Who was Martine Vik Magnussen and what happened to her?

MARTINE Vik Magnussen was celebrating successful exam results when she was brutally murdered in Mayfair in 2008.

Here we look at how she died and what developments were made in the case.

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Who was Martine Vik Magnussen?

Martine Vik Magnussen was a Norwegian business student who studied at Regent’s Business School London.

She was found dead on March 16, 2008, having been reported missing by her friends the previous day.

An inquest by the Westminster Coroner on 24 November 2010 concluded that Martine had been unlawfully killed.

Her father, Odd Petter Magnussen, has campaigned tirelessly for justice since the death of his daughter.

What happened to Martine?

Martine was murdered on March 14, 2008 after attending the Maddox Club in Mayfair one night.

She celebrated the class victory in her last test results.

She was found on March 16, 2008 under a pile of rubble in the basement of a block of flats on Great Portland Street, London.

It turned out that she had been strangled, and further investigation revealed that she had been raped.

Some of her belongings are still missing from what she was wearing on the night of her death, including her earrings and shoes.

CCTV footage from the night in question shows her leaving the club at around 2am with Farouk Abdulhak, a fellow Regent’s Business School student.

Abdulhak is the son of a Yemeni billionaire and was a former friend of Martine, with whom he got into a taxi.

Shortly after the incident, he left the country, flew to Egypt and then on to Yemen.

Police say he is the only suspect in the case and have asked to return to the UK to face questioning.

Other people have been arrested on suspicion of being an accessory to murder, including a woman in her 60s who was taken into custody on March 8, 2022.

This was hailed as a major breakthrough in the fight for answers in the case.