After a gentle start to proceedings, it was a shock to hear details of Michaela's last day, writes RUADHÁN Mac CORMAICin Port Louis
IT MAY have been that the morning had until then been taken up with procedural issues and the reading of the charge sheet to the jury – events so dramatic that a woman at the back of the public gallery was admonished for snoring – but it came as a jolt when prosecution counsel Mehdi Manrakhan brought the court suddenly back to the day Michaela McAreavey died.
January 10th, 2011. That day, the third of John and Michaela McAreavey’s “dream honeymoon”, the couple had breakfast together at Legends Hotel.
John went for a golf lesson, Michaela stayed at the swimming pool, and they met up again for lunch at the poolside restaurant. After their meal, Michaela ordered tea and went to their room to get some biscuits. “John stayed behind and waited . . . and waited, for her to come back,” prosecution counsel said.
“Members of the jury, Michaela would never return. This was the last time that John saw his beautiful wife Michaela.”
Concerned that his wife was taking too long to return, John settled the restaurant bill and walked to room 1025, Mr Manrakhan said. There was no answer at the door, so he went to the reception desk to ask for help. When he entered the room, Michaela was lying in the bath. She was already dead when he tried to revive her.
Just behind the prosecution team in court sat John McAreavey’s sister Claire and his brother-in-law Mark Harte, who listened intently and inscrutably as the lawyers outlined the state’s case. They were accompanied by Pat McRann, the first secretary from the Irish Embassy in South Africa, and flanked by two PSNI officers who have travelled to Mauritius for the trial.
At the far-left sat the two accused, Avinash Treebhoowoon (30) and Sandip Moneea (42). The two men sat as far apart as their bench would allow, and rarely looked at one another.
Police and court staff took steps to improve conditions yesterday, setting up steel barriers to prevent a crush in the morning dash for seats and installing a new speaker system so everyone in the overflowing public gallery could follow the hearing.
One of the planks of the prosecution case, as detailed by counsel yesterday, is a hotel worker named Raj Theekoy. At about 2.40pm on the day of the killing, Mr Theekoy was near room 1025 when he heard a woman’s voice screaming, “‘Ah, Ah, Ah,’ as if she was in pain.”
A few moments later, he saw the accused men coming out of room 1025 – Mr Treebhoowoon’s face appeared wet and he was wiping his face with his hand, according to the eyewitness’s account. Later, when news of the killing had spread, Mr Theekoy says he met Mr Treebhoowoon and asked him what had happened in room 1025. Nothing had happened, he says the accused replied, and told him he was to keep quiet. When he asked again a short time later, he says, Mr Treebhoowoon told him: “If you open your mouth, I’ll get you involved in the case.”
The jury was told that while Mr Moneea has always denied involvement in Ms McAreavey’s death, Mr Treebhoowoon confessed before later retracting that confession. In a statement to police three days after the killing, he explained that he had been stealing in room 1025 when he was caught red-handed by Michaela. He willingly participated in her murder, the prosecution said, in order not to be exposed as a thief.
The afternoon was given over to the evidence of Harris Jeewooth, a police photographer with the crime scene investigation unit.
Mr Jeewooth came under sustained and at times aggressive questioning from defence counsel, who showered him with precise questions about his modus operandi and his recollections of the scene. Had he photographed the sand outside the terrace door to check for footprints? No, he replied. How many computer screens did he see in the security control room? He couldn’t remember. Would colour photos not have been more useful to the court? So it continued for more than two hours.
The lawyers zoned in on a belt photographed at the scene. Was it a man’s belt? What state was it in? Was it not a “catastrophic failure” that more photos were not taken, asked the theatrical junior counsel for the defence. (The judge upheld an objection to this phraseology.) At one point, the same lawyer referred to Mr Jeewooth’s “quasi-expert evidence” and asked how long he had been with the crime scene unit as of January last year. Four months, he replied. It was his first murder case.
When the defence suggested that a packet of biscuits seemed to have moved position in photographs taken two days apart, a loud “Aha!” came from the defence team and the two dozen law students gathered behind them. The judge let it pass.
By the time he adjourned for the day, the chaos of Tuesday morning was forgotten and the court had settled into its quiet working rhythm. Apart from the whirr of the air-conditioning, the courtroom had grown so quiet that you could make out the sounds of each individual car making its way through the busy streets outside.