{"id":6204,"date":"2017-12-19T10:15:31","date_gmt":"2017-12-19T09:15:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=6204"},"modified":"2017-12-19T10:15:31","modified_gmt":"2017-12-19T09:15:31","slug":"more-on-that-murder-in-beirut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/6204\/","title":{"rendered":"More on that murder in Beirut"},"content":{"rendered":"

Further to my post yesterday<\/a> on the murder of Rebecca Dykes in Beirut, and via Theophrastus in the comments<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A Lebanese Uber driver has confessed to killing a British diplomat in Beirut, a judicial source has told the Guardian.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

The suspect arrested on Monday morning has been named as Tariq H, a taxi driver for Uber.<\/p>\n

The source said preliminary investigations showed the killing was not politically motivated, and that the suspect had confessed to the crime.<\/p>\n

The source said Dykes had hired the driver using the ride-hailing app. Lebanon\u2019s state news agency, NNA, said the vehicle that picked her up was identified using CCTV footage.<\/p>\n

A spokesman for Uber said in an email: \u201cWe are horrified by this senseless act of violence. Our hearts are with the victim and her family. We are working with authorities to assist their investigation in any way we can.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Unless the Lebanese police have fitted up some poor sod for reasons unknown and beaten a confession out of him, this looks pretty much an open-and-shut case. Why the hell an Uber driver, who can be linked to the crime with astonishing ease, would commit a murder of a passenger is anyone’s guess. He’s either remarkably stupid or mentally ill.<\/p>\n

Whatever the driver’s motives it’s absolutely tragic, and I was completely wrong. That’s the problem with speculation; don’t expect that I’ll stop, though.<\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Further to my post yesterday on the murder of Rebecca Dykes in Beirut, and via Theophrastus in the comments: A Lebanese Uber driver has confessed to killing a British diplomat in Beirut, a judicial source has told the Guardian. … … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,43],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6204"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6204"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6205,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6204\/revisions\/6205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}