Police arrest man over body in suitcase

DETECTIVES were questioning a man last night about the death of a woman whose body was found inside a suitcase at Heathrow airport.

A spokeswoman for Scotland Yard said the man was arrested at about 10pm, but declined to say where he was held or where he had been taken. "No further details are available to be released at the moment," she said.

Police had earlier named the dead woman as Fatima Kama, 28. Her body was found on Saturday night, and she had been due to fly to Canada the following day. She was identified after her family alerted relatives in Britain to say she had not arrived in Montreal. They in turn contacted the Metropolitan Police.

Ms Kama is understood to have been Lebanese although she may have held a Canadian passport. She had been living in the Marble Arch area of central London since the start of the summer. She had also visited Lebanon, returning to London 10 days ago.

Police said Ms Kama had last been seen alive at 2pm on Saturday, about nine hours before her body was discovered inside a suitcase in the terminal three short-stay car park at the airport west of London. She had been stabbed more than 10 times. Police said Ms Kama was last seen with friends but they had been unable to trace her movements since then.

Obtaining a positive identification - which came yesterday afternoon by one of her relatives - was a big breakthrough for police. Officers had stressed that until they could identify the victim it was virtually impossible to try to discover a possible motive. "A family member saw the coverage in the media and put two and two together to make four," said Detective Chief Inspector Richard Taber, who is heading the inquiry. "It is appalling that anyone should be stabbed and murdered but to have your loved one bundled ignominiously into a suitcase and callously abandoned in a car park, I think, is awful," he said. "One of the theories we are working on at the moment is that whoever murdered this woman left the suitcase at the car park, then caught a flight out."

Detectives have been studying closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage taken of all cars entering and leaving the car park. Up to 6,000 cars a day use the car park but officers have been concentrating their efforts on tracing those who used it between 5pm and midnight on Saturday.

Police are convinced that the suitcase was brought to the car park in a vehicle rather than by the Underground because of its weight. Ms Kama, who was 5ft, weighed about 10 stone. Three women had noticed the suitcase on Saturday evening and alerted staff. Detectives believe it had not been left long because security staff at the airport check the area every couple of hours.