27-year-old Kamonnan Thiamphanit, known as Angela to friends, was heard screaming on the evening of Sunday 7 April by neighbours before her body was found by police on Monday.
The Metropolitan Police has referred itself to a watchdog after it emerged calls from friends concerned about her welfare were not acted upon.
Kamonnan Thiamphanit, 27, was found dead by police at a property on Stanhope Place in London’s plush Bayswater area on Monday morning, prompting investigation into reports of screams coming from the building over the weekend.
Neighbours living close to the £4million house, formerly serving the Ethiopian Embassy, told MailOnline they had heard loud music and shouting late on Saturday night and into the early hours of Sunday morning, hours before police received calls expressing concern for the dual-nationality Chinese/Hong Kong and Thai woman.
Police have now confirmed they are ‘supporting her devastated family and friends as best we can as they come to terms with their tragic loss’, noting Ms Thiamphanit, who worked in London, has relatives based overseas.
‘While our detectives are keeping an open mind regarding any motive, I can confirm they believe it is possible that her attacker was known to her,’ said Commander Owain Richards on Thursday.
Residents of the area told MailOnline they believe the house is rented out as an Airbnb-style holiday let and that it does not have any permanent residents, having previously served as the site of the Ethiopian diplomatic mission in the United Kingdom.
One wealthy local said the types of people leasing the property varied – but that most only tended to stay for a short time.
A resident living in Stanhope Place said: ‘All kinds of people rent it for a few days. In early March there were three women in the house who partied over the weekend and made lots of noise.
‘A Swedish family were in the property over Easter. I’ve never seen the victim and she wouldn’t have been in the house for very long. She would have come after Easter because this family were in the house before that.’
Recalling the events of the weekend he said: ‘We heard a lot of loud music coming from the house and it sounded as if they were having quite a party.
‘I remember discussing it with my family and we said that we’d like to speak to the owner but the problem is we don’t know who the owner is. There are lots of people coming and going at that property.’
The £4m home is spread across two floors and also has a basement and roof garden.
Alan Granberg, who lives in a mews home located behind the street, said on Saturday night three different riders accidentally knocked on his door with food deliveries meant for the house in Stanhope Place where Angela’s body was found.
He said: ‘There was lots of noise and music coming from the house and I told the delivery riders that I hadn’t ordered any food.
‘My house is also (the same house number) and whoever ordered the food couldn’t have been there for long and didn’t know the area well because they didn’t give the right directions.’
He added: ‘There are lots of homes in this area which are available on very short term lets. I’ve never seen this woman before and believe she’d only been there a few days.’
“Reports of torture, deaths in custody, and a lack of medical attention have raised concerns among human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.”
Saudi Arabia currently detains over 450,000 Ethiopian migrants, highlighting the dire situation undocumented migrants face in the country.
Saudi Arabia hosts about 750,000 Ethiopian migrants, with about 60% (450,000) likely to have travelled to the country through irregular means.
The official process to repatriate approximately 70,000 nationals is expected to commence in the coming weeks, following Saudi Arabia’s commitment to supporting the return of thousands of Ethiopians detained there this month.
Among the detainees, hundreds are held at the Al-Shumaisi Detention Centre, a facility established to detain individuals who violate residency and labour regulations. Despite its capacity to accommodate 32,000 inmates, the centre currently holds a significant number of Ethiopian migrants.
Saudi Arabia hosts around 750,000 Ethiopian migrants, with the majority estimated to have entered irregularly. Despite efforts to deport undocumented migrants, thousands remain detained after serving sentences, pleading for assistance, and enduring dire conditions within the detention centres.
Reports of torture, deaths in custody, and a lack of medical attention have raised concerns among human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW).
In December 2020, the human rights body released a report revealing that deplorable conditions are holding hundreds of migrants in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The detainees, primarily from Ethiopia but also from other African and Asian countries, are being held pending deportation due to their lack of valid residency permits.
According to HRW’s investigation, guards using rubber-coated metal rods are torturing and beating the migrants in severely overcrowded rooms.
The organisation documented at least three allegations of deaths in custody between October and November. HRW conducted interviews with seven Ethiopians under custody and two Indians facing deportation, all of whom recounted their confinement in cramped rooms alongside up to 350 others.
The report highlights the dire conditions faced by migrants in Saudi Arabia and calls for improved treatment and protections for detainees.
Saudi authorities have not taken any concrete action, despite repeated calls for investigations.
☆ Saudi Arabia’s notorious kafala (sponsorship) system remained substantially intact in 2024, with migrant workers and domestic workers in particular continuing to suffer routine abuse. The Saudi authorities ramped up their crackdown on Ethiopian migrants, with mass killings at the Saudi-Yemen border.
☆ Today, around a third of the total population in Saudi Arabia are migrant workers mainly from African countries like Ethiopia and Eritrea, and Asian countries like Bangladesh and the Philippines.
☆ Ancient Saudi tribe in danger of ‘disappearing off face of the earth: Part of the site is the home of the Huwaitat tribe (descendants of Fatima, daughter of the false prophet Mohammad) who have spanned Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Sinai peninsula for generations, tracing their lineage back before the founding of the Saudi state. At least 20,000 members of the tribe now face eviction due to the project, with no information about where they will live in the future.
Conservationists have sounded the alarm over $1tn project that will stretch across vast area of Saudi desert
☆ They warn that it could impact birds including nightingales and larks migrating between Europe and Africa
A Foolish Man Builds on Sand Instead of Rock
❖[Matthew 7:26]❖
“And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.”
🫠 Humiliation for Saudi Arabia as it’s ‘forced to scale back $1.5trillion plans for 106-mile-long city The Line to just 1.5miles with workers already being laid off at desert construction site’
End of The Line? Plan for Saudi NEOM megacity ‘involves technology that doesn’t exist’ and was ‘untethered to reality’, insiders say as officials admit long delays with 106-mile metropolis ‘reduced to just 1.5 miles with 2030 deadline’
The revelation that Saudi Arabia‘s megacity project ‘The Line’ has been scaled back is the latest sign that the kingdom’s audacious state-building enterprise is not going according to plan.
The Line is one of 15 projects announced as part of Mohammed bin Salman’s ambitious NEOM undertaking, which is part of the Crown Prince’s overall ‘Vision 2030’ scheme to reshape his oil-dependent country’s economy and image.
The linear metropolis was meant to be home to around 1.5 million residents by the end of the decade, with plans to ultimately increase its full capacity to nine million.
The 1,640-foot-tall structure was also meant to stretch across 106 miles of desert, but – according to people familiar to the matter, cited by Bloomberg – it will now only be one-and-a-half miles long (a 98 percent reduction in its planned length) and be home to just 300,000 people by 2030.
The report that it has been scaled back is just the latest sign that Bin Salman’s megacity is stalling before even getting off the ground.
Analysts have long expressed scepticism over the project which has touted technology that is yet to be invented. One former worker once described The Line as being ‘untethered to reality’.
Saudi Arabia is pushing forward with the construction of Neom, a futuristic megacity and ecological prestige project, despite international criticism over human rights violations.
According to a recent report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) people from the Howeitat tribe who live in the region earmarked for the city have been displaced and their homes demolished without adequate compensation. What is more, one Howeitat man has been killed and the death sentences of three further tribe members have been confirmed, while three more have been handed 50-year jail sentences on terrorism charges.
‘Neom is built with Saudi blood’
This view is echoed by Lina al-Hathloul, director of communication of the London-based Saudi human rights watchdog ALQST. “Our main concern is that Neom is built on Saudi blood,” the sister of the famous Saudi women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul told DW.
“The trials against the tribe people were conducted behind closed doors. In order to advance the project, the judiciary is even prepared to execute people,” al-Hathloul said.
Neom is not the only place in Saudi Arabia where people have been forcibly displaced. From January to October 2022, authorities in the port city of Jeddah had many houses demolished to implement urban development plans. In the process, thousands of people became victims of unlawful forced evictions, including foreign nationals, as Amnesty International reported.
“We have seen, time and again, that anyone who disagrees with the crown prince, or gets in his way, risks being sentenced to jail or to death, whether peaceful protesters, social media critics, or people unfortunate enough to live on land his regime wants to seize,” Basyouni said.
Saudi Arabia’s 100-mile-long and 1,500ft-high linear megacity set to be built in the desert will be a ‘deathtrap’ for millions of migrating birds, experts have warned.
The Kingdom says The Line, which will cost $1trillion to build, will be an ‘unprecedented living experience’ that preserves ‘surrounding nature’.
However, conservationists have sounded the alarm over the vast project, saying it will be a deadly barrier for birds migrating between Europe and Africa each year.
Saudi Arabia has branded it a ‘civilisation revolution’, but researchers have identified the project as one of the 15 most pressing conservation issues to watch in 2024.
And experts have said in a study released on Monday that a combination of factors mean it poses a huge risk to birds that migrate over Saudi Arabia every year.
These include the mirrored facades, the city’s orientation and the intention to have wind turbines along the top of it.
‘Birds flying into tall windows is a serious problem, and this is a building that is 500m high going across Saudi Arabia, with windmills on top,’ Professor William Sutherland, director of research in Cambridge University’s zoology department, told The Times.
‘It’s also kind of like a mirror so you don’t really see it,’ Sutherland, who led the study, added. ‘So unless they do something about it, there’s a serious risk that there could be lots of damage to migratory birds.’
Nightingales, wheatears, larks, sandgrouse and turtle doves are all species of bird that use the migratory route which could be affected.
Other species known to travel that way include the Egyptian vulture and saker falcon, both of which are endangered globally, The Times reports.
The Line’s vast construction will extend from the heart of another planned Red Sea megacity known as NEOM, a plank of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s bid to diversify the Gulf state’s oil-dependent economy – to the ocean
The publication said the area The Line is set to occupy is already a bottleneck for an estimated 2.1million birds that travel between Europe and Africa every autumn.
It noted that every year, 988million birds are killed in collisions with buildings in the US alone, with the risk found to be higher in areas with glass or mirrored buildings.
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