In Songlines #56 we first reported on the extraordinary case of a glamorous Lebanese pop star found brutally stabbed to death in her luxury apartment in Dubai. The death of singer Suzanne Tamim shocked the Arab pop world, but the revelation that her killing was ordered by Hisham Talaat Moustafa, heir to the massive Talaat Moustafa Group fortune and a prominent member of president Mubarak’s government in Egypt’s Shura Council, turned it into the biggest scandal of the decade in Egypt.

Tamim rose to fame after appearing in the TV musical talent show Studio el fan in Lebanon in 1996. Like so many Lebanese pop stars, she became one of the icons of the pan-Arab pop world whose epicentre is the Egyptian capital, Cairo. She was twice divorced by the time she came to Cairo, and she subsequently moved to London and then Dubai. At the time of her death, she had been married to Iraqi-born British kickboxing champion Riyadh Al-Azzawi for 18 months.

After Moustafa’s arrest the Egyptian media reported that he had been in a three-year relationship with Tamim prior to her marriage to Al-Azzawi, at which point he had paid retired Egyptian policeman Mohsen Al-Sukkary $2 million to kill the pop star. Both men have been sentenced to death pending the Egyptian grand mufti’s confirmation and have the right to appeal.

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