...And how he found wife No 3 – via Benn and a kidnap plot
JEREMY CORBYN met his Mexican-born third wife after helping in a four-year search for her niece who had been abducted, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
He first met Laura Alvarez – 20 years his junior – when they joined forces to track down the then seven-year-old Jasmin Alvarez.
She is the daughter of Laura’s older sister Marcela, who was living in Britain at the time.
Corbyn has never talked about his 2012 wedding to the human rights lawyer, whose background has remained a mystery until now. But last night Marcela told The Mail on Sunday from her home in Mexico City: ‘Jeremy helped find my daughter. He intervened and made calls and did everything he could to help. Without his assistance I would never have been reunited with Jasmin. Because of our case he met my sister and they fell in love.
‘I was the one who introduced them. I said, “Jeremy, this is my sister” and “Laura meet Jeremy.” Was it love at first sight? I don’t know. I think that their love grew slowly.’
Laura, 46, flew to Britain from her native Mexico City in 1999 when she received a call from her sister. Marcela said that her estranged husband Edguardo had abducted their daughter after a custody battle and fled the UK.
Having appealed to the late Labour statesman Tony Benn for help, Marcela was introduced to Corbyn, the MP for Islington North in London.
Marcela said: ‘Tony was speaking
at a campaign to benefit firefighters. I was taken along by a friend and I approached him and told him about my daughter’s abduction and begged him for help.
‘Jeremy was at the same event. Tony, who became a great friend, introduced me to Jeremy and he promised to help. Tony was like a mentor to Jeremy. They were very close, like family. We met again a short time later at a fundraiser at a pub in Finsbury Park. I was with my sister and I introduced them. That is how their relationship began.’
Corbyn spoke to West Sussex Police, who were investigating the abduction, and accompanied Marcela and Laura to meetings with officers at the police station in Crawley, where the family had lived.
Jasmin was eventually discovered living in the United States and was reunited with her mother on Christmas Day 2003, while her father was extradited to the UK and sentenced at Hove Crown Court to 12 months in jail.
Although Laura then returned to Mexico to study law, Corbyn kept in touch, and Marcela said they ‘maintained a long-distance relationship for years’. She said that Laura and Corbyn married at a theme park outside Mexico City before his new wife moved to London.
In Mexico City, Laura’s friends and family remember an ‘ordinary’ girl from a humble background, the youngest of five children whose father sold cheese door-to-door.
Marcela’s daughter Jasmin now lives in London where she is an aspiring actress. Additional reporting: Amanda Perthen and Jonathan Petre