A Lebanese Uber driver
has confessed to killing a British diplomat in Beirut, a judicial source has
told the Guardian.
The body of Rebecca
Dykes was found on the side of a motorway in the early hours of Saturday
morning. Local police suggested she had been strangled. Her body was found
without any identity papers on the Metn highway, which leads out of the
Lebanese capital to the north-eastern suburbs. A postmortem suggested she had
died at about 4am on Saturday.
Dykes, who was believed
to be 30 years old, had spent the evening with friends at a cafe in Gemmayze, a
district of Beirut known for its bars and restaurants. She is thought to have
left on her own at around midnight.
The suspect arrested on
Monday morning has been named as Tariq H, a taxi driver for Uber. The source said
preliminary investigations showed the killing was not politically motivated,
and that the suspect had confessed to the crime.
The source said Dykes
had hired the driver using the ride-hailing app. Lebanon’s state news agency,
NNA, said the vehicle that picked her up was identified using CCTV footage.
The results of two
autopsies showed that Dykes had not been raped, contrary to media reports, but
investigators believe the suspect had attempted to sexually assault her, the
source said.
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