June 14, 2007	Thursday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 28, 1428

KINGSTON, June 13: Pakistan's World Cup cricket coach, Bob Woolmer, almost certainly died of heart failure, Jamaica police said on Wednesday, a day after ending a high-profile investigation into his murder.

Police based their conclusion on the cause of Woolmer's death on the evidence of three independent pathologists from Britain, Canada and South Africa who reviewed an initial postmortem and said Woolmer was not, in fact, murdered.

They also took into account a toxicologist's report which said there were no poisons in Woolmer's body.

“Determining the cause of death is the remit of the coroner but we are 99 percent sure that Woolmer died of heart failure,” said police spokesman Karl Angell.

He did not elaborate, but the Jamaica Observer newspaper quoted Police Commissioner Lucius Thomas as saying Woolmer had “an enlarged heart which was brought on by a number of illnesses.”

Previous media reports have referred to his ill health and speculated that he suffered from diabetes.

Woolmer's death in Kingston on March 18, one day after Pakistan lost to little-fancied Ireland in the cricket World Cup, cast a shadow over the sport that deepened when police announced it was launching a murder investigation.

That probe was based upon a postmortem report by pathologist Ere Seshaiah, which said the 58-year-old former England international cricketer had been strangled.

In an embarrassing U-turn, police reversed course on Tuesday and said Woolmer died of natural causes in direct contradiction to Seshaiah's findings.

Seshaiah insisted he was right despite the verdict reached by police in the Caribbean island nation. “I am sticking to my findings. He was murdered,” he told the Observer in an interview published on Wednesday.

The Gleaner newspaper published excerpts from the three reports by the independent coroners used by police.

“After viewing the photographs and video and discussing the circumstances, I gave my opinion that Mr. Woolmer's death was not due to throttling, but in fact natural causes, probably cardiac related,” Lorna Martin, head of forensic medicine and toxicology at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, was quoted as saying.

Kingston's coroner has declined to say when an announcement on the official cause of death will be made.

Meanwhile, Jamaicans reacted with embarrassment to news that Woolmer was not, in fact, murdered, after a saga that started as a tragedy, became a mystery, and now turned into a farce.

Attention focused on how police appeared to botch their highest-profile investigation in years by announcing on March 22 that they were treating Woolmer's death as murder, and then declaring nearly three months later he died of natural causes.

Police defended their performance but commentators said Jamaica's image had taken a hit and the way the probe was conducted could even affect voter perceptions of the ruling People's National Party ahead of elections due by October.

“First it was shock,” said political commentator Kevin O'Brien Chang on reaction to news of Woolmer's death on March 18. “Then horror at the fact that he was murdered. Now we feel ashamed at the gross incompetence on the part of our guys.”It has been “a real comedy of errors. You couldn't get any more errors than that. It's a bunch of clowns,” he said of detectives involved in the case.

The news cast a shadow over the island of 2.7 million, which deepened when police announced he had been murdered.

The potential impact of the Woolmer affair may go beyond Jamaica's international reputation.

When Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller took power in February 2006 she rode a wave of popularity as the country's first female leader but a series of scandals have damaged the fortunes of a party in power since 1989.

Cricket fever and a successful World Cup could have boosted the party's fortunes despite criticism over the amount of money spent on rehabilitating Sabina Park stadium in Kingston and building a second stadium near Montego Bay.

In one speech, Simpson-Miller, often called ‘Sista P’ by her supporters, sought to capitalize on the attention given to the national sport.

“I have the strength to swing the bat,” Simpson-Miller, was quoted as telling a campaign rally.

In the event, the failure of the West Indies to progress beyond the second round of the competition and Woolmer's death in a Kingston hotel dampened euphoria.

The opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) said it would not seek to turn the investigation into a political issue, arguing voters were more concerned about government failure to invest in health, education, water and rural infrastructure.

“We would never expect it (Tuesday's announcement) to have political repercussions,” said James Robertson, a deputy leader of the JLP.

“It does make our police force look incompetent ... As a country we must be embarrassed by what took place (but) the opposition would never make a political football out of this. We would never take advantage,” he said.

Jamaicans were more concerned about crime and the high murder rate than about Woolmer's death, said former West Indies cricketer Maurice Foster, who now hosts a radio talk show.

Even though Woolmer died of natural causes, the effect of the saga would be to focus attention on the ability of the police to combat crime, he said.—Reuters