Expat accused of wife’s murder in Dubai may face death penalty

A BRITISH newspaper editor accused of murdering his wife with a hammer at the couple’s villa in Dubai may face the death penalty.

Francis Matthew, 61, denies the murder of his wife of more than 30 years, who was found in a pool of blood with fatal head injuries in their bed in July.

Police said that Mr Matthew, the editor-at-large of Gulf News, told them that robbers had broken in and killed his wife Jane, 62, a Dubai court heard.

The journalist, who along with his wife was a fixture of Dubai’s large British expat scene, later said that he had killed her by accident during a row, according to authorities. But in a further interrogation, he allegedly told police he had become enraged when his wife called him “a loser”, as they were in serious debt, and said that he needed to “provide financially”.

“He told us that he got really angry, picked up a hammer from one of the shelves in the kitchen then followed her to the bedroom and hit her twice on her forehead while she was lying in her bed,” a police officer told the court.

Prosecutors said they would seek the death penalty if he was convicted. ♦ Rurik Jutting, 31, the British former banker who received a life sentence last November for killing and mutilating two Indonesian women – Sumarti Ningsih, 23, and Seneng Mujiasih, 26 – in Hong Kong in 2014, is to appeal against his murder conviction.