Lee Murray Walks Free

Fozzy

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Lee-Murray-Suspected-Of-Involvement-In-Securitas-Robbery-Extradition-Request-Rejected-By-Morocco/Article/200906415317804?lpos=UK_News_Second_World_News_Article_Teaser_Region_3&lid=ARTICLE_15317804_Lee_Murray%2C_Suspected_Of_Involvement_In_Securitas_Robbery%3A_Extradition_Request_Rejected_By_Morocco

£53m Heist Suspect Will Not Be Extradited

9:45pm UK, Wednesday June 24, 2009

An extradition request for a martial arts expert arrested in connection with Britain's biggest cash robbery has been rejected by Morocco, Sky sources say.

Cage fighter Lee Murray, from Sidcup, south London, was arrested in a shopping centre the capital Rabat three years ago.

He was detained on suspicion of robbery, kidnap and other offences linked to the £53m Securitas depot robbery in Tonbridge, Kent, in February 2006.

At the time of his arrest, Det Supt Paul Gladstone, Kent Police's head of serious and major crime, said: "The arrest was made with the authority of the Crown Prosecution Service, Kent Police and the Moroccan authorities

"This latest development is part of our ongoing investigation and our inquiries continue. We remain determined to bring the people behind the robbery to justice."

The UK Home Office had made a special, one-off request for Mr Murray's extradition because Britain has no formal extradition treaty with Morocco.

The last person to have been extradited from the north African country to Britain was in 1995.

Lee "Lightning" Murray is a well-known cage fighter - a mixture of kick-boxing and wrestling.He has appeared on television and nearly died in 2005 when he was stabbed outside the Funky Buddha nightclub in London's Mayfair after a Page Three model's birthday party.

In January 2008, five men were found guilty for their part in the Kent robbery and received a total of 140 years in jail.Stuart John Royle, 49, Lea John Rusha, 35, Roger Coutts, 30, and Jetmir Bucpapa, 26, were all sentenced to 30 years, while Ermir Hysenaj, 28, was sentenced to 20 years.

http://sports.espn.go.com/extra/mma/news/story?id=4284796

Murray's release surprised him, lawyers

Comment Email Print Share By Shaun Assael
ESPN The Magazine
Archive

Lee Murray, the MMA star accused of masterminding the biggest cash robbery in history, has been released from a Moroccan prison cell to freedom, his lawyers in Morocco and London said Wednesday.

The surprise move came after a hearing before the Moroccan Supreme Court in which a panel of judges upheld Murray's claim that he is a citizen of the North African nation. British prosecutors were trying to extradite the fighter on charges that he masterminded the Feb. 22, 2006 robbery of a cash warehouse on the outskirts of London, making off with a record $92 million in cash. Abdellah Benlamhidi, Murray's Moroccan-based attorney, told ESPN that his assistant visited the maximum security Sale prison in Morocco's capital city of Rabat on Wednesday afternoon and was told Murray was gone."

Lee was freed," he wrote in an e-mail.Seven masked men with automatic weapons were involved in the 2006 heist, which began when two of the robbers abducted the bank's manager. After the assailants forced their way into the high-security warehouse, they loaded the cash into three waiting trucks. Much of the loot was recovered, but approximately $40 million is still missing.

Five of the assailants were captured and convicted at trial in London last year. Another alleged accomplice, close Murray friend Paul "The Enfoircer" Allen, is currently in custody. But British prosecutors consider Murray, a former UFC star known as "Lightning Lee", the prize.

Calls to Kent police were not returned Wednesday. It is unclear what the next step for British authorities will be.

After the robbery, Murray fled to Morocco and claimed citizenship because his father was born there. (His mother is English.) The 31-year-old lived lavishly until he was arrested by a swarm of 50 polic officers in a Rabat mall. After police found cocaine in his upscale villa, he was charged with local drug crimes. In February 2007, a court convicted him and sentenced the fighter to eight months in lockup. Since then, he has been held at the Sale prison while the Supreme Court weighed his request for asylum.

According to his UK attorney, Derek Parker, the decision caught Murray completely by surprise.

"I spoke to him last night and he didn't even know that he was going for a hearing on the extradition," Parker told The Magazine on Wednesday. "It was a complete surprise. When he arrived to court, they told him, 'You're a Moroccan citizen. You can go.' "Parker said Murray thought he was being called to testify as a witness in an unrelated case involving inmate violence.

Elated friends of the fighter who were reached in London on Wednesday evening were still trying to track him down. "All I can tell you is his messages are going straight to voicemail," said close friend Mark "The Beast" Epstein. "I want to fly to Rabat to see my mate."

Murray's professional height came in January 2004, when he fought at UFC 46 at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas dressed in a Silence of the Lambs mask and an orange jumpsuit. He prevailed over the veteran Jorge Rivera in 1:45, sparking talk that he could be the promotion's next big star. But legal troubles in the UK prevented him from entering the U.S. after that. A stabbing outside a London nightclub raised questions about whether he would fight again.

Parker said Murray has been training while in prison and that "he has every intention of fighting again." But, he said, it would probably have to be in Rabat.

"I don't think he'll be going back to the UK in our lifetime," Parker said. "And the U.S. isn't high on his list of vacation destinations either."

Murray's prison tenure has been as colorful as his history in the ring. Last month, the Wrestling Observer newsletter reported that the fighter tried to break out of his cell by using tiny saws that were hidden in his food. According to the publication, was thwarted when another prisoner broke into his cell, found the saws and informed prison officials.

At the time, he was reportedly serving time in a different cell as punishment for being caught with a laptop computer and five kilos of drugs. He also allegedly had access to expensive clothes and fine foods, making him a target. The prisoner who found the saws had reportedly entered his cell to steal his belongings.

Parker called the reports "completely untrue." Still, he said one reason for Murray release may have been that Moroccan authorities "had enough of Mr. Murray being kept in custody."

Hardly the greatest news today

JimmyFloyd

Filth!

Raze_them_all

Still though....I wonder how much he has stashed away

mirwillbeback

Scumbag of the highest order, holding women and children hostage. A true ambassador for MMA.

And if that Epstein is still fighting, I hope he gets bashed too. :mad:

cmb.

mirwillbeback wrote: »

Scumbag of the highest order, holding women and children hostage. A true ambassador for MMA.

And if that Epstein is still fighting, I hope he gets bashed too. :mad:

Ah , there is nothing like trial by media. If Murray actually was the mastermind behind the robbery and associated offencences but then he deserves to go to jail and his history of street violvence etc doesnt make him look like a nice person but epstein is uninvolved as far as we know, sure, he grew up in the same area as Murray but what exactly did he do wrong? I'm not trying to be devils advocate here but at the very least, keep your anger directed towards murray

pablohoney87

Im actually shocked he walked free. There is no denying the fact that he was a very talented fighter.

dunkamania

WHy wouldnt he walk free. Once his citizenship was approves, all they had on him was a minor drugs charge.

cmb.

Murray is back in jail:

Lee Murray's freedom was short-lived. The ex-UFC fighter who is one of the most wanted men in the UK for allegedly masterminding a $92 million cash depot heist in Tonbridge, has been re-arrested in Morocco following the hearing that refused his extradition.

"Lee was indeed rearrested right away, because the British Authorities did put [in] a formal request to the Moroccan Authorities to have him tried in Morocco for the alleged robbery," his attorney Abdellah Benlamhidi told FanHouse via email.

The Feb. 22, 2006 Securitas bank depot heist in Tonbridge, England netted a gang of thieves over £53 million, or the equivalent of over $92 million US at the time.

Five of the seven men involved in the direct raid have been sentenced for their crimes in the UK, while a sixth is still awaiting trial. Murray is the only one who has escaped the grasp of the UK legal system, which has spent much of the last three years trying to get Murray extradited in hopes of trying him under British law.

Murray, who fled to Morocco shortly after the robbery, claimed Moroccan citizenship in hopes of stiff-arming any attempts at extradition. His father, Ibrahim Murray, is Moroccan, and though Murray was born in the UK, Moroccan law holds that its citizens can not be extradited, no matter what the crime. On Wednesday, Moroccan courts ruled Murray to be Moroccan and briefly released him before re-arresting him.

Murray was originally arrested in Rabat, Morocco for cocaine possession in 2006 and sentenced to eight months. Since then, he has been held in prison while authorities determined his citizenship, and ultimately, his extradition status. In February 2007, British authorities offered to exchange suspected terrorist Mohmed Karbouzi for Murray, whom they considered the ringleader of the heist.

Ironically, just over a week ago, it was reported that Murray tried to escape from prison after small saws were found in his cell.

The 31-year-old was 8-2 with one no contest and one no decision in his career, and once went the distance in a loss to current UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva. In his only UFC fight, he defeated Jorge Rivera by triangle choke at UFC 46. Murray was invited back to the UFC but was never able to return and fight in the U.S. because of visa problems.

Murray gained a measure of cult fame in the MMA world before ever debuting in the UFC for his role in a London street fight with ex-UFC champion Tito Ortiz. In September 2005 -- just months before the heist -- Murray nearly died in a nightclub stabbing.

UK authorities are now expected to work with the police in Morrocco.

"I do expect the trial to start soon," Benlamidi told FanHouse.

Four of the Securitas thieves sentenced in the UK were ordered to serve sentences of a minimum of 15 years while a fifth will serve a minimum of 10. If convicted, Murray, however, will be sentenced under Moroccan law.

Murray's life and the bank heist are the basis for a movie currently under pre-production by Time, Inc.

rovert

lol

Fozzy

I wonder if Moroccan law would be harsher than British law in that area

Maynard

Hughes tells the story second-hand via Pat Miletich because he went back to the hotel room and was not involved in the incident (contrary to recent lore).
Here’s the snip:

“So it’s four o’clock in the morning and they had everybody leave the club, right? Well, the UFC had bussed us all over there but they didn’t have a bus to take us back. It’s down to Mark, me B]Pat Miletich[/B, Tony Fryklund, Chuck Liddell, Tito [Ortiz] and Lee Murray. Lee Murray’s crew was still there, Tito’s crew was also still there. I walked out the back door to go in the alley. Tito’s buddy jumped on my back. He jumped on my back and acted like he had me in a choke hold, just messing around, you know? Then I felt him get ripped off of me. I turned around and Tony Fryklund had HIM in a chokehold, and was really choking him. The guy looked like a mouse that just got trapped in a mousetrap; his eyes were popping out and obviously he wasn’t breathing. Tony thought he was actually attacking me – that’s the only reason he did it. So I turned round and told Tony to let him go, and Tony let him go. Then Tito’s buddy turned around and basically said ‘what the f*** are you doing?’ to Tony. Well, when he said that, one of Lee Murray’s buddies, that one guy who kind of took care of us all week long, thought this guy was actually trying to fight us, so he ran out of the crowd and cracked this kid with a right hand and knocked him out cold…. The entire alley erupted into a huge brawl. I was just standing there, and there were bodies flying all over the place. I was confused how it all happened, because it happened so fast. I was standing there with my mouth open like ‘what the hell is going on?’ I looked over and Chuck Liddell was with his back against the wall, knocking people out that were trying to go after him. Then I looked over and there’s Tito directly past me, taking his coat off, going after Lee Murray, and Lee Murray’s backing up the alley taking his jacket off. Both their jackets come off, and Tito throws a left hook at Lee Murray and misses, and right as he missed, Lee Murray counters with, like, a five-punch combo, landed right on the chin, and knocked Tito out. OUT. Tito fell face-first down to the ground, and then Lee Murray stomped him on the face a couple of times with his boots.”

I’ve heard this story told numerous times and none of them seem to be the same. This one is no different. Massive amounts of booze tend do that to a drunken herd of men.

Devastator

I really liked 1 part of that story....and completely disgusted by another.

Obviously this part about Chuck, back against the wall sounds like he was trying to stay out of it and some bell end's tried to take the opportunity to "knock out Chuck Liddell" during a ruck......seems Mr Liddell had other ideas

Maynard wrote: »

I looked over and Chuck Liddell was with his back against the wall, knocking people out that were trying to go after him.

and then theres this such a scumbag thing to do! I know you've heard various stories about this, but kicking a man when he's down...nevermind that he's knocked out is downright dirty! I want that bit not to be true

Maynard wrote: »

then Lee Murray stomped him on the face a couple of times with his boots.”

paulieeye

Maynard wrote: »

I looked over and Chuck Liddell was with his back against the wall, knocking people out that were trying to go after him

weird. Just 10 minutes ago I read a bit in Chuck Liddell's book that said something like. "If your every outnumbered in a streetfight put ur back against the wall to cut down the advances"

Practices what he preaches