# 77: Her Boy Best Friend MURDERED HER and Buried Her in the Basement

An episode of [Outlore with Eleanor Neale](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1682504024), 20 Aug 2024, 1 h 21 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO4754951059.mp3

Ad - Use my code USUAL20 for 20% off your first Wild order: https://www.wearewild.com/?discount=USUAL20 In 2008, 23-year-old Norwegian student Martine Vik Magnussen was killed after a night out in Mayfair. In the early morning following her murder, the man responsible, Farouk Abdulhak fled the UK to Yemen. Farouk Abdulhak is the son of one of Yemen’s richest and most powerful men For nearly 15 years, he hasn't left the country and has lived in luxurious hotels, protected by his father's power. The British government has tried to extradite him to the UK to face justice, but Yemeni law continues to protect him, as there is no extradition treaty with the UK. In 2011, BBC reporter Nawal Al-Maghafi tracked Farouk down and befriended him on Snapchat. After gaining his trust, Farouk confessed to killing Martine but claimed it was an accident resulting from rough sex gone wrong. Today, Farouk remains trapped behind his wall of wealth, privilege, and power, while Martine's family and friends are still waiting for him to be brought to justice. Justice For Martine - https://justiceformartine.com/how-to-help/ Trigger Warning: drugs, sexual assault, and murder. Resources: https://linktr.ee/usualdisclaimer Click here to download our show sponsor Match Masters https://matchmaste.rs/hCkF/UsualDisclaimer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

## Transcript

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[1:05] In the spring of 2823, year old student Martina Victoria
[1:10] Magnussen was out celebrating the end of her exams at a fancy
[1:14] club in Mayfair, London. She was having the time of her
[1:17] life surrounded by all of her closest friends.
[1:20] Among them was her best guy friend, a man named Farouk.
[1:25] Someone she trusted completely, Or so she thought.
[1:29] Later that night night Farooq invited her to his place for an
[1:32] after party. Something they've done many
[1:34] times before, but this time was different.
[1:38] Behind his mask of friendship, Farooq had been hiding dark and
[1:42] sinister desires for Martina, and that night he chose to
[1:46] reveal them in the most horrific way possible.
[1:50] Two days later, Martinez dead body was discovered half buried
[1:55] under rubble in his basement. She had been assaulted, murdered
[2:00] and abandoned by a monster that had pretended to be her best
[2:04] friend for months. This is the story of Martina
[2:08] Victoria Magnussen, a young Norwegian woman that came over
[2:12] to the UK full of ideas and full of a lust for life.
[2:15] But she was betrayed by a close friend and robbed of her future.
[2:27] This series is intended for educational purposes, to
[2:30] memorialize victims, and to amplify important conversations.
[2:34] All opinions stated are mine alone.
[2:36] Before we get into this episode, I do.
[2:38] Just want to warn you we're going to be covering a lot of
[2:41] sensitive topics today including drugs, sexual assault, rape and
[2:46] murder. Viewer discretion is always
[2:48] advised. Now let's try to uncover how a
[2:51] man that has literally confessed to murdering his best friend has
[2:56] managed to escape justice for nearly 15 years now.
[3:00] So let's set the scene. It was early spring in one of
[3:03] the richest, glitziest parts of London, famous for being the
[3:07] most expensive square on the Monopoly board Mayfair.
[3:11] On March 13th, 2823, year old Martina Victoria Magnussen and
[3:16] her friends went on a celebratory night out to mark
[3:19] the end of that university term. Martina looked beautiful, as she
[3:23] always did. Her hair was long, blonde, WAVY
[3:27] and that combed. She had this thick eyeliner on
[3:31] pink lipstick. She was the epitome of 2008
[3:35] beauty. Her and all of her friends were
[3:36] in really good spirits that night.
[3:38] They were celebrating the bright future that university was soon
[3:42] to bring them. But as they all put on their
[3:44] lipstick and their high heels, they had no idea that a horrific
[3:49] tragedy was just hours away. Martina would never be seen
[3:53] alive again. Her disappearance completely
[3:57] pour apart the lives of her friends, her family, everyone
[4:01] that knew her. She was born in Oslo, Norway on
[4:04] February 6th, 1985 to her parents Odd PETA Magnussen and
[4:09] Kristen Victoria. Martina was the middle child of
[4:12] her family. She had an older brother named
[4:14] Magnus and a younger sister named Matilde and they all grew
[4:18] up on this quite small island in Norway called Nasoya.
[4:21] She was raised in a very happy, warm and loving family and they
[4:26] really nurtured Martina as she grew into this very curious,
[4:30] adventurous young kid. She loved to explore, she loved
[4:34] nature, she loved the outdoors. She loved climbing trees,
[4:37] building snowmen, running off the end of the pier and jumping
[4:40] into the lake. She grew up to be a very popular
[4:43] girl. I mean, it was hard not to like
[4:46] Martina. She was just very friendly,
[4:48] charming. She didn't hurt a family.
[4:50] And in fact, she was one of the big social links of I guess that
[4:55] whole entire island, or at least the young people on that island.
[4:58] She would host garden parties every summer that she would
[5:02] invite like everyone she knew to everyone would be singing,
[5:05] dancing, cooking, drinking. Everyone that attended those
[5:08] parties has incredible memories of them.
[5:11] And all of that was made possible by Martina.
[5:13] Her father, Odd, described her as pure sunshine.
[5:17] And he always encouraged every single passion and interest that
[5:21] she ever had in her childhood. And she had quite a lot at times
[5:24] and she wanted to be a prima ballerina.
[5:27] At one point she wanted to be a professional netballer or a show
[5:30] jumper because she loved horses. In fact, when she was still very
[5:34] young, her dad actually went and made a deal with one of the
[5:37] local farmers where they essentially kind of hired a
[5:41] horse that would stay there at his farm, but Martina could go
[5:44] and feed it and play with it and ride it whenever she wanted.
[5:48] She was so. Grateful she was so excited.
[5:50] Things were going really well with this horse, right until one
[5:53] day she takes the horse on a day when she's meant to be at school
[5:58] and she rides it to school to go and show all of her friends and
[6:01] I loved that. I think that's such a cool.
[6:02] Story I don't really know what happened.
[6:04] She probably got into trouble, but like hey, that's really
[6:07] cool. Nice horse.
[6:08] How cool would that girl be when you're in primary school and she
[6:11] like just comes in like clip clopping on her horse.
[6:14] You'd think she was like a God. But anyway, in 1999, Martina was
[6:19] 14 years old and her parents decided to separate.
[6:23] I. Believe Martina then moved to
[6:25] Oslo with her mother still in Norway.
[6:27] She saw her father a lot. They remained very close through
[6:30] the rest of her life. Not much really changed, but now
[6:33] she was in high school and Martina.
[6:36] One thing about Martina is that she was very driven.
[6:38] She was very ambitious and very, very intelligent.
[6:41] She could have done pretty much whatever career she set her mind
[6:45] to her, but her first choice was medicine.
[6:47] I mean, it makes sense. She was a very caring, loving,
[6:51] helpful person. She always wanted to be helpful.
[6:54] So it makes sense that she would want to go into healthcare and
[6:57] she was well on her way to that dream career.
[6:59] She had brilliant grades. She was doing a lot of
[7:02] volunteering as well, at like hospitals and old people's homes
[7:05] to get experience her belt. She was going to get that job
[7:09] for sure. Then at the age of 21, she
[7:12] enrolled in university over 1000 miles away from where she lived
[7:15] in Norway. She decided to go to Poland, to
[7:19] a medical school in Warsaw. And she gave it her best.
[7:21] Shot in university, but as the months went by, Martina realized
[7:26] that she didn't really enjoy studying medicine the way that
[7:30] she thought she would. For years she had been so set on
[7:33] this career path, but now it just seemed like it wasn't for
[7:35] her. She was seven months into this
[7:37] course and she decided to cut her losses.
[7:40] This wasn't for her. So she dropped out of university
[7:43] and decided to rethink her life path.
[7:45] She knew for sure that she wanted to keep studying.
[7:48] She was going to go back to university and get a degree in
[7:50] something, but just not medicine.
[7:53] And she also knew that she wanted to keep travelling the
[7:55] world. Obviously, the first chance that
[7:57] she got, she moved away to a different country and she wanted
[8:00] to keep that streak going, remembering fondly her past
[8:04] trips to England. She'd visited London a lot and
[8:07] she she really liked it, so that made sense to her.
[8:10] She could speak English. It was a whole new environment,
[8:12] a whole new culture, all new people and a whole new career
[8:17] opportunity. So she moved to London and
[8:19] enrolled in Regents Business School to do international
[8:22] business relations. So this was like a small private
[8:26] school, very focused on business.
[8:28] It attracted a lot of international students, a lot of
[8:31] very wealthy international students.
[8:33] I think she was living in some sort of student accommodation
[8:36] for the first few months, but soon enough she ended up moving
[8:39] into a tiny flat with three other girls from her course.
[8:42] There were actually three other Norwegian girls named Ceci, Nina
[8:46] and Tal, and these girls had the absolute best time living with
[8:50] each other. They said that that house was
[8:53] loud, it was chaotic, it was lively, it was fun, and Martina
[8:57] was a huge part of that fun, lively atmosphere.
[9:00] She was always making people laugh, playing pranks on people.
[9:04] She was very mischievous and she loved the nightlife of London.
[9:07] She was a party quarrel, as so many young students are.
[9:11] She was 23 and living the dream. Thursday, March 13th, 2008 was
[9:16] another night out for the girls. But it wasn't just any other
[9:19] night out. Tonight was quite special
[9:21] because they were celebrating. It was just over a year since
[9:24] Martina had moved to London and all of the students had taken
[9:27] their exams at the end of that university year and Martina had
[9:31] come top of her class. She was buzzing, especially
[9:34] because she'd had that career redirected direction.
[9:37] She'd been so set on medicine and then it kind of felt like a
[9:41] landslide when she couldn't do it.
[9:43] It felt like everything had just crumbled underneath her.
[9:46] But now she was in Business School and she was doing damn
[9:49] well. This was a cause for
[9:50] celebration. So that night they were heading
[9:52] out to Maddox in Mayfair, which is an exclusive members only
[9:57] club for like Rich Important. People, it was very.
[10:00] Popular with Regents Business School students, especially on
[10:03] Thursdays. There must have been some sort
[10:05] of like 2 for one on cocktails so the girls were getting ready
[10:09] that night on March 13th knowing that they were about to see like
[10:13] everyone they knew inside that club.
[10:15] Maddox is even a hotspot for some celebrities like Beyoncé,
[10:19] Prince Harry, like, because it's exclusive and members only and
[10:23] you have to pay a fee to be able to go there.
[10:25] That's where all the famous people are.
[10:27] Martina, Nina, and Ceci all started getting ready at about
[10:30] 7:30 PM. They were borrowing each other's
[10:33] clothes, drinking cheap wine, singing along to their favorite
[10:36] songs, having a bit of a gossip. Oh my God, I love getting ready
[10:39] with the girls before a night out.
[10:40] And Martina looked gorgeous that night.
[10:43] She'd spent ages in front of the mirror doing her makeup.
[10:45] She'd painted on this very sparkly silver eyeshadow.
[10:49] She was wearing a full designer outfit, making sure that she was
[10:53] Maddox material. She wanted to fit right in.
[10:55] And amongst these rich people, all the celebs, all of the elite
[11:00] of London were going to be there.
[11:01] As they were all getting ready at home, Martina was texting
[11:04] around pretty much everyone that they knew, asking if they were
[11:07] going to be there tonight, how they were getting there, what
[11:09] time they were getting there, you know, just coordinating.
[11:11] And one of the people she was texting was her closest guy
[11:14] friend who also went to her university, 21 year old Farouk
[11:19] Abdullah. They'd known each other for
[11:21] about 8 months at this point as she'd known everyone in her
[11:24] London circle for about 8 months.
[11:26] She'd only been living there a year, but she'd grown really
[11:29] close with Farooq in that time. In fact he'd grown very close
[11:33] with her. You could tell that he had a bit
[11:35] of a crush on her and they would text all the time back and
[11:39] forth. They would teach each other
[11:40] words in their own languages. He spoke Arabic, she spoke
[11:44] Norwegian, so they'd like teach each other how to swear in
[11:47] different languages and stuff. And Martinez friends would
[11:49] always tease her about him saying oh is that your
[11:52] boyfriend? And she would deny it, she'd say
[11:55] no, he's just my friend. I don't see him like that.
[11:58] I mean, it was obvious that he had a crush on her, everyone
[12:01] knew that, but she just kind of ignored it because she liked him
[12:04] as a friend and she didn't want anything more than that.
[12:06] The two of them bonded a lot on very serious, like deep things.
[12:11] They confided in each of their secrets and and softer parts of
[12:15] themselves, the trauma that they'd been through in life.
[12:19] Farooq had told Martina that he felt a lot of pressure from his
[12:23] family, not only to do well in university, but to do well in
[12:27] absolutely every aspect of his life, because his family were
[12:30] well known in Yemen. Trust me, we'll get back to that
[12:33] in a bit. But he felt so much pressure to
[12:36] be the perfect son and the perfect heir to his father's
[12:41] business empire. And Martina felt really sorry
[12:45] for Farooq. His dad had been absent and
[12:47] uncaring for all of his life, and she could tell just how much
[12:51] this had really affected him. Even Martina's mother knew about
[12:55] Farooq daddy issues. When Martina had gone home for
[12:58] Christmas and seen her family, she was telling them all about
[13:01] these friends that she was making in London.
[13:03] She got up a picture of Farooq on her phone and she was saying
[13:06] to her mum, like, how sad is that?
[13:08] I feel so sorry for him. So much so that she felt this
[13:12] responsibility to make sure that this boy, this man has a better
[13:16] life going forward. And so she started introducing
[13:19] to Farooq, to her friends, to her social circle.
[13:23] She was giving him opportunities and when she brought him around,
[13:26] all of her friends. They.
[13:28] Thought he was alright. I mean, he was quite shy, quite
[13:32] awkward, but hey, so were a lot of people.
[13:35] But soon Martina's friends, especially her roommates,
[13:38] realized that he was shy and awkward because he had a big old
[13:42] crush on her. They could tell he was just
[13:43] absolutely enamoured with her. And it was like he was just
[13:47] waiting for her to turn around and say, you know what, I like
[13:50] you too. But Farouk needed to get in
[13:52] line. He was one of many, many men
[13:55] that liked Martina. In fact, her friends always
[13:58] joked that there were no men left in London because all of
[14:01] them were just in love with Martina.
[14:03] She was so beautiful. She was so charming.
[14:06] She was a knockout, but she just didn't see Farooq that way.
[14:09] So she kind of ignored his advances.
[14:11] And she was usually pretty good at setting boundaries with
[14:14] people. But Farooq just wasn't seeming
[14:17] to get the message. She would turn him down when he
[14:20] would cross the line with something.
[14:22] But then a week. Later, he would try again.
[14:24] And then again and again, ignoring her boundaries
[14:27] completely. Only a month before this
[14:29] incident, he'd actually tried to kiss her on the lips and she'd
[14:32] recoiled back being like, whoa, I just, I just see you as a
[14:36] friend. She actually said to her friends
[14:38] that she didn't know why he thought he could do that.
[14:41] Like she hadn't been giving him any kind of impression.
[14:43] There wasn't a vibe there. There was number, like sexual
[14:46] tension. She was very really confused why
[14:49] he had just overstepped like that.
[14:51] But the thing with Farouk Abdullah is that he was never
[14:54] really told no as a child. Everything he wanted, Daddy's
[14:59] money could buy him, and he'd never really had to deal with
[15:02] rejection or anything like that. So when Martina would turn him
[15:06] down, that just like, didn't compute for him.
[15:10] He doesn't know what it feels like to not get what you want.
[15:13] So he keeps going, thinking, Oh well, she's going to come round
[15:16] to it at some point. Let's talk about who his daddy
[15:19] is, shall we? All that daddy's money is coming
[15:21] from somewhere. His father was Shara Abdullah, 1
[15:24] of of Yemen's richest men, a multi billionaire like an
[15:29] absolute business tycoon. He owns so many things, so to
[15:34] say that Farouk came from complete privilege.
[15:37] Would. Be an understatement.
[15:39] The Abdullahs had power and influence in almost every single
[15:43] industry worldwide, but especially back home in Yemen.
[15:47] His dad was literally one of the most important people in that
[15:51] whole entire country. He was actually the first person
[15:54] in Yemen to own a private jet. His family had these huge mega
[15:58] mansions all over the world in different countries and loads of
[16:01] them in Yemen too. And they would have full bodies
[16:04] of staff just to take care of their family.
[16:06] That's maids, chefs, nannies, chauffeurs, servants,
[16:11] everything. And I do think about this quite
[16:13] often, about children that grow up with so much and they've
[16:16] never had to experience less. How do you explain to a child
[16:21] that this is not normal? The life that we live.
[16:24] Is not normal. Well I guess they don't really
[16:27] explain that to their kids, do they?
[16:28] Because then that that's how they end up being entitled.
[16:32] Like Farooq. His father was always moving the
[16:34] family around from country to country when he was chasing
[16:37] different business opportunities and different business partners.
[16:40] So Farooq would be forced to say goodbye to his life and rebuild
[16:46] completely every few. Years as Rick.
[16:49] Which, as he was his childhood was still tumultuous in that
[16:52] way. He didn't have a social group
[16:55] that he could depend on. He didn't have any long term
[16:57] friends, no one outside of his insane family.
[17:01] Over the years. Farouk grew up to be a whole
[17:04] entire 5 foot seven. He was slim.
[17:07] He had dark hair, dark eyes. He was always decked out in
[17:10] designer. Are you surprised?
[17:12] He spent a lot of his teenage years in Cairo, in Egypt.
[17:15] That's where his family kind of settled.
[17:17] Finally, he was there. He was actually training to be a
[17:21] wrestler, and he was quite a small guy, but apparently he was
[17:25] a lot stronger than he looked. Although one time he did arrive
[17:28] at one of his training sessions drunk.
[17:31] He had driven there, he had drunk drove there.
[17:33] But of course he never really saw any punishment for that or
[17:37] for anything else he ever did, which will be a running theme in
[17:41] Farooq's life. Daddy's money and his power
[17:44] managed to protect Farooq from every single consequence ever in
[17:49] life, both little and large. His wrestling trainer obviously
[17:53] saw him come to work plastered, drunk driving in plastered.
[17:57] And so he starts having a go at him, saying just how dangerous
[18:00] and illegal it was, and Farooq responded.
[18:03] It doesn't matter, I have diplomatic immunity.
[18:06] Farooq's father was a diplomat and that means that him and all
[18:10] of his family can benefit from diplomatic immunity, which
[18:14] basically means while ever they're in another country, they
[18:17] cannot be arrested or prosecuted for any crimes or civil cases.
[18:22] Obviously, they're all originally from Yemen.
[18:24] They'd moved to Egypt. And so they have this diplomatic
[18:28] immunity. They basically have a literal
[18:30] get out of jail free card. And Farouk seemingly knew that
[18:34] very well and he was using it to his advantage.
[18:37] He was willingly going out and committing crimes knowing that
[18:40] well, what are they going to do? They can't do anything.
[18:42] He didn't care who he was a danger to, whose life he was
[18:47] putting at risk. It was just Farooq world.
[18:50] But it's worth noting that even though he takes advantage of
[18:53] every single privilege that his father could provide for him,
[18:57] Farooq never actually really liked his father.
[19:00] I mean, he complained about him so much to Martina and we know
[19:03] that they had a Rocky. He had a rocky childhood with
[19:07] his father being very absent and quite uncaring.
[19:10] His father was supposedly very strict and ruled over his family
[19:13] with an iron fist. Their reputation meant
[19:16] absolutely everything and his father knew that his children
[19:20] were the heirs to his business empire and so they had to be as
[19:25] intelligent and cutthroat as he is.
[19:29] In fact, Farouk and all of his siblings were expected to have
[19:32] arranged marriages to the offspring of other very rich,
[19:37] successful, powerful Yemeni families.
[19:40] At the time of this case, Farouk was 21, and he was nearing that
[19:44] time that his father was going to start marrying him off and
[19:47] expecting him to take over the empire.
[19:50] So he knew that those. Couple of years that he.
[19:52] Was about to spend at university in London.
[19:55] That was his last taste of freedom.
[19:57] And while he was in a completely different country to the rest of
[20:00] his family, while he was studying in university, Farouk
[20:03] started to stray from his very strict Islamic faith.
[20:08] He started to break a lot of rules.
[20:10] He was drinking a lot, engaging in relations that weren't pre
[20:14] approved by his father. But like I say, he was taking
[20:17] advantage of this last little pocket of freedom before his
[20:21] life was signed away to business deals and and stress.
[20:25] Brooke loved a good night out, especially at Maddox because
[20:28] that really fit his elitist kind of mentality that he had.
[20:33] He was so special and powerful that he could only spend his
[20:37] time around other special powerful people.
[20:39] He ended up buying an apartment in Mayfair, which anyone that
[20:44] lives in London that will have just sent a shockwave of Oh my
[20:47] God through your body. He bought an apartment in
[20:49] Mayfair at the age of 21. Those apartments are so
[20:52] expensive that I don't even want to look it up because it'll hurt
[20:55] my feet. But I think there were several
[20:56] reasons that he bought an apartment so close to Maddox 1.
[21:00] He loved going club in there. It was super close.
[21:02] It was convenient. Two, it was convenient for
[21:06] everyone else that lived further out in London to be able to just
[21:10] stay at Farooq's house after these nights out at Maddox.
[21:14] And when I say everyone. I mean just Martina, She was the
[21:18] only one he would ever really ask to stay over.
[21:21] Everyone else always wanted to go home.
[21:23] To be fair, no one else really knew Farooq as well as Martina
[21:27] did. So I guess maybe that's why her
[21:29] friends, her roommates, never stayed at Farooq's.
[21:31] They always just went home after the nights out.
[21:34] But not Martina, she had actually stayed over at his
[21:36] house on her own several times and things had been fine.
[21:39] So let's talk about the night out in question.
[21:42] Thursday, March 13th, 2008 around 10:00 PM.
[21:46] Martine, Tina and her friends, her roommates walk into Maddox.
[21:49] Farooq saw her and he just knew that he wanted to keep her as
[21:54] long as he possibly could. He didn't want this night to
[21:56] end. And there are tons of
[21:58] photographs from this night from Martinez last ever night out.
[22:03] And it's both so haunting but so heartwarming to see how happy
[22:08] she was. She was having the best time.
[22:10] She was so youthful and so bright and so beautiful.
[22:14] And it all comes across in these photos and there are multiple
[22:17] photos that feature just Martina and Farooq, her arms wrapped
[22:21] around him because he was her closest guy friend and she
[22:25] trusted him. The group spent the next 5 hours
[22:28] drinking, dancing, doing a little bit of cooking in the
[22:31] bathrooms. And by 3:00 AM, almost everyone
[22:35] was ready to call it a night and go home.
[22:37] Martina, however, was not one of those people.
[22:40] She was quite the party animal. And when all her friends were
[22:42] saying, right, it's time to go home, we're going to get a taxi
[22:44] back, she was like. No.
[22:46] Farooq invited Martina back to his place for an aftrs little
[22:50] after party. So before they left to go to
[22:52] Farooq's house, Martina walked her friends to the taxi rank,
[22:56] said goodbye to them, give them the last ever hug and kiss she
[23:00] would ever give them and they never saw her again.
[23:03] Martina went back into Maddox and then 20 minutes later both
[23:07] her and Farooq left. They were walking arm in arm to
[23:11] the local taxi rank. They were heading to his house,
[23:15] and that was the last time anyone ever saw Martina.
[23:18] She was in the company of her close, trusted friend.
[23:23] Why would anyone have a cause to worry?
[23:26] The next morning, Martinez roommates woke up, probably a
[23:29] bit hungover, around 11:00 AM and they realized that Martina
[23:33] was not in the house. They weren't concerned about
[23:36] this, though, because they thought that Martina was going
[23:39] to Farooq's house after the night out.
[23:41] She'd done that a couple of times before.
[23:43] So, you know, she's an adult woman.
[23:45] She can make her own decisions. She just stayed over her
[23:48] friends. On a normal day, I think her
[23:50] friends would have texted her or called her just to make sure,
[23:53] just to check that she was all right.
[23:55] But at the time of this case, Martina had lost her phone and
[23:59] it was 2008, so people weren't exactly like.
[24:02] Addicted to their. Phones like they are now, if you
[24:04] lost your phone or broke it or whatever, you would go for like
[24:07] a week or two without one until you managed to get a new one.
[24:10] So she didn't have a phone and everyone in her life knew that.
[24:13] So people weren't trying to text and call her trying to figure
[24:16] out where she was, and no one was really expecting any updates
[24:20] from her. As the day.
[24:20] Went by. The girls were recovering from
[24:23] their hangover in their own time.
[24:25] They actually had plans later that evening, and they were
[24:28] expecting Martina to come back through the door any minute, but
[24:32] by 4:00 PM she still wasn't home, so they decided to leave
[24:36] her a message on Facebook. She wasn't active on Facebook at
[24:39] the time, but they thought just in case she managed to get
[24:42] access to a laptop or something then they might as well message
[24:46] her. They messaged Farooq as well
[24:47] while they were there, but they didn't get a response from
[24:50] either of them. Neither were active, but they
[24:52] were still kind of hoping that Martina was just going to walk
[24:55] through the door any minute now and laugh at them for being so
[24:57] worried about her. It wasn't until 10:00 PM that
[25:00] night the girls really started to worry because like I said,
[25:04] they had plans that evening. It was like a little girls
[25:07] night. They were going to go out to a
[25:08] bar, and Martina was supposed to be there, but she hadn't come
[25:13] home. They weren't assuming the
[25:14] absolute worst at this point, but they were worried for sure.
[25:18] And so before they left for this girl's night, they messaged her
[25:22] again. They text her on her phone just
[25:24] in case, Messaged her on Facebook.
[25:26] They were practically doing everything that they could just
[25:29] to say, look, we're worried about you, please get back to
[25:33] someone, we're going to the bar. They thought that maybe she
[25:36] might meet them there. Maybe.
[25:38] Of course, she hadn't had her phone.
[25:40] She hadn't been able to contact them.
[25:42] Maybe it was her plan that she was going to stay out all day
[25:44] and then meet them at the bar later on.
[25:46] But she never came to the bar. The girls couldn't stay there
[25:49] for more than one or two drinks because the atmosphere was just
[25:53] so tense. They couldn't have fun and act
[25:55] like any other night because it wasn't any other night.
[25:58] One of their friends was not there.
[26:00] There was an empty seat at the table and they had no idea where
[26:03] she was. Any attempt to try to relax or
[26:06] try to have fun felt fake and felt unfair when Martina wasn't
[26:13] there to join in. So they went back home earlier
[26:15] than they would have, and they were really hoping that they
[26:18] were just going to walk in. Martina would be home by now.
[26:20] She'd be tucked up in bed, sleeping after her wild
[26:23] adventure over the last day. But again, when they came in the
[26:27] house, there was no sign of Martina.
[26:29] By now it was almost 24 hours since they had last seen her.
[26:34] Since they. Had left the.
[26:35] Club. Since she'd walked them to the
[26:37] taxi rank and seen them off, it had been nearly 24 hours.
[26:41] So now her three friends, her three roommates decided that
[26:44] they would call the police and report her missing.
[26:47] And not only that, they also walked to the closest police
[26:51] station with a printed out photo of Martine and on the back they
[26:56] had written Farooq's full name and his address.
[26:59] They told the police. When they handed over this photo
[27:02] that the name and the address on the back of that piece of paper
[27:05] was the last person, the last place that Martina was known to
[27:10] have. And you know what?
[27:11] Those girls did a really freaking good job in such a
[27:14] quick space of time. They really identified what the
[27:17] key pieces of information were. They gathered it all and they
[27:21] presented it to the police. They were so efficient with time
[27:24] there. But even though the.
[27:26] Police had been. Handed this kit to be able to
[27:29] solve this case, they all but laughed in the girls faces.
[27:34] They said that Martina was probably just on some wild night
[27:38] out and they should just wait for her to return home.
[27:41] They did absolutely nothing about it, at least not that
[27:44] night. They waited until the next day,
[27:46] and about 12 hours in, they sent 2 police officers to Martina's
[27:51] apartment to speak with her roommates.
[27:53] They were asking all kinds of questions about Martina, about
[27:57] Farouk. But the police?
[27:58] Didn't really do anything useful or give them any reassurance or
[28:02] anything. I feel like one of the biggest
[28:03] reasons they actually went around to the apartment that day
[28:06] was to just be able to confirm on record that she wasn't at her
[28:10] own house. They just didn't have any
[28:12] urgency with this case whatsoever.
[28:14] You could tell that the police weren't taking this seriously
[28:17] and they thought it was just some kind of drunk runaway
[28:21] situation. So now we are 36 hours into a
[28:25] missing persons investigation of a young woman and there has been
[28:29] no real help from the police whatsoever.
[28:32] Her friends were getting very frustrated and very worried, and
[28:36] they felt like no one else was taking this seriously, but they
[28:40] knew who would. They got in contact with
[28:42] Martina's parents over in Norway.
[28:45] At first, her father was in denial.
[28:47] He reminded her friends that she had lost her phone, so of course
[28:51] she's not in contact. He told them not to worry too
[28:53] much, but her roommates gave him even more detail and they spoke
[28:57] about the person that she was last seen with.
[28:59] There was just something about this situation.
[29:02] It was like her roommates felt it in their gut that something
[29:05] was wrong. I guess it just goes to show
[29:06] that they never really trusted Farouk's intentions with Martina
[29:10] in the 1st place. The fact that she was in his
[29:13] company and then she goes missing and they are so sure
[29:16] that he did something like her friends must have thought that
[29:19] he was a bit of a suspicious guy for their brains to jump
[29:22] straight to that. You know, if one of my friends
[29:25] went missing for a day and they were with another one of their
[29:27] friends, I don't think I would immediately start blaming or
[29:30] being suspicious of their friend.
[29:33] But yeah, like I said, that speaks volumes about what Farouk
[29:36] was like and how he was with Martina.
[29:38] Her roommates suggested to Martina's father that he should
[29:42] come over to England and help them search because the police
[29:45] weren't taking this seriously. And they knew that they needed
[29:49] to act fast. And I think it was when her
[29:52] roommates suggested that that he should come over to England, I
[29:54] think that's when it really clicked for him just how serious
[29:57] this was. They weren't going to make him
[30:00] cross the country if she was just on some, like, drunk
[30:03] weekend Bender, You know, her parents were absolutely
[30:06] horrified and so panicked they hopped on a plane as quickly as
[30:10] they could pack a bag and rush to the airport.
[30:12] And the idea of that plane journey is just awful to me.
[30:16] Obviously, I talk about a lot of these different true crime cases
[30:19] that feature this harrowing plane journey where a parent has
[30:24] been told their child is missing.
[30:26] There's a whole entire search going on for them in this
[30:28] different country. And now the parent has to put
[30:31] their phone on aeroplane and completely disconnect from all
[30:35] updates for however many hours. I mean, this flight won't have
[30:39] been too long, only a couple of hours because it was just across
[30:42] Europe. But I think about like the Grace
[30:44] Mullion case, for example, she was from England, her family was
[30:47] from England, and they had to travel all the way to New
[30:49] Zealand. You would just feel sick to your
[30:52] stomach the whole entire time, not being able to communicate
[30:55] with anyone, not being able to get those updates from the
[30:58] police as they come in. While Martina's friends waited
[31:01] for her parents to get the flight in, they were all huddled
[31:04] around the very cramped little table in their kitchen, doing
[31:09] their own detective work, doing whatever they could.
[31:12] Since the police weren't doing fuck all, they created a
[31:14] Facebook group called Please Help Us Find Martina, appealing
[31:18] to anyone that might have information.
[31:21] They spent that whole entire night.
[31:23] They stayed up taking different messages, taking phone numbers
[31:26] and names, calling those phone numbers to see if they could
[31:29] give any information. They really were doing so much
[31:32] more than the actual detectives, the actual police were doing for
[31:37] Martina. The girls checked Farooq's
[31:39] Facebook page to see if he'd been active since they last saw
[31:42] him. And he had.
[31:44] He had posted something quite concerning, actually, at 4:00 AM
[31:48] on the night that Martina went missing, just 40 minutes after
[31:52] they had left Maddox together, he updated his Facebook page to
[31:56] say Farooq Abdullah is home alone.
[31:59] Home alone. It made no sense considering
[32:03] Martina was staying the night at his How was he home alone 40
[32:07] minutes after leaving the club? And I think it's.
[32:09] Also just very strange in itself that you would write that as
[32:11] your Facebook status. Like, I know that this was 2008.
[32:15] It was a different time. I wasn't really on Facebook in
[32:17] 2008. With early social media, people
[32:19] were posting right load of shit, weren't they?
[32:21] Like nothing. Like there was no value in
[32:23] anyone's post. It's like I just ate some
[32:24] noodles. But posting that you're home
[32:28] alone at 4:00 AM, it, I just think it's so literal in its
[32:33] attempt at being an alibi. Like, it's almost comically
[32:36] ridiculous. Like, don't worry, officer, look
[32:39] at my Facebook status. It says I was home alone last
[32:42] night. So I can't, I can't be
[32:44] responsible for this crime. Like what?
[32:45] Seeing this Facebook status on Farooq's page just confirmed the
[32:51] girl's suspicions even more. They knew they were on the right
[32:54] track. They knew that Farooq had done
[32:57] something to that friend. So they kept digging into this
[33:00] lead and they managed to get a hold of Farooq's brother, who
[33:04] lived, of course, back over in Egypt.
[33:06] And they were speaking to him. And he said that he hadn't been
[33:10] able to get a hold of Farooq all day.
[33:12] He wasn't answering his texts or his calls.
[33:14] And this just added to all of that suspicion.
[33:17] He had gone radio silent. And so the girls took everything
[33:21] that they had just found out as they'd been working together on
[33:24] this case, and they took it to the police.
[33:26] And they said, look, he, he has posted this Facebook status.
[33:29] He's not getting in touch with any of his family.
[33:31] Something weird is going on here.
[33:34] And so the police looked into it.
[33:36] They go to the computer, type in his Facebook link and it's gone.
[33:40] He had deleted his whole Facebook page.
[33:44] And now the police were actually starting to take this seriously
[33:48] because who just deletes their Facebook page like in the middle
[33:52] of the night for no reason? Especially a popular young
[33:56] social uni student like Farooq who would use it to plan things
[34:01] and to make friends. It wasn't that they didn't
[34:03] believe her friends earlier on, but there could have been a
[34:06] reasonable explanation. But now it was like 2 whole days
[34:10] out. The guy that she was last seen
[34:12] with has deleted his Facebook page.
[34:15] This is looking serious now. So within 15 minutes of hearing
[34:19] about his deleted Facebook page, police were at Martinez
[34:22] apartment taking her hair brush and her toothbrush, anything
[34:26] that they could get her DNA from.
[34:28] By the Sunday morning, it had been two whole days.
[34:31] Now Martinez family were just coming into London on their
[34:35] flight and the police were traveling to Farooq apartment,
[34:39] first of all to see if they could find him, but second of
[34:41] all to search it. When they got there, the
[34:44] apartment had been deserted. Almost everything was still
[34:48] there, still in its place, but there was no sign of Farooq and
[34:52] no sign of his essential items. Things like his passport, his
[34:56] wallet, his phone, his clothes. It was all evidence that he had
[35:02] led to the scene. Of course, the detectives had a
[35:05] terrible feeling about this, and that only got even worse when
[35:09] they noticed a crumpled up tank top on the floor of his
[35:12] apartment. It clearly didn't belong to
[35:14] Farooq. It was petite, rather feminine,
[35:18] and he wasn't exactly known to be that.
[35:20] The T-shirt was taken in as evidence and when police looked
[35:23] back at the photos that Martinez friends had brought into the
[35:26] station, you know the last photos ever taken of her on that
[35:30] night out, she was wearing that exact tank top.
[35:34] The police were discovering very quickly that Martinez friends
[35:37] had been on the right track from the very beginning.
[35:40] They must have known and now their suspicions about Farouq
[35:44] were materializing into real evidence.
[35:46] Once Martinez mum and dad arrived into London they were
[35:50] transported to the police station where all of her friends
[35:52] and her roommates had been practically camping out for the
[35:56] last God knows how many hours waiting for the freshest
[35:59] updates. But then came the update that
[36:02] everyone had been dreading. One of the officers that had
[36:05] been searching for Rooks apartment had noticed some tiny
[36:09] blood droplets leading out of his front door, down the steps
[36:15] and to the basement in his building.
[36:17] The trail LED up to a padlocked door, one that police officers
[36:22] couldn't get into. There were no keys laying around
[36:25] in the apartment. Someone had made sure that
[36:28] people couldn't get into this little room.
[36:30] Obviously that wasn't going to stop the police.
[36:32] They can break doors down if they need to.
[36:34] They can kick shit in. But they were already very
[36:37] fearful of what they might find behind that door when they
[36:41] managed to breakthrough this door into Farouq's basement.
[36:45] Under a pile of rubble lay the beaten, bloodied and brutalized
[36:50] dead body of Martina Victoria Magnussen.
[36:53] She was only semi clothed when they found her, although she did
[36:57] still have that sparkly silver eyeshadow on that she very
[37:01] excitedly painted on before that night out.
[37:03] When she was discovered, most of her body had been covered up
[37:07] intentionally with this like construction rubble that had
[37:11] been left down in the basement. But one of her arms was
[37:14] stretching out and that was actually what the police saw.
[37:17] That was what alerted them to her body, almost as if she was
[37:21] reaching to be saved. Everyone's hearts shattered into
[37:25] a million pieces. All of the hope drained out of
[37:28] them as this case turned from a missing person to a murder
[37:32] inquiry. The police locked down the crime
[37:35] scene and the most important thing right now was locating
[37:38] Farouk Abdullah, who had been conveniently missing along with
[37:43] Martine. This whole entire Martina's
[37:45] friends told the police everything about this man, about
[37:48] his huge crush on her and his inability to accept her
[37:52] rejections and how entitled he is just in general about
[37:56] everything. The police agreed that there was
[37:58] certainly a motive there. He wanted this girl who didn't
[38:01] want him back, and she had been pretty much the first person in
[38:05] his life to ever tell him no and to stick with it as well.
[38:09] Because. I get the impression from the
[38:11] way that he was trying again and again and again that he thought
[38:14] he could wear her down. But maybe it was becoming
[38:17] evident to him that she wasn't going to come round to this.
[38:20] She wasn't going to like him back.
[38:22] And so maybe he got really angry.
[38:24] Farouk Abdullah was the only suspect in this case.
[38:28] I mean, her body was literally found in the basement of his
[38:31] building. There was a blood trail leading
[38:33] from his apartment. There are very few other people
[38:36] on this planet that it could have been.
[38:39] When Martinez body was taken from the crime scene and taken
[38:42] for an autopsy, it was discovered that she had suffered
[38:45] a total of 43 separate injuries and at least twenty of those
[38:51] were to her face and neck. There was a huge amount of
[38:54] bruising and scraping, scratching, swelling from where
[38:58] she had had to fight for her. Life there was.
[39:02] A major struggle with her attacker, but her cause of death
[39:05] was confirmed to be strangulation.
[39:08] There were these huge marks on her neck where her killer had
[39:11] very up close and personally squeezed all of the life out of
[39:17] her. Her toxicology report, of
[39:18] course, showed the alcohol and the cocaine that she'd had that
[39:21] night. But what was interesting was it
[39:24] was less than everyone imagined. It really wasn't a large amount
[39:27] at all. In fact, it shows that she
[39:29] probably would have been very aware and very alert when all of
[39:33] this was happening to her as she was fighting for her life.
[39:37] She would have been very aware that she was losing and very
[39:41] aware that this man, her guy best friend that she had trusted
[39:45] for so long, was trying to kill her.
[39:49] And of course, we have to talk about the state of undress that
[39:53] Martina was found in. Her autopsy confirmed that she
[39:57] had been raped by her attacker. They were able to recover semen
[40:02] from inside of her and they were able to make links to Farooq.
[40:08] Now that confuses me. Does it confuse you?
[40:10] We've tried to dig into this because I was really confused
[40:12] why they didn't just say it was a match to Farooq.
[40:15] What do you mean the semen has links to him?
[40:17] That's the strangest way I've ever heard it put, but I think
[40:20] I've figured it out. In the same way that they went
[40:22] to Martina's house and got her toothbrush and her hair brush
[40:25] for DNA testing, I believe they'd done the same with Farooq
[40:29] because he wasn't there to get an actual swab or any kind of
[40:32] real samples. They may have just had to
[40:35] compare this semen DNA with like, yeah, his spit DNA or
[40:40] something like that. Maybe that's why it's not an
[40:42] exact match but is a link. Either way, this was pretty
[40:46] damning evidence to everyone that saw it and heard of it.
[40:49] The police believed that most of the attack had taken place in
[40:53] the apartment. The rape, the struggle, the
[40:56] strangulation. It's believed that Farouk then
[40:59] picked up Martina's limp body and carried her down the stairs
[41:04] to the basement, hoping that he could just hide all of this
[41:07] behind a padlocked door and no one would ever find it.
[41:10] But Martina had bled all the way there.
[41:13] She had left a little trail for police to follow.
[41:17] In some kind of tragic way, she had helped to solve her own
[41:22] murder case. Now this whole thing seems
[41:24] totally cut and dry, doesn't it? The killer couldn't really be
[41:27] anyone else other than Farooq. All of the evidence is in his
[41:31] apartment. Semen that can be linked to him
[41:35] is inside of her. Like, who else is it going to
[41:37] be? This guy that she had befriended
[41:40] and welcomed into her social circle and fell so sorry for
[41:44] him. She had done so much to be his
[41:46] shoulder, to cry on and to make him feel better.
[41:50] And this whole entire time, it was now seeming like he'd had
[41:53] these dark, sinister intentions and thoughts about her.
[41:57] Maybe it was a case of. If he couldn't have her, and if
[42:00] she wasn't going to turn around and love him back, then no one
[42:03] can have her. And one thing that makes it all
[42:05] even worse for me is that Martina.
[42:08] Was. Staying at his house that night
[42:10] for a reason. He lived literally just down the
[42:12] road from the club and she was very intoxicated.
[42:15] She knew that it would be dangerous to try and trek across
[42:19] London and get herself home all on her own in the early hours of
[42:22] the morning. She thought that she was doing
[42:25] the safest thing here, staying with this friend that she
[42:28] trusted. He literally goes to her uni.
[42:31] He's in her social circles. She thought that this man could
[42:35] be accounted for. It's just so incredibly
[42:38] heartbreaking that the biggest danger to Martina that night was
[42:43] this friend that she thought she trusted so much.
[42:47] So now all that was left to do was to track down Farouk
[42:50] Abdullah and arrest him. But this would prove to be a way
[42:55] bigger challenge than police ever could have imagined.
[42:58] None of Farooq's friends in London knew where he was.
[43:00] They'd tried to text him and call him.
[43:02] No one could get a hold of him. In fact, his mobile phone,
[43:05] they'd managed to get in touch with his network provider.
[43:08] His mobile phone had stopped pinging.
[43:10] Like it seemed like he'd taken the whole entire thing apart,
[43:13] taken the SIM card out of his phone.
[43:15] But police were able to get a hold of his call history when
[43:18] they called his phone network. All of the stuff that he'd done
[43:21] up until fleeing, they found that in the early hours of
[43:24] Friday morning, right around the time that Martina would have
[43:27] been killed, he had been desperately trying to get a hold
[43:30] of his family back over in Egypt.
[43:32] He was calling his mum, his brother, his father.
[43:36] Of course, we don't know the contents of these calls or who
[43:39] picked up or how many calls were taken or whatever.
[43:42] We just know that he was frantically, desperately calling
[43:45] and then shortly after those calls he updates his Facebook
[43:49] status saying that he is home alone.
[43:52] About an hour after that, at 5:00 AM, Farooq just randomly
[43:56] turns up at one of his friends flats, and I don't know why.
[43:59] I don't know if they'd had a conversation before this, but he
[44:02] turns up and the friend said that Farooq was obviously quite
[44:06] anxious and stressed, so they smoked a joint together and then
[44:10] Farooq left. He didn't say anything really
[44:13] about the situation, but he just went back home.
[44:15] I don't think he got a wink of sleep at all that night because
[44:19] only a couple of hours later, at 9:30 in the morning, he called
[44:23] one of his London friends to let them know that he was leaving
[44:26] England that morning because of a family emergency at home.
[44:30] When detectives found this out, it sent a wave of fear through
[44:35] them all over 48 hours ago, Farooq had intentions of leaving
[44:39] the country, so he was probably gone by.
[44:42] And you know what's so frustrating?
[44:45] The police sat on this case for a couple of days, not really
[44:48] doing anything, waiting for Martine to just show up again.
[44:51] Maybe if they'd have acted a bit fucking faster, then they might
[44:55] have had a better chance of tracking him.
[44:57] But by now he could be anywhere at all in the whole entire
[45:01] world. So where do police start with
[45:03] that? They searched up the airports
[45:05] closest to him that did flights out to Cairo in Egypt and to
[45:09] Yemen because, like I said, his family owned so much in Yemen,
[45:13] but they were mainly based in Cairo.
[45:15] So they didn't really know where he was going to go, Egypt or
[45:18] Yemen. But they managed to figure out
[45:19] which airports he could have gone to.
[45:21] And then they scoured the CCTV footage of those places until
[45:25] eventually they found it. Less than 12 hours after Martina
[45:30] was last seen alive, Farouk Abdullah had boarded a flight to
[45:34] Cairo, Egypt. At this point in time, his
[45:37] father wasn't actually in Yemen or in Cairo.
[45:40] He was in Norway doing some business meetings, which is
[45:43] painfully ironic that that is the home country of his sons
[45:48] alleged murder victim and he was getting this news over the
[45:52] phone. At least we believe so.
[45:54] We've had to do. Quite a bit of speculation about
[45:56] this part because obviously phone calls aren't recorded and
[46:00] the phone logs are very basic, but we theorize that he called
[46:06] up his father that morning and basically told him, look dad,
[46:09] I've done something fucking horrible and I need your help.
[46:12] I need to get out of the UK. I need you to protect me and so.
[46:16] We theorize. That that he and his father made
[46:19] a deal to both go and meet in Cairo immediately.
[46:24] So Farouk jumps on a plane in London, heads straight there and
[46:27] then his father finishes up his business meetings in Norway and
[46:30] he too jumps on a plane to Cairo and they land around about the
[46:34] same time. Now the police timelines get
[46:37] even more blurry from this point on because the Abdul acts were a
[46:41] very secretive family and they were very, very rich and very
[46:44] influential. They had so many security guards
[46:47] and like whole teams dedicated to their privacy, so no wonder
[46:52] we can't find that much. However, it's rumoured that the
[46:56] first place they went was to their family home.
[46:58] They gathered everyone, well, everyone important, Farouk, his
[47:02] mum, his dad and his brother and they just basically talked it
[47:06] all out I guess. Talked about what their options
[47:09] were and what the fuck they were going to do.
[47:11] It was decided that. The best place for Farooq right
[47:14] now would be Yemen because that's where his family had the
[47:18] most power, the most influence and the most money S they
[47:21] grabbed his father's private jet and shipped him off to Yemen.
[47:26] This was a very clever move from Farooq and his family, something
[47:31] that the UK police were, well, they couldn't really fight back
[47:35] against it and I'll tell you why.
[47:37] The UK doesn't have an extradition treaty with Yemen so
[47:42] they can't get Farouk brought back over no matter what
[47:45] evidence they have. Well this seemed absolutely
[47:48] heinous to everyone in the UK considering how damning the
[47:51] evidence is. They literally found his semen
[47:55] inside of her body, her blood trailing down his steps.
[47:59] Surely evidence that is that damning could because for a one
[48:03] off deal to be made for his extradition, Martinez family had
[48:07] high hopes that the Yemeni government might take a look at
[48:10] this request and take pity on their family.
[48:13] Maybe they would understand how devastating this whole thing
[48:16] would be for them and they could strike a one off deal.
[48:20] But now Yemen blocks extradition all together in their
[48:23] constitution. They just don't really trust
[48:26] other countries courts and they want to protect their own
[48:28] people. And Farouq was being protected
[48:31] all right, not only by his own government but of course by his
[48:34] own billionaire business tycoon father who practically owned the
[48:38] whole of Yemen. I'll be honest though, I think
[48:40] his father cared more about what this could do to his business
[48:43] and to his companies and to his reputation than I don't know.
[48:48] Then whatever his son's going through, I think his father was
[48:50] only thinking about himself. Maybe a little.
[48:52] Bit about his son but more so he just wanted to get rid of this
[48:56] and to hush it all so that he could continue making billions
[48:59] his father. 'S name was.
[49:00] Shara Abdullah, I'm not sure if I've actually mentioned that
[49:03] yet, but Mr. Abdullah was trying his absolute best to make this
[49:07] problem go away. He was arranging meetings left
[49:10] right and center with all the most important people in Yemen,
[49:13] like the Minister of Justice, anyone that had any kind of
[49:16] influence in law enforcement. Shara made all of these people
[49:20] guarantee that no matter what, Farooq would never be handed
[49:24] back over to the UK no matter what evidence they had against
[49:27] him. Because really that's all they
[49:29] had to worry about was him being handed to the UK.
[49:32] Because while ever he was in Yemen, he was safe.
[49:35] Everyone there was kind of scared of his father.
[49:38] They knew well not scared, maybe intimidated is the word to use.
[49:41] They knew how much power and influence he had and how crucial
[49:45] he was to the whole trade market of Yemen.
[49:48] Whatever Shara said goes, even if it's something as
[49:52] questionable and immoral as this.
[49:54] How on earth were Martinez family ever going to be able to
[49:58] get justice when the whole of Yemen's government had vowed to
[50:03] protect the prime suspect in their daughter's murder case?
[50:06] This whole time, Farouk had just been living it up in Yemen.
[50:10] I mean, he'd been there less than a week, so it hadn't been
[50:13] all that long. But he knows that he is so safe
[50:16] there. As long as his father's a lot
[50:17] alive and fighting for him, he's fine.
[50:20] He has gotten away with murder. He could sit back and relax in
[50:23] their mega mansions, in their hotels, by the pool sipping on a
[50:27] cocktail if he wanted. But I'm guessing he was back to
[50:30] that strict Islamic 5th now that he was back with his family.
[50:33] But my point is he didn't have to worry about that ongoing
[50:36] murder investigation that he was currently the prime suspect of
[50:40] back in London. Meanwhile, Martinez family went
[50:43] to the morgue to go and identify the dead body of their daughter.
[50:47] She lay there. Cold and grey, all of that
[50:50] bright, fun loving energy had just been drained out of her.
[50:55] Her father said that she looked peaceful, like she was just
[50:58] sleeping. And then when he went to stroke
[51:01] her cheek and give her a kiss for the final time, he felt just
[51:04] how cold and stiff she was. And that was confirmation that
[51:09] his baby was gone. For Martinez family, this was
[51:13] such a visceral and heart shattering experience.
[51:17] It was so real and incomprehensible that their
[51:21] loved one had been brutally ripped from them in the worst
[51:25] way possible and they were never going to see or speak to her or
[51:28] feel her energy ever again. Meanwhile, Farooq's family were
[51:33] treating this more like some gossipy scandal that just needed
[51:36] sweeping under the rug and keeping quiet.
[51:38] They hired a PR team to be a spokesperson for the family like
[51:42] it was some sort of Internet cancellation.
[51:45] Farooq's reputation was always protected as much as it could be
[51:49] by his PR team, where Martina's reputation was constantly being
[51:54] smeared in the papers in all kinds of different countries.
[51:58] The victim blaming in this case was rife.
[52:01] They would say that she was just a.
[52:02] Party girl. She was drunk all the time.
[52:04] She was on drugs that night, so something like this was bound to
[52:07] happen to her. They were conveniently
[52:09] forgetting that the boy that was responsible for doing all of
[52:12] this to her was one of her best friends.
[52:16] She hadn't put herself in any kind of questionable situation,
[52:19] not that that even matters. But she was.
[52:22] Staying over at a best friend's house after a night out, She was
[52:25] doing everything right. She didn't want to trek across
[52:28] London in the early hours of the morning when it was dark and she
[52:31] was all on her own. So she stayed at a trusted
[52:34] friend's house, and it was just so unfortunate that that best
[52:38] friend was a wolf in sheep's clothing.
[52:41] The detectives on Martina's case and the UK government as a whole
[52:46] began to fear that they had hit a dead end in Yemen.
[52:49] Farooq had hired his own top class legal team.
[52:52] You can imagine the kind of lawyers that his father could
[52:54] hire. And Farooq was actually
[52:56] currently in hiding. His father had so many different
[52:59] properties all over Yemen, and he'd picked specifically one
[53:02] that was very isolated on the top of a mountain, like he was a
[53:05] fucking go. It was very luxurious, don't get
[53:08] me wrong, but it was a prison of its own kind.
[53:11] There was no one around to talk to.
[53:13] There was nothing really. In July 2008, four months after
[53:17] Martina Victoria Magnuson's body had been found covered in rubble
[53:21] in his basement, the British police and the Crown Prosecution
[53:25] Service formally charged Farouk Abdullah with the rape and
[53:29] murder of Martina. He was moved to the very top of
[53:33] Scotland Yards most wanted list and if he ever tried to step
[53:36] foot out of Yemen, the police would be right there waiting for
[53:40] him with an arrest warrant and handcuffs.
[53:42] But that could be a very long waiting game.
[53:45] They could only act if slash when Farooq ever left the
[53:50] country. But who's to say he's ever gonna
[53:52] leave? Why would you when your dad has
[53:54] more than enough money, more than enough properties to keep
[53:57] you entertained and protected forever?
[53:59] At this point in time, Martinez friends and family, especially
[54:03] back over in Norway, were thinking the Norwegian
[54:06] government could probably do a bit more to help out here.
[54:08] The UK government were doing all that they could and up until now
[54:12] the Norwegian government were leaving it to the Brits.
[54:14] Since it did happen in this country, it makes sense.
[54:17] But when things were going nowhere, they needed all hands
[54:21] on deck. Everyone that could possibly
[54:23] help needed to help. So they held a protest in
[54:26] Norway. They managed to get 27, 1000
[54:29] signatures on a petition. And bear in mind this was like
[54:33] before social media was massive. Massive.
[54:35] They got Norwegian politicians to write letters and emails to
[54:39] Farooq's dad's business partners, so he worked with a
[54:43] load of big companies like Xerox and Mercedes and Coca-Cola.
[54:47] And they were. All right, into these companies
[54:49] to say, hey, just so you know this guy.
[54:52] That you work. With his son's a suspected
[54:54] murderer, maybe you should cut ties.
[54:56] And actually, quite a few of them did.
[54:58] But that's not any justice for Martina, is it?
[55:01] 2 years after her murder, her friends and family reached out
[55:05] to the former Norwegian Prime Minister to see if he could do
[55:08] anything. As soon as he read about
[55:10] Martina's case, his heart was broken and he knew he wanted to
[55:14] do everything that he could. And so he got on the phone, did
[55:18] a few emails, and somehow he managed to schedule a meeting
[55:21] with Farooq's father himself. The former Norwegian Prime
[55:25] Minister was going to fly out to Cairo to speak with Farooqs
[55:29] father. This was huge.
[55:31] They were going to be able to confront him face to face.
[55:34] So he flies out there. They get to this meeting and as
[55:38] they're talking about it all, Farooqs father bursts into
[55:41] tears. He said that he was just so
[55:43] overwhelmed and so stressed by this whole situation.
[55:47] And like, I'm not surprised. Obviously I don't agree with
[55:50] what he was doing in the slightest, but that is probably
[55:54] one of the most stressful things you can put on yourself is
[55:57] trying to harbour a murderer. But despite breaking into tears
[56:01] and saying how stressed and how much this is for him, he still
[56:05] wasn't willing to give up. I'm not really sure why he
[56:08] agreed to do this meeting. Maybe just to use it as a
[56:11] therapy session, maybe just to vent, because coming out of it,
[56:15] nothing was really agreed. The former Prime Minister left
[56:18] that meeting feeling really deflated.
[56:20] He felt like Farooq father had kind of.
[56:24] Taking him for a ride. He had gotten so close to making
[56:27] an agreement, but then there'd be something else that they need
[56:29] to factor in. Oh, wait, we've forgotten about
[56:31] this. Let's talk about this for a
[56:33] while. That kind of thing.
[56:34] Where like, it got to the end of the meeting and they were like,
[56:36] well, shit, what did we actually just talk about for that whole
[56:39] entire time? But the former Prime Minister
[56:40] did not give up. The next year, he was able to
[56:44] schedule another meeting. This time, Farooq was going to
[56:47] be present. He was going to be there.
[56:50] It had been 3 1/2 years since Martina's body was from the
[56:54] rubble underneath his home. Farouk walked into that meeting
[56:58] and sat down with his father and the Norwegian Prime Minister,
[57:02] and he too broke down. He claimed that he was
[57:06] remorseful about this whole thing.
[57:08] He felt bad that Martina had lost her life.
[57:11] This whole thing was very sad to him.
[57:13] And he said that he was willing to cooperate in the
[57:16] investigation. Huge.
[57:18] But there was one part of this whole meeting that was fucked
[57:22] up. Especially fucked up was that to
[57:25] say that Farouk had been friends with Martina for eight months.
[57:29] They called each other best friends.
[57:31] They'd grown so close. He was now refusing to call her
[57:35] by name. He would only refer to her as
[57:38] the deceased. Which is fucked up.
[57:41] Let me repeat it. Sorry for swearing.
[57:43] I know some of you watch these videos with young people in the
[57:46] room. Those young people in the room
[57:47] would probably agree though, if they understood what was going
[57:49] on. Nothing really came out of this
[57:51] meeting, but a final meeting was scheduled for February 2012.
[57:55] It was due to take place in Yemen with Farooq's father, his
[57:59] lawyer, and the former Norwegian Prime Minister.
[58:02] They discussed the possibility of opening a joint investigation
[58:05] between the British and Yemeni police, and his father seemed
[58:09] quite receptive to that. In fact, he was asking questions
[58:12] that suggested he would go through with it, you know,
[58:14] asking how could they keep this a secret?
[58:16] How could they protect his reputation throughout all this?
[58:20] I mean, obviously those are the only things he cared about.
[58:22] What did I tell you earlier? And you know, I said that Farooq
[58:24] was going to be a part of this meeting.
[58:26] Well, that's what everyone thought until it got to it.
[58:30] And they'd sat him in a different room.
[58:32] I think this was his lawyers doing.
[58:34] Obviously they had sat Farooq in a different room.
[58:37] So this meeting was going on in this room and they, they would
[58:40] get to a point where they would need Farooq's input.
[58:42] So the lawyer would get up and leave and go and chat to Farooq
[58:46] in another room and then come back to this room and feedback.
[58:48] It's ridiculous. It's like when you fall out with
[58:50] a mayor in primary school and you're like, well, I'm not going
[58:52] to talk to her. Go send her a message for me.
[58:54] You know, surely, if his lawyer was in the room.
[58:57] He would be able to speak. I thought that was what the
[59:00] lawyer was for, but this meeting went very similarly to the last
[59:04] ones, where it starts out with a clear direction and it seems
[59:07] like they're making progress, but then by the end of it, it's
[59:10] just devolved into this really vague agreement that isn't
[59:14] actually really going to do anything for anyone.
[59:17] There's no point pushing forward with it.
[59:18] There's no point spending any more time or energy on this
[59:21] because Farooq's father and their lawyer.
[59:24] Were. Really just taking everyone for
[59:26] a. Ride.
[59:26] They were just. Stalling.
[59:27] They were just trying to confuse.
[59:29] Basically, they left that final meeting with Farooq, solidifying
[59:33] the fact that he would never return to the UK.
[59:36] And that was it. After this third meeting failed,
[59:39] Farooq's father Sharra actually got in contact with Martina's
[59:43] family and offered to pay them off to just drop the case.
[59:47] He was going to give them £50 million if they let all of this
[59:53] go away. Offers of monetary compensation
[59:55] for someone's death is a relatively common practice in
[59:59] Yemen. In fact, Shera himself had
[1:00:02] actually received a monetary compensation for the murder of
[1:00:05] his own niece. Whoever had killed her had done
[1:00:09] so in the most heinous way. I think it was done out on the
[1:00:12] street and then they literally threw the her body into the
[1:00:15] road. But when Farooq's father, her
[1:00:18] uncle, the most successful businessman of the whole entire.
[1:00:21] Family went to go meet with the murderers family.
[1:00:25] He accepted monetary compensation in exchange for
[1:00:28] letting the killer keep his freedom and his future.
[1:00:31] I have a lot of thoughts about that.
[1:00:32] My main one being, are you not a billionaire?
[1:00:35] Why do you care about an extra few million more than you care
[1:00:38] about justice for your niece? I think that just speaks
[1:00:41] volumes. I think money means way more to
[1:00:44] these people than people do. Farooq's father was clearly
[1:00:48] hoping that Martinez family might be the same but he was
[1:00:51] sorely mistaken. Maybe money means more to him
[1:00:54] than his loved ones, but there was no amount of blood money
[1:00:58] that could sway Martinez family. By now it was years out from the
[1:01:02] murder taking place and the case was at a complete stalemate.
[1:01:06] It was still open, but what could the UK police really do?
[1:01:10] It was so frustrating because all of the evidence pointed to
[1:01:13] this one guy that they were so sure was the killer.
[1:01:17] There was no point looking anywhere else at anything else,
[1:01:21] but he was just so out of reach. They had done 99.9% of the work
[1:01:26] on this, but that last little bit was impossible.
[1:01:30] But over the years, Farooq's shield of protection has begun
[1:01:34] to crumble around him as the political tide in Yemen started
[1:01:39] to change. In 2011, there were a lot of
[1:01:42] protests going on in Yemen demanding political change.
[1:01:45] People, people wanted the president out.
[1:01:48] You know, the guy that Farooq's father was super close with, the
[1:01:51] guy that has been able to protect Farooq this whole entire
[1:01:54] time. The rest of Yemen wanted him
[1:01:57] out. And so he was forced to step
[1:01:58] down in 2012. So that was one of.
[1:02:02] Farooq's biggest hitters out of the question now.
[1:02:04] For the last four years, Farooq had enjoyed all of the
[1:02:08] protection that he needed because the literal president
[1:02:11] was on his side. But that wasn't a guarantee for
[1:02:14] much longer. The unrest in Yemen continued to
[1:02:17] escalate, and in 2014, a civil war broke out.
[1:02:20] Within a year, Sana, where Farooq lived, had been heavily
[1:02:24] bombed and the city was left in ruins.
[1:02:27] In December 2017, the former president and Farooq's
[1:02:31] protector, his dad's bestie, was killed and with this Farooq's
[1:02:36] support network completely collapsed.
[1:02:39] The very few friends and family that he had left around him all
[1:02:43] started to flee the country out of fear.
[1:02:45] Farooq was left alone and stranded in a war-torn city,
[1:02:50] unable to leave Yemen completely or he would be arrested.
[1:02:54] The consequences of his actions. Are.
[1:02:57] Always lurking in the shadows, just waiting for the time to get
[1:03:01] him. So at this point in time, even
[1:03:03] though Farooq was safe from the law and the consequences of his
[1:03:07] actions, and he had a roof over his head, he was still
[1:03:10] surrounded by misery and famine everywhere he looked.
[1:03:14] It certainly wasn't the life of luxury that he was used to that
[1:03:17] he had grown to expect everywhere he went.
[1:03:20] And soon, Farooq's protection would almost completely
[1:03:24] collapse. It was bound to happen one day.
[1:03:27] But in late 2020, his father, one of the richest billionaires
[1:03:31] in Yemen, the man that had protected him through all of
[1:03:34] this, died following a battle with cancer.
[1:03:37] On his deathbed, he took out a photo of Farouk from his wallet
[1:03:41] and cried. He always said that his son
[1:03:44] Farooq was the biggest problem in his life, in fact, the only
[1:03:49] major problem that he'd ever had.
[1:03:51] All the stress of the business world was absolutely nothing
[1:03:54] compared to what his son had put him through.
[1:03:57] Sharra was thinking after he died, what on earth was Farooq
[1:04:01] going to do? What would become of his son
[1:04:04] without the protection that only he could provide?
[1:04:07] Once he's gone, all of that protection is gone too.
[1:04:11] And his concerns for his son were very valid.
[1:04:14] When his dad died, obviously he had no other family left in Sana
[1:04:18] and and mainly in Yemen. People had fled the whole entire
[1:04:21] country, but mostly fled that city.
[1:04:23] What distant family he did have left were all arguing at this
[1:04:27] point in time over Sharer's inheritance that were there
[1:04:31] were. 6. Billions to be spread out among
[1:04:34] them. Of course there's going to be
[1:04:35] arguments, and apparently there were also a lot of arguments
[1:04:38] about what they were going to do about the Farooq situation now
[1:04:41] that Shara was gone. I mean, up until this point, it
[1:04:44] had been all Shari's problem. It seems that he had agreed to
[1:04:48] protect his son. He had taken on that
[1:04:49] responsibility. But now that he was gone, whose
[1:04:53] responsibility was Farooq? No one.
[1:04:55] No one wanted that to be on their back.
[1:04:58] Because a lot. Of them had cut ties with him or
[1:05:00] distance from him actually believing that he was a murderer
[1:05:04] back in London that is of course being protected.
[1:05:06] This case has really frustrated pretty much every single person
[1:05:10] that has ever come across it because it really is just so
[1:05:13] unfair. And then one day, a reporter at
[1:05:16] BBC Arabic. Now, while Al Magafi made it her
[1:05:20] mission to go undercover and penetrate Farooq's defense, she
[1:05:24] was determined to get a confession out of him once and
[1:05:28] for all. Nowell was 33 years old and
[1:05:30] actually from Yemen herself. She had a lot of family back
[1:05:33] there, and so she was able to use her connections to be able
[1:05:36] to get a lead on Farooq. She managed to speak with a
[1:05:40] friend of his who revealed that he was a paranoid mess and he
[1:05:44] barely left the house anymore. Apparently he moves his location
[1:05:48] relatively frequently and is very secretive about his
[1:05:51] address. And like I say, he barely leave
[1:05:53] the house, so he gets pretty much everything he possibly
[1:05:56] needs delivered directly to his door.
[1:05:58] Eventually someone gave Nowell a picture of Farouk, a recent
[1:06:03] picture from when he had attended his father's funeral,
[1:06:07] and now he still looked like himself in the face, but he was
[1:06:10] bald with a beard. Someone also managed to give her
[1:06:14] his phone number which she didn't want to just use straight
[1:06:17] away because that would probably put him off to be fair,
[1:06:20] receiving a random text from a random number trying to talk to
[1:06:24] him. But then now all finds out that
[1:06:27] Farooq loves Snapchat at his big age.
[1:06:30] He is 35 years old, yet he uses Snapchat a lot.
[1:06:35] And I was very taken aback by that.
[1:06:37] Because like so random and that just so random.
[1:06:41] But now all decides to take the phone number that someone had
[1:06:45] managed to send across to her that was supposedly his and she
[1:06:48] runs it through Snapchat and up pops an account linked to it
[1:06:53] under the name Farooq with a bald Bitmoji that looks exactly
[1:06:57] like him. This was closer than anyone had
[1:07:01] gotten to Farooq in years. Now all wasted no time.
[1:07:04] She added the account and very quickly, within moments, he had
[1:07:08] accepted her again. I found this very interesting
[1:07:11] because this guy is so. Paranoid SO.
[1:07:13] Worried about his privacy and his security, yet the second he
[1:07:17] gets added by a girl on Snapchat, he's like oh who's
[1:07:21] this? The two of them began talking
[1:07:23] and he was just getting to know her the same as he would any
[1:07:26] other lady friend. He told her that he was 35 years
[1:07:30] old and that he currently works in stocks and crypto trading.
[1:07:34] Somehow he just gets even more intolerable as we go on.
[1:07:37] As the two of them continued to speak, they were messaging like
[1:07:40] every single day on Snapchat. Now, I was putting in a shift
[1:07:44] for this, but as the two of them grew closer, she began trying to
[1:07:48] get some secrets out of Farooq. She started with small ones that
[1:07:53] you know, the stakes weren't too high to gain his trust.
[1:07:56] Once she showed him that she could keep small secrets, then
[1:07:59] he started telling her bigger ones and bigger ones until he
[1:08:03] eventually broke. And one day he said I did
[1:08:06] something when I was younger. It was a mistake.
[1:08:09] I told you my real name. I can't specifically go to the
[1:08:12] UK for something that happened there.
[1:08:14] It's been 14 years since I travelled.
[1:08:17] The only reason I'm scared is because you told me You're a
[1:08:19] writer and a journalist. You're the last person I should
[1:08:23] talk to. So clearly he knows just how
[1:08:25] risky it is to be opening up to Narwhal like this, and I'm
[1:08:28] actually really surprised that she was honest with him and told
[1:08:31] him that. She was ABBC.
[1:08:33] Journalist and everything. Yeah.
[1:08:34] I'm just really shocked that that didn't put him off.
[1:08:37] Clearly, he is just desperate for some socialization,
[1:08:40] especially with a woman. A part of him just couldn't help
[1:08:43] it, just couldn't help himself. He had been craving human
[1:08:46] connection for so long, and he'd been so isolated in his little
[1:08:51] house in the mountains or wherever.
[1:08:52] And now all could tell how desperate he was.
[1:08:55] And she was kind of playing on that a bit.
[1:08:56] Don't blame her. Guy's a murderer.
[1:08:59] So she was saying to him like, oh, maybe we should get on a
[1:09:01] first time call soon. And and Farooq was hesitant but
[1:09:05] eventually he came around to the idea and he picked up the call.
[1:09:08] In this conversation, Farooq said that he doesn't know what
[1:09:11] answers the family of Martina even want.
[1:09:15] What He was under the impression that since nothing can bring
[1:09:18] their daughter back then what's the point?
[1:09:20] What's the point them even still thinking about it?
[1:09:22] In fact, he refused to ever speak with Martinez family
[1:09:25] directly because it would be too hard for him.
[1:09:28] Too hard for him. The audacity of Farooq Abdullah
[1:09:33] to RIP the life from this woman and then claim that it's just
[1:09:37] all too much for him to deal. With.
[1:09:39] As the conversation this first time call continued, Narwhal was
[1:09:42] pushing for an in person meeting, and of course again,
[1:09:45] Farooq was very hesitant to do so.
[1:09:48] Eventually he kind of came round to it, saying that he would be
[1:09:51] willing to meet in person, but it had to be just the two of
[1:09:54] them, no one else. She had to fly to Yemen and come
[1:09:58] to his. Nowell was understandably very
[1:10:01] wary about doing this, going somewhere to be alone with a
[1:10:05] suspected murderer and rapist. So while she was trying to
[1:10:09] change the conditions of their in person meeting, they
[1:10:12] continued to FaceTime and text. And he mentioned something at
[1:10:15] some point about how he thought about giving the family closure,
[1:10:19] but he'd never done it. In fact, his exact quote was
[1:10:23] it's already been 14 years, what's another two?
[1:10:26] And actually, as soon as he'd said that, he demanded to change
[1:10:28] the. Subject.
[1:10:29] He did that quite a bit. Because obviously he thinks he's
[1:10:32] just talking to a lady, he's just getting to know this lady,
[1:10:36] but really she's all she wants to talk about is Martina.
[1:10:39] By this point, Nowell was really struggling to keep her cool with
[1:10:43] Farooq, because she believed wholeheartedly, as most of us
[1:10:46] do, that he was a cold, stubborn rapist and murderer.
[1:10:51] Not only that, but he was sitting there on FaceTime and
[1:10:53] playing games with her, and just like he was playing games with
[1:10:57] the justice system, she had pretty much had enough of this.
[1:11:00] And so she eventually gave him an ultimatum of sorts, saying
[1:11:04] that she couldn't continue talking to him unless she knew
[1:11:08] the truth of the Martina situation that he was so
[1:11:11] secretive about South. Finally, after months of laying
[1:11:14] the groundwork, Farouk was ready to talk.
[1:11:18] He claimed that that whole night was just such a blur and he only
[1:11:21] really remembers it in flashbacks, which he blamed on
[1:11:24] the cook in But he insisted that what happened to Martina was
[1:11:27] just an accident, nothing nefarious.
[1:11:30] He said it was a sex accident gone wrong.
[1:11:33] I'm sure you're thinking the exact same thing that I am
[1:11:35] thinking right now. Bullshit.
[1:11:38] Martina was evidently not interested in Farouk like that.
[1:11:42] She had turned down his advances time and time again.
[1:11:46] Her body was found beaten and bloody.
[1:11:49] She had bled all the way down the stairs.
[1:11:51] What kind of rough sex gone wrong would leave a woman like
[1:11:55] that? I mentioned the Grace Mullane
[1:11:57] case earlier on in this episode, but I think it's worth bringing
[1:11:59] up again because there are a lot of parallels between this case
[1:12:03] and that one. Grace went on a Tinder date when
[1:12:05] she was backpacking in New Zealand.
[1:12:07] She met this guy that she thought was really cool.
[1:12:10] She went home with him and then she was never seen again.
[1:12:13] He was later seen removing her body from the hotel room in a
[1:12:17] suitcase. He later claimed that that too
[1:12:20] was just rough sex gone wrong and Grace had asked for it.
[1:12:23] There's so much. Victim blaming when it comes to
[1:12:26] these rough sex gone wrong kind of defenses.
[1:12:29] Because as I said in that video, no woman has ever consented to
[1:12:33] being murdered during sex. And I think it's worth repeating
[1:12:36] that Martina never even wanted to have sex with him, and she
[1:12:39] told him that multiple times. So why would she turn around and
[1:12:43] decide, Oh yeah, OK, then on this one particular night.
[1:12:45] And then he beats her up. Like none of it is adding up for
[1:12:49] him to be able to use that as a defence.
[1:12:51] Like, not even close. So when he'd said this to
[1:12:54] Narwhal that it was just rough sex gone wrong, she was probing
[1:12:57] him a bit further. And she was like, well, if it
[1:12:59] was an accident, why would you drag her body down to the
[1:13:02] basement and cover in a load of rubble?
[1:13:04] And Farooq couldn't really give her a solid answer because like
[1:13:08] I say, it's just not adding up. All he did say was that he
[1:13:11] deeply regrets the unfortunate accident that happened.
[1:13:14] He regrets going to Yemen and should have stayed and paid the
[1:13:18] piper AKA bear the consequences of his actions in London.
[1:13:22] But he said to Narwhal that it's just too late for him now.
[1:13:25] He feels like he can't go back to the UK.
[1:13:27] The UK are very biased against him actually, is what he
[1:13:30] believes. So he maintained that he will
[1:13:33] never be surrendering himself. Although this undercover mission
[1:13:36] by Narwhal didn't bring about complete justice, it did bring
[1:13:40] about a partial confession. This is the first time anyone
[1:13:44] has ever gotten Farouk to admit that he is responsible for her
[1:13:48] death. Just two years ago, in 2022,
[1:13:51] there was another pretty big development.
[1:13:53] In this case, in fact, an arrest was made, but it wasn't Farooq.
[1:13:58] It was an unnamed woman in her 60s that was arrested by police
[1:14:02] in London on suspicion of helping Farooq evade justice for
[1:14:06] over a decade. Martinez family flew to London
[1:14:09] as soon as they heard this news. They wanted to speak with the
[1:14:12] police. They went and sat there and they
[1:14:13] said who is it? And police said that they
[1:14:16] couldn't tell them. Their family pleaded with
[1:14:19] lawyers and with police for answers, and they had a feeling
[1:14:23] that it was probably Farooq's mother.
[1:14:25] But the police said to them that they could not confirm nor deny
[1:14:29] that it was Farooq's mother. And off the record, I always
[1:14:33] think that means confirm. That's just my own personal
[1:14:35] opinion there. Because, I mean, if it wasn't,
[1:14:37] then just say that. If it wasn't, then you can just
[1:14:40] say no. But let me clarify that
[1:14:42] nothing's ever really been confirmed there.
[1:14:44] They've never come out and said who this unnamed woman in her
[1:14:46] 60s really is. Everyone thinks it's Farooq's
[1:14:50] mom. Are there any other women in the
[1:14:52] whole entire world that are like reaching their elder years and
[1:14:56] would be willing to put their freedom on the line for Farooq?
[1:14:59] Abdullah? So Martinez family did some of
[1:15:02] their own digging. I love how everyone's becoming a
[1:15:04] detective. In this case, they managed to
[1:15:06] find an estranged family member who could give them the dirt on
[1:15:10] Farooq's mother. Apparently Farooq and his Mama
[1:15:13] had always had a very special relationship.
[1:15:16] Farooq was definitely her favorite child, and she made
[1:15:20] that very obvious. And actually, around the time of
[1:15:22] this mystery woman's arrest in London, his mum's apartment was
[1:15:27] raided by the police. So I'm just putting two and two
[1:15:29] together at this point. And they tore that shit to
[1:15:31] shreds, bro. They, like, pulled up all the
[1:15:34] carpets, all the floorboards. They were pulling photos off the
[1:15:37] wall. They were, like, breaking
[1:15:39] everything that she had to, like, look inside it to see if
[1:15:41] she'd hidden anything in there. The police seemed to believe
[1:15:44] that this woman, his mother, had helped him escape to Yemen all
[1:15:48] those years ago. And if they couldn't get to
[1:15:50] Farooq himself, then they decided that they were going to
[1:15:53] try and get everyone close to him that had committed a crime
[1:15:57] in order to protect him. Whether the arrested woman is
[1:16:00] his mother or not. It's still the biggest
[1:16:02] development that we've had in this case for years.
[1:16:05] And Martinez family continues to stay in contact with the Yemeni
[1:16:09] authorities 16 years later. They are not letting this go.
[1:16:13] In fact, no one is letting this case go, which I think is
[1:16:16] absolutely incredible. Everyone that knew Martine or
[1:16:19] has heard about this case is keeping it in the conversation.
[1:16:23] This case has been very intriguing to look into because
[1:16:26] we have two very dedicated families that are fighting
[1:16:30] complete opposite sides of this war.
[1:16:32] Martina's mum and dad are doing absolutely everything in their
[1:16:35] power to bring her justice and Farooq's mum and dad are doing
[1:16:39] absolutely everything in their power to avoid.
[1:16:42] It but at the. Core of it all was a young girl
[1:16:45] who trusted her friend. She and Farooq had become close
[1:16:49] over the last eight months. They went to the same uni, they
[1:16:51] had the same friend group. Of course she felt like she
[1:16:55] could trust him. It's a tale as all this time for
[1:16:57] women and girls alike. You make friends with a guy, you
[1:17:01] want things to remain strictly platonic.
[1:17:03] You enjoy your platonic friendship with this guy.
[1:17:06] But a lot of the time they just won't take no for an answer.
[1:17:09] Or at least they're always waiting for you to change your
[1:17:12] mind. Martina had stated her
[1:17:14] boundaries with Farooq time and time again and every time Farooq
[1:17:17] overstepped she was forgiving and she would just remind him
[1:17:21] that look, I don't see you like that, but she would still be
[1:17:24] friends with him. But I think Farooq believed he
[1:17:26] could manipulate Martina and make her change her mind, but it
[1:17:30] wasn't working, was it? She was a strong woman and she
[1:17:33] wanted what she wanted, or more accurately, she didn't want what
[1:17:37] she didn't want. And that was Farooq.
[1:17:39] When he realized that he couldn't manipulate her or
[1:17:41] change her mind, it seemed he just straight up murdered her
[1:17:46] and hid her body in the basement.
[1:17:47] Today, Farouk Abdullah is still stranded, trapped in Yemen, a
[1:17:51] country still torn up by the civil war.
[1:17:54] Now that his father is dead and gone, Farouk is no longer secure
[1:17:58] and protected. Sources closest to him say that
[1:18:01] he is very paranoid and he's afraid to leave the house.
[1:18:03] He has no life, he has no freedom, and he has no one
[1:18:07] around him. Well, hardly anyone around him
[1:18:09] that still loves him and cares about him.
[1:18:11] It's no prison sentence, but it's sure is hell in its own
[1:18:15] unique way. He ruined his own life.
[1:18:17] He made his bed, and now he must lie in it forever.
[1:18:20] Daddy's money can't save him now.
[1:18:22] Maybe he hopes that this will all just blow over and people
[1:18:25] will stop caring eventually, but we're here to make sure that
[1:18:29] that doesn't happen. I encourage all of you that are
[1:18:32] listening to this episode right now.
[1:18:34] To. Keep screaming for Justice for
[1:18:36] Martini Victoria Magnussen. Her parents have actually set up
[1:18:40] a website called Justice for martini.com.
[1:18:43] You can go there. There's so much information
[1:18:45] about this case on there and about Farouk himself.
[1:18:48] There is a whole page dedicated to telling you everything they
[1:18:52] know about him, which I think is really good because he wants
[1:18:55] people to forget about him. He wants this all to blow over
[1:18:58] and to be able to go out in public and be fine again.
[1:19:01] But we're not going to let that happen.
[1:19:02] They also have a place where you can donate on that website for
[1:19:06] the Martine Foundation for Justice.
[1:19:08] And I just want to read you directly off of their like
[1:19:11] mission statement. The Foundation will provide
[1:19:13] financial support to relatives of victims in unsolved cases
[1:19:17] involving injustice so that the cases are not put aside or
[1:19:21] forgotten, but tried legally in a fair manner.
[1:19:24] Support for legal assistance as well as reward for tips leading
[1:19:28] to the arrest of serious criminals falls into this
[1:19:30] category. This case just absolutely breaks
[1:19:32] my heart and it makes me so incredibly angry to think about
[1:19:37] him sitting in his Yemeni mansion.
[1:19:39] Surely it can't all last much longer.
[1:19:41] I mean, he's only 35. He has so much life left to
[1:19:45] live, but he can't do anything with it.
[1:19:47] I encourage all of you to go to that website to donate if you
[1:19:50] can, to read through the things that they do and just to make
[1:19:54] noise about this case on social media.
[1:19:57] Well, anywhere, anywhere that you can.
[1:20:00] I'm not allowed to call him a murderer personally, but if we
[1:20:03] bring him to the UK then the courts can do that for me.
[1:20:09] Thank you so much for listening to Usual Disclaimer.
[1:20:12] At this point, I just want to say that if you've been affected
[1:20:14] by any of the topics we discussed today, please check
[1:20:17] the description where we've left some helpful resources.
[1:20:20] If you want to hear more cases like this one, make sure to
[1:20:23] follow Usual Disclaimer on your podcast app so that you get
[1:20:26] notifications when we post new episodes.
[1:20:29] And if you really enjoyed, I'd love it if you could leave a
[1:20:32] rating and a review too. Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor
[1:20:35] Neil is an Audio Boom Studios production.
[1:20:38] See you next time.

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