Body of Para who died in police custody THIRTEEN years ago turns up at mortuary more than a decade after he was 'buried'



The body of a Falklands war veteran who died in police custody has been discovered in a mortuary more than a decade after he was apparently buried.



The family of ex-paratrooper Christopher Alder, 37, thought they had given him a dignified burial in 2000 after he died in horrific circumstances in a police cell two years earlier.



But his devastated sister, Janet, was yesterday informed that her brother’s body was still in a mortuary – and detectives now believe a woman, named as Grace Kamara, may have been buried in his place.

Christopher Alder choked to death at a police station in 1998. It has been discovered that his body has laid in a mortuary for ten years when it was thought he had been buried

Christopher Alder was a former paratrooper. An inquest found that four police officers were guilty of the 'most serious neglect of duty' when he died

They have asked for Mr Alder’s family’s permission to exhume the buried body to positively identify it. Last night, Miss Alder, 49, said: ‘I’m in shock. This is an absolutely disgusting situation.

‘[Police] told me that in 1999 a woman called Grace Kamara, who was about 60, died from a heart attack. She was kept in deep freeze because her family, who all live in Nigeria, were asking for repatriation.’



Miss Kamara was finally due to be buried in Sheffield last Friday. A friend asked to inspect her body on the day of her funeral, but when they arrived at the mortuary, they found Mr Alder in her place.

Mr Alder's sister Janet has battled for justice, but lost a recent challenge after claiming she had been racially abused during the investigation

Miss Alder said: ‘The undertakers went to get the body and it was then they found it wasn’t Grace, it was a man.



‘It’s just unbelievable – the police even said to me that they can’t say for sure that it was Grace that was buried in Christopher’s grave. I don’t know what to believe.’



Miss Alder has now been told by officers that in 2000 the Hull mortuary where her brother’s body was kept had been moved to an unknown, temporary location.



A year later it was moved permanently to Hull Royal Infirmary.



Miss Alder added: ‘I want to know what’s happened to Christopher’s body all these years.



‘It’s like they just went into the mortuary, saw a black person and said “send this one out”.’



Mr Alder, a father-of-two who served during the Falklands War, choked to death at the feet of four officers on a police cell floor on April 1, 1998.



He had been punched during an argument outside a nightclub in his home city of Hull and was taken to hospital, where he became hostile, perhaps because of his head injury. He was then discharged into the hands of Humberside Police, who arrested him for a breach of the peace and took him to Queen’s Gardens police station.

By the time he arrived, he was unconscious and his trousers were around his knees. He was left handcuffed on the floor while the four officers looked on and did nothing.



They could allegedly be heard on CCTV footage making monkey noises as he lay dying for 11 minutes. They later claimed they thought he was ‘putting on an act’.

Police officers appear to stand around as Mr Alder chokes in a police station in Hull

Two uniformed police officers try to save Mr Alder as a group watch on

Despite efforts to save him, a police officer tells his sergeant that Mr Alder has died

But a damning report by the Independent Police Complaints Commission found the men responsible of ‘unwitting racism’. It concluded that PC Matthew Barr, PC Neil Blakey, PC Nigel Dawson and Sergeant John Dunn – who all refused to co-operate with the IPCC investigation – were guilty of a ‘most serious neglect of duty’.



The officers were charged with manslaughter but acquitted at Teesside Crown Court in 2002 on the orders of the trial judge.



Last night, Hull City Council said it was ‘appalled’ when, last Friday, ‘it was made aware of a situation relating to the body of a man, who was in his late 30s, located in the city mortuary’.

