Agony of murdered diplomat’s friend
A FRIEND of a murdered British diplomat has spoken of her anguish at choosing the bar they visited before she was attacked in Beirut.
Bethan McKernan, 28, spoke of her grief yesterday after Rebecca Dykes was sexually assaulted and strangled, allegedly by a taxi driver, on her way home from the bar. Miss McKernan said: ‘If we’d gone somewhere else she’d still be alive.’
Miss Dykes ordered an Uber taxi at midnight on Friday, just a few hours before she was due to fly back to Britain for Christmas. The 30-year-old diplomat, who worked at the British embassy in the Lebanese capital, was allegedly raped and strangled by 35-year-old Tarek Hesso. She was found on the side of a motorway with a rope tied around her throat, and her clothing had been ripped, local police said.
Miss McKernan, a journalist working in Beirut for The Independent, said she was still grieving the loss of her friend Kim Wall, a Swedish reporter who was dismembered after boarding a Danish inventor’s submarine in August.
She wrote online yesterday: ‘The fact I am now dealing with the murder of another young female friend is something I can’t wrap my head around.
‘I suggested the bar we went to on Friday night. I take Ubers in Beirut all the time. If we’d gone somewhere else she’d still be alive. If I’d got in that car I’d be dead. I’m so sorry, Becky, for the violence men do to us.’
Security sources said the suspect had previously been arrested for drugs and had served prison sentences for other offences.