The widow of the 10th Earl of Shaftesbury, who paid her brother £100,000 to murder him when he asked for a divorce, has complained that the murder “also broke her life”.
Jamila Ben M’Barek, a former escort who met her husband Anthony Ashley-Cooper when he hired her as a prostitute for the night, also apologized to her ex-husband’s family after she and her brother Mohammed hatched a plan to kill. him.
Speaking on the Channel 5 documentary A Very British Sex Scandal: The Earl & The Escort, after being released from prison after spending nine years behind bars, and while Mohammed is still serving a 25-year sentence, she said her late husband was ‘ really generous.’
During their two-year marriage, M’Barek lived a life of luxury at the earl’s lavish estates in the south of France and would inherit £4 million from him. But after a turbulent time in which her husband returned to his old habits of calling prostitutes and had an affair with an escort, he asked her wife for a divorce in 2004.
Shortly afterwards, in November, the count left a hotel bar in Cannes and said he would return to finish his drink, but never returned. Five months later, his skeleton was found in a ravine near the town in southern France, and Jamila and Mohammed were arrested for his murder.
Jamila Ben M’Barek, a former companion who was jailed in 2007 for the murder of her ex-husband, the 10th Earl of Shaftesbury, has said her life has been “destroyed” by the murder.
The brothers were sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2007 after being found guilty of murdering the 66-year-old aristocrat, however Jamila’s sentence was reduced on appeal to 20 years and she was released after nine years.
As featured in the Channel 5 documentary, Jamila expresses her regret over what happened, but maintains that Mohammed killed her ex-husband in self-defense.
She describes wanting to apologize for the “pain” caused to the late Earl’s family, including his remaining son, Nick, and “explain” what had happened.
‘I feel sorry for his family because Anthony was a very nice person, really generous. ‘I’m sorry for what happened,’ he said. “Of course, he broke my life too.”
The couple met in 2002 when Anthony, who had already been married twice before to Bianca de Paolis and Christina Montan, with whom he shares two children, hired her as his companion for the evening.
Appearing in a Channel 5 documentary A Very British Sex Scandal: The Earl & The Escort, Jamila sticks to her story that the Earl was murdered by her brother Mohammed in self-defence.
Jamila was imprisoned for more than 20 years for the count’s murder, but was released after serving nine years. Her brother is still in prison
During the documentary, Jamila describes how the Pretty Woman-style romance soon turned into a nightmare when she fell into old habits of heavy drinking, drug taking, and womanizing.
Although their life seemed perfect on the outside, the show reveals how they began to live separate lives as he frequented speakeasies in Cannes while she stayed at home.
Jamila recalled: ‘When I married Anthony, the first year was perfect. He had my house, he had my children with me, I was well on my way to fulfilling my dreams.’
However, she noted that her husband felt “lonely” and often cried for his mother as his relationship with family members, who did not approve of his third marriage, became more distant.
“She was a sad person,” Jamila recalled.
She described how his drinking became out of control and she tried to stop it by taking care of him “24 hours a day.”
“My sister and my family said ‘you’re crazy,'” he recalled.
One night, after Jamila went alone to a party in Monte Carlo and returned early in the morning, she claims she found young women running around the house, dressed in “my clothes.”
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 10th Earl of Shaftesbury, disappeared from Cannes in November 2004
The Earl’s second son Nick (pictured with his wife Dinah) is understood to be fighting to stop Jamila using the title ‘Countess’.
She claims they were going through her children’s belongings and asked her husband who they were, to which he responded that they were his “friends.”
As of tonight, the relationship continued to disintegrate and they soon broke up.
In April 2004 he met another woman he hoped to marry, a nightclub hostess named Nadia Boche.
Within a few months of meeting her, he bought Nadia a house and showered her with money and gifts, just as he had done with Jamila when they met.
When their marriage fell apart and he told her in 2004 that he wanted a divorce, she gave him an ominous warning: “You will regret it.”
Shortly after their angry exchange, the count was dead, murdered by the countess’s brother, Mohammed, who carried out the murder on her orders.
They almost got away with it, as the aristocrat’s severely decomposed body was not found for six months.
Speaking about the murder in the documentary, Jamila maintains that it was all an accident and Mohammed killed the earl in self-defence after they quarreled.
He claims that, after leaving the hotel bar where he had told the waiter he would return for a drink, the count traveled home in a taxi and arrived “drunk.”
Jamila claims she and her then-husband argued, which woke up her brother, who was staying with her and was sleeping in the next room.
She said: ‘[Mohammed] I woke up and the fight started. Great fight.’
As the violence continued, Jamila claimed she put her hands over her ears and begged them to stop, but “no one wanted to.”
He then claimed that the earl put his hand on Mohammed’s throat and somehow Mohammed ended up on top of him.
Then, without explaining how, he claimed that the count died suddenly, before Mohammed disposed of his body.
The count and Jamila married in Holland in 2002, a few months after meeting each other (pictured in a registry office)
Jamila has previously lamented what she believes is a lack of justice after the court did not believe her and her brother’s version of events.
Speaking to the Daily Mail last year, he said: “The trial was a joke, there was no justice, the judge just wouldn’t accept anything I said.” How can it be premeditated? Why would I ask my brother to kill my husband in the house where I live with my children in broad daylight?
“This is not justice, it is racism, if my name had been Jennifer or Caroline, I would not have been convicted of murder, it is because I am Arab and that is why they gave me 25 years for a murder I did not commit.” .’
She insisted: ‘It was a fight between two men and it happened in front of me in the hallway of my house. I tried to stop it but I couldn’t do anything. They were hitting each other and punching each other and then Anthony died.
When the case came to trial in 2007, two years after the earl’s body was found, the key to the case was a police wiretap in which she spoke to her sister about the £100,000 she had paid in the weeks prior to the murder, although his sister had no knowledge of or participation in the plot.
She dismissed this while speaking to the Mail, saying: “They don’t have a proper translation for the recording, I was speaking in Arabic slang to my sister, I told her I had paid my brother £100,000 over many years, not in one go “. go and not for killing Anthony.
“We didn’t plan anything together, I just wanted my brother to help me tell Anthony to respect me more and not come home to prostitutes and gangsters.”
The earl’s family suffered further tragedy just a month after his body was found when his eldest son Anthony died of a heart attack.
Now, as Jamila retains the title of countess which she boasts on her Instagram page, it is understood that the earl’s second son, Nick, who is now the 11th Earl of Shaftesbury, has vowed to do whatever is necessary to unseat her stepmother of the title. .
She said last year: ‘Nick has said he will take the title from me but he won’t have it easy. I will face him in court, I will fight him and I will win.
‘He has no rights, I married his father and that’s why I am legally the countess, whether he likes it or not. He can pay all the expensive lawyers he wants, but I will still fight him and win.