Royal Marine murder: Coroner rules death was unlawful

Carl Davies was found dead on Reunion Island in November 2011, two days after arriving

The mother of a former Royal Marine killed on an island in the Indian Ocean has welcomed a coroner's verdict that his death was unlawful.

Carl Davies, 33, was stabbed and beaten on French-governed Reunion in 2011, but the one man convicted of his murder was subsequently cleared at a retrial.

Coroner Patricia Harding told his inquest in Kent the full details of how Mr Davies died might never be known.

His mother, Maria, says the ruling will help the family "fight for justice".

Mr Davies, a former teacher, from Sittingbourne, was found at the bottom of a ravine on Reunion in November 2011.

The trial of Vincent Madoure on the island in 2017 heard that Mr Davies' death, just two days after he arrived on the island, had initially been treated as an accident until a post-mortem examination revealed he had been beaten and suffered a number of stab wounds.

Four men were initially charged with his murder, but cases against three of them were later dropped before Mr Madoure, then 30, was found guilty and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Carl Davies' mother, Maria, said she was "broken inside" but would continue to fight for her son

However, he was acquitted in a retrial, leaving Mr Davies' family once again seeking "closure", nearly 10 years after his brutal killing.

After the coroner's ruling, Mrs Davies said the family would write to all the judges on Reunion involved in various stages of the investigation, urging them to review the entire case.

She said: "From day one it was bungled. It just wasn't investigated properly. To have 'death by misadventure' would have been awful. Unlawful killing was really the only way we believe it could have gone."

She added: "Underneath, I am absolutely broken, but when you take something so precious from me and my family, don't expect us not to fight."

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