Earl’s murderous stepmum on TV
THIS will horrify the Earl of Shaftesbury: I hear that his stepmother, who was convicted of aiding and abetting his father’s murderer, is to appear in a documentary about the killing.
Former escort Jamila M’Barek, 61, was the third wife of his father, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 10th Earl of Shaftesbury, who was killed aged 66. She was found guilty of murder by a French court and of paying her brother Mohamed to kill him in 2004 in Cannes.
Still technically able to use the title Dowager Countess of Shaftesbury, she was sentenced to 25 years in jail at the trial in 2007 but was released in 2016. Her brother is still in prison.
Now living in Switzerland, she gives her interview in The Earl, His Lover, The Escort And Her Brother, to be aired on Channel Five next weekend.
She tells the programme: ‘I would like to explain to them everything. I would tell them, “Sorry for the pain that you had”. I feel sorry for his family because Anthony was a very, very nice person. He was really generous . . . Of course, I regret what happened, I loved Anthony and I had a good life with him. Of course, it broke my life, too.’