LONDON — Police have been accused of ‘framing’ Omar Benguit and manufacturing the evidence that has kept him in prison for 23 years for the murder of a South Korean student. According to a BBC Panorama investigation, 15 witnesses used to support the prosecution case have now said the police pressured them to embellish statements or lie in court in their investigation into the brutal murder of Jong-Ok Shin.Police knew the testimony of the main prosecution witness in the trial was directly contradicted by CCTV evidence, the investigation learned.Dorset Police did not directly address the suggestion that officers had framed Benguit, but said its investigation was “thorough, detailed and very complex”.Jong-Ok Shin, known as Oki,was stabbed to death while she was walking home from a Bournemouth nightclub in 2002. Benguit, an addict with a history of drug and knife crime, was convicted at a third trial in 2005, after two previous juries failed to reach verdicts.The BBC has investigated this case over nine years, previously reporting that some witnesses had said they gave false evidence after being pressured by police. Witness testimony was crucial to the prosecution as there was no CCTV or forensic evidence linking Benguit to the crime.After reviewing Panorama’s evidence, retired murder squad detective Brian Murphy called for the Independent Office for Police Conduct to investigate Dorset Police’s handling of the case.The former detective chief inspector, who has been involved in more than 200 murder investigations, said in his view Benguit’s conviction was not safe. “This cries out for a review without a doubt,” he said.Des Jenson, Benguit’s barrister, said that if police had coerced witnesses to lie, “it means that they have manufactured evidence, they’ve perverted the course of justice”.The murder led to intense pressure on Dorset Police, because Bournemouth’s economy relies heavily on international students and the South Korean government wanted the murderer caught.The police built their case against Benguit around the testimony of a drug addict as the prime witness, who BBC did not identify by name. She said she had been driving three people, including Benguit, on the night of the murder.The police witness said she had stopped the car after passing Oki — and that all three men had gone to talk to her. They tried to persuade the student to come to a party and, when she refused, Benguit stabbed her, she said.The witness had a history of making false allegations and her account contradicted Oki’s dying testimony, that she had been stabbed by a single, masked attacker.In her third and final statement, she claimed she had stopped at a BP garage on Charminster Road in Bournemouth before picking up Benguit and the others. But Panorama has found that when police checked CCTV cameras, they could not find any footage of her or the men.It was the same with her description of what happened after the murder. She claimed she had driven the three men to what was then a crack house a mile away to get cleaned up.There was a CCTV camera across the road and police could see footage of addicts going in and out. But they did not find any evidence of the witness, the three men or the car.Her account was the only evidence placing Benguit at the murder scene, but her account was supported in court by witnesses who gave evidence about his actions before and after the murder. Most of them were also drug addicts.Panorama has now obtained more evidence that suggests some officers may have been deliberately trying to frame Benguit.Police interviewed five drug addicts who had been at the crack house that night and they all initially denied having seen him there.But when they were re-interviewed months later, all five changed their stories in the same way. They all said they had seen Omar Benguit on the night of the murder and that he had been covered in blood.It was their evidence in court that helped to convict him.One of the crack house witnesses had already told the BBC she lied in court.The second witness, Andi Miller, said the prime witness had told the police about dozens of thefts they had committed together, and the police used that to get him to tell lies.”They had me bang to rights on jobs, you know what I mean?” he said. “And I never got charged for any of it. I felt as though the police pressurised me into saying something that wasn’t true.”The BBC has also spoken to the family and friends of the last two crack house witnesses. They say the couple have admitted lying in court. That means the evidence of 15 key prosecution witnesses has now been discredited or undermined.The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) is currently considering Benguit’s case, after the BBC discovered CCTV evidence in 2021.It was grainy CCTV footage of a man who looked like Benguit using a phone box on Charminster Road about 25 minutes after the murder.If the man in the footage is him, then he cannot have been at the crack house cleaning up, as the prime witness claimed.The CCRC discovered that 135 CCTV tapes from the original police investigation had gone missing.The commission has concluded it was possible that the man in the grainy phone box footage was Benguit, but it could not be sure.Now, Panorama has uncovered new evidence that strengthens the possible alibi.At the time, Benguit and other addicts were regularly using the phone box on Charminster Road to arrange drug purchases with their dealer.Documents obtained by Panorama show a call was made from the phone box to Benguit’s dealer at the exact time that the man who looks like him was captured on CCTV.The combination of the CCTV footage and the phone records strongly suggests that Omar Benguit was in the phone box that night and has an alibi that disproves the crack house evidence.The program has also discovered that the police were aware of this potential alibi at the time.They knew the man in the phone box resembled Benguit and they knew that a call had been made to his dealer at exactly the same time. Rather than investigating the alibi properly, police appear to have buried it.Criminologist Barry Loveday, who has been researching the case for 20 years, said Dorset Police has serious questions to answer.”The police were highly selective in the way they collected evidence. In my opinion, Omar was framed. This was a quite elaborate frame-up,” he said.There is a possible motive for the police to try to frame Benguit — their failure to stop a suspected murderer from killing again.Danilo Restivo was suspected of murdering a 16-year-old student in Italy before he moved to England in 2002.He lived just three streets from where Oki was killed and he was an early suspect in her murder too.A woman reported to police that she heard Restivo discussing details of Oki’s murder that had not been made public.Italian police then warned Dorset Police about their suspicions, but detectives stopped investigating Restivo after his girlfriend gave him an alibi. — Agencies
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