Nóra Quoirin death: Girl's body 'placed in the jungle'

The mother of a 15-year-old girl found dead in a Malaysian jungle says she believes her daughter's body was placed by somebody in the spot she was found.

Nóra Quoirin, from Balham in south London, vanished from her room at the Dusun rainforest resort in August 2019.

Her body was found near the resort nine days after she went missing. A coroner recorded her death was by misadventure.

Meabh Quoirin, who thinks Nora was abducted, said the family would "never give up their fight for justice".

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Nóra was born with holoprosencephaly, a disorder that affects brain development, and her parents have always believed that wandering off from the resort - which is about 40 miles from Kuala Lumpur - was not something their daughter would have done.

A post-mortem examination found Nóra had died three days before her body was found, due to gastrointestinal bleeding from hunger and stress endured over a prolonged period.

But Mrs Quoirin points out that the jungle had been searched on four occasions in the seven days leading up to her death, with police suggesting the teenager been "alive and moving" during the first stages of the search.

"The fact that search teams were there, along with many hundreds of volunteers in that particular area so close to her death, makes us feel that she was placed there at a later point," Mrs Quoirin told the BBC.

Nóra's parents Maebh and Sebastien Quoirin want there to be a revision of the inquest verdict

The teenager's mother pointed out that the inquest had not explained how her daughter ended up in the jungle, where her unclothed body was eventually found by a group of volunteers.

"I suppose the easiest one to dwell on was the fact there was an open window [in the family's chalet]," said Mrs Quoirin, who is originally from Belfast.

"Someone opened that window, it wasn't any of us. That is totally unexplained."

Malaysian police have always treated Nóra's disappearance as a missing person case. They maintain there was no suggestion of abduction, kidnap or foul play.

During the search for her daughter, Mrs Quoirin told emergency services that their work meant "the world to us"

"Nóra always looked to someone else for reassurance on what she should do next so the idea that she would have climbed out a window - even found a window or seen a window in the pitch black - is in our view crazy," Mrs Quorin said.

"If she had somehow mistaken which door was for the bathroom and had gone out the front door for instance... she was barefoot, she would have instantly felt pain and she would have been absolutely petrified."

Nóra's parents have asked for a revision of the inquest verdict as "so many questions have been left unanswered".

Nóra was born with holoprosencephaly, a disorder which affects brain development

"I think it will be impossible to ever have all the answers to questions that inevitably we will agonise over for the rest of our lives," Mrs Quoirin said.

"We can do more justice by at least recognising who this child was and that she wouldn't have - couldn't have - done the things that have been ruled through this verdict of misadventure.

"It's our duty to Nora to stand up for that, to really recognise who she was and stand up in the name of all children with special needs, to recognise who these children are, what they represent in our society."