CCTV footage from Woolmer murder hotel sent to UK specialists

Video footage from the Jamaican hotel where Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer was murdered has reportedly been sent to specialists in the UK to search for clues to his killer's identity.

Sources in Jamaica claimed that tapes from the closed-circuit television cameras positioned on the 12th floor of the Pegasus Hotel in Kingston, where the 58-year-old Briton was found dead on March 18, showed unclear images that may require enhancing.

But former Scotland Yard detective Mark Shields, the deputy commissioner of Jamaican police, has previously denied the claims, saying that visitors and guests filmed entering and leaving the corridor can be identified.

The footage, which has been painstakingly transferred by local detectives from VHS tape into a digital format, is now said to have been sent to a British laboratory for what has been described as "a deeper look", while four investigators from Scotland Yard and two from Pakistan continue to assist the three-week-old inquiry in Jamaica.

Mr Woolmer was found dead by a housekeeper in room 374 of the Pegasus Hotel the day after his team's shock Cricket World Cup defeat by Ireland.

The initial results of the post-mortem examination were deemed inconclusive, but the cause of death was later declared to be manual strangulation after the pathologist reviewed his findings.

The results of toxicology tests that could prove whether or not he was poisoned are still pending.

Speculation over the motive has largely centred on claims that he was killed to cover up a shady match-fixing ring, though Mr Shields, has said that he is keeping an open mind.

He has revealed that certain evidence at the scene points to murder.

Among those assisting local officers are Pakistani detectives including Zubair Mahmood, who led the investigation into the kidnap and beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl, who was killed by Islamic terrorists in Karachi in 2002.

Mr Woolmer's hotel room, where he was found dead in the bathroom, remained sealed off and under guard by police officers yesterday. Speculation that he knew his killer has been compounded by statements from the hotel's manager, Eldon Bremner, that every floor of the hotel was guarded by two police officers at the time of his death to keep strangers out, and that Mr Woolmer operated an "open-door" policy among those he knew.

Defending questions over whether security had beenlax, Mr Bremner insisted: "We are not a concentration camp."