Iyad Albattikhi and Mohammed Reveshi free on technicality…
British authorities are re-opening the cold case file on 14-year-old Charlene Downs, who went missing 10 years ago and local police have long since suspected her of being murdered, and worse, cut up and used in shish-kebabs at a local restaurant, as reported by the Daily Star (of London, UK) on Nov. 2, 2013.
Police in the northeastern English town of Blackpool are also re-opening the case of Paige Chivers, 15, who was reported missing in the same locale in 2007.
There is fear that both girls were victims of “grooming gangs,” the British term for adult men who lure then trap underage girls, usually through drug addition, into the global sexual slavery market.
As reported, there are accusations arising that young Charlene was sexually abused by approximately 100 men before her disappearance.
Widely Ignored by the American Media…
As covered by Examiner.com, the murder trial of Charlene Downs by fast food shop owner Jordanian immigrant Iyad Albattikhi and his business partner Mohammed Reveshi fell apart when secret surveillance tapes were thrown out of court, despite police recordings of the duo admitting to killing her and serving her flesh to unknowing customers.
Prosecuting attorney Tim Holroyde stated to the jury in May of 2007:
Albattikhi laughed and said she was very small – the plainest possible indication that he was lying to the police when he said he did not know her.
He and others present then laughingly said that Charlene had gone into the [shish] kebabs.
Albattikhi’s business partner, Mohammed Reveshi, was charged as an accessory who disposed of the body by cutting her up and running her, bones and all, through a meat grinder.
Some of the recorded back-and-forth between the two:
- Reveshi said: “Her big bones went into the machine as well, you know that, don’t you?” Albattikhi replied: “Her bones? Did you . . . inside the machine?” “Yes,” Reveshi said.
- Reveshi had said to his partner: “Well, hopefully I [done] it properly you know . . . he thought he saw me cutting her body up.”
- “Do you remember she was bleeding to death?” “Yes,” replied Albattikhi. “So that she made a mess,” Reveshi allegedly added.
- Later in the transcript Reveshi allegedly says: “The last one then, it was the last deep one and then it was the [heart] . . . that finally killed her.”
- At one point Reveshi said: “I’m so worried and you was the one who killed her.”
Naseem Malik, the IPCC (the Independent Police Complaints Commission) Commissioner for the North West of England, is in charge of the organization that handed down the ruling that stated “the covert surveillance evidence gathered against the two main suspects in the case was flawed.”
In layman’s terms, in the tape recordings, the two accused admitted to chopping Charlene Downs into small bits and using her flesh on their menu can never be used in court.
As cited by the left-of-center The Independent of London in October of 2009:
The IPCC revealed that the flaws in the evidence included the fact that much of the recorded tape and video evidence was not properly transcribed, that the officers working on the investigation were “inexperienced and untrained” and that the informant, Mr Cassidy, was not properly briefed and so therefore asked the suspects leading questions.
