By Joy Watters

LEADING FORENSIC pathologist Professor Derrick Pounder is keeping an open mind on the death of Pakistani cricket coach Bob Woolmer in Jamaica, but is convinced the system which carried out the medical investigaton is flawed.

He describes the island’s forensic pathology service as overwhelmed and understaffed by pathologists who have a lack of proper qualifications.

Bob Woolmer (59), a former England player, was found unconscious on the floor of his Kingston hotel a fortnight ago on Sunday. Initial reports were inconclusive about the cause of death but later a forensic pathologist concluded he had been strangled.

A team of four Scotland Yard officers has just arrived in Jamaica to review the investigation, but Professor Pounder yesterday said it would be wise to have another autopsy.

The Dundee University professor of forensic medicine’s human rights work has taken him to the Caribbean island and he has observed autopsies in cases where people have been shot by the police or army and concludes the system has reliability problems.

Jamaica is a poor country with a population the size of Wales but 1400 murders a year. The system has been overwhelmed by this extreme violence, he says.

Forensic pathology is provided by Indian doctors not Jamaicans.

“There are very few of them, working in poor conditions with very poor organisation,” he said. “They have a relatively low level of skills and would not be permitted to perform homicide autopsies in the UK with the level of training that they have.

“I have a high degree of scepticism that their diagnosis is correct in this case.”

He said that in Tayside, Fife and Central there were deaths every year when a drinker had fallen or stumbled, had an accident and died. Bob Woolmer was said to have been drinking before his death.

“In these deaths locally, often the scene looks very suspicious, there may be a lot of blood and it is very chaotic. Bob Woolmer was seen to have been drinking heavily and there was a lot of blood because of the injury to his nose. All of this might look suspicious but may not necessarily be so.

“From what I read in the Jamaican papers, there were no external injuries to the neck—but when they dissected the neck, it was found he had a fracture in the area of the voice box. The precise details of this have not been released but such an injury can be due to accidental death as well as strangulation.

“There are Jamaican pathologists who are competent to carry out homicide autopsies but don’t want to,” he said, explaining that it was a “politically highly sensitive” occupation.

The professor said the Woolmer case reflected the general problems affecting Jamaica’s investigations.

“Amnesty International has some pretty strong things to say about them, putting the spotlight on claims police death squads were killing criminals.”