squad had become members of the Tablighi Jamat and the group listened to prayers and sermons while travelling with the rest of the squad on the team bus.
The killer
The programme also quoted the deputy commissioner of Jamaican Police Mark Shields as saying that Woolmer was murdered by someone who had come from outside the Caribbean country.
“The difference between Bob Woolmer’s murder and most of these is that Jamaican killers tend to use knives or guns. The fact that Bob Woolmer was strangled has made the police infer that his killer had come from outside Jamaica,” he stated.
He said that on March 18, the day Woolmer was found dead in his hotel room, nine murder cases had been registered across the country.
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