Archive - Monday, 1 February 1999


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BRITISH Gas have offered to fly

A WIDOW still fighting to prove her husband was murdered is to return to the spot where he died.

Jan Edwards - dubbed Mother Courage by MP Martin Bell - also plans to question the Mafia-busting Russian policewoman, who is responsible for the investigation into Dave Edwards' death.

"It's the last place on earth I want to go to," said Jan on Friday. "But I'm going to ask them why they've closed the investigation four times and why they've never answered any of the questions put to them."

Last week bosses at British Gas - for whom Dave had been working - offered to fly Jan and her son Wayne to St Petersburg.

But they insisted that last month's open verdict did not suggest foul play - despite a decision by prosecutors in St Petersburg to reopen the case again.

Dave was working as a British Gas contractor in the city when he was mown down by a police car in October 1994.

Jan, who has three children, has always believed he was murdered in a dispute over protection rackets.

On Friday, Jan said she was reluctant to accept British Gas' offer.

"Dave was their responsibility - to look after him and bring him home," she said. "They didn't do that. The least they could do is find out what happened."

Instead she called for help from the Foreign Office - to give her the credibility to ask organised crime specialist Ekaterina Victorovna the questions that she wanted consular staff to ask in 1994.

"This country has not done a thing for us," she said. "I need to need to get there and I need somebody to be with me."

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.