Escort who married Earl of Shaftesbury and paid her brother £100,000 to murder him when he tried to divorce her laments her 'broken life' after serving 9 years in jail and says her ex 'was a good person'

The widow of the 10th Earl of Shaftesbury who paid her brother £100,000 to murder him when he asked for a divorce has moaned the killing 'broke her life too'.

Jamila Ben M'Barek, a former escort who met her husband Anthony Ashley-Cooper when he hired her as a prostitute for the night, has also apologised to the family of her ex-husband after she and her brother Mohammed hatched a plan to kill him.

Speaking in Channel 5 documentary A Very British Sex Scandal: The Earl & The Escort, after being released from prison following a nine-year stint behind bars, and while Mohammed is still serving a 25-year term, she said her late husband was 'really generous'.

During their two-year marriage, M'Barek lived a life of luxury in the Earl's lavish properties in the South of France and was set to inherit £4 million from him. But after a turbulent time in which her husband returned to his old ways of ringing call girls and had an affair with an escort, he asked his wife for a divorce in 2004.

Soon after, in November, the Earl walked out of a hotel bar in Cannes and said he'd return to finish his drink - but he never came back. Five months later, his skeleton was found in a ravine near the city in the South of France, and Jamila and Mohammed were arrested for his murder.

Jamila Ben M'Barek, a former escort who was jailed in 2007 for the murder of her ex-husband the 10th Earl of Shaftesbury, has said her life has been 'broken' by the killing

The siblings were sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2007 after being convicted of murdering the 66-year-old aristocrat, however Jamila's sentence was reduced on appeal to 20 years and she was released after nine years.

As she appears in the Channel 5 documentary, Jamila expresses her regret over what happened - but maintains Mohammed killed her ex-husband in self defence.

She describes wanting to apologise for the 'pain' caused to the late Earl's family, including his remaining son Nick, and to 'explain' what had happened.

'I feel sorry for his family because Anthony was a very nice person, really generous. I regret what happened,' she said. 'Of course, it broke my life, too.' 

The couple met in 2002 when Anthony, who had already been married twice before to Bianca de Paolis and Christina Montan, with whom he shares two sons, booked her as an escort for the evening.

Appearing in a Channel 5 documentary A Very British Sex Scandal: The Earl & The Escort, Jamila sticks to her story that the Earl was killed by her brother Mohammed in self defence

Jamila was jailed for more than 20 years for the Earl's murder but was released after serving nine years. Her brother remains in prison

During the documentary, Jamila describes how the Pretty Woman-style romance soon turned into a nightmare as he fell into old habits of heavy drinking, drug taking and womanising.

Although their life looked picture-perfect on the outside, the programme reveals how they began living separate lives as he frequented underground bars in Cannes while she remained at home.

Jamila recalled: 'When I got married to Anthony the first year was perfect. I had my house, I had my kids with me, I was in a good way to fulfil my dreams.'

However, she noted her husband was 'lonely' and often cried about his mother, as his relationship with family members, who did not approve of his third marriage, became more distant.

'He was a sad person,' Jamila recalled. 

She described his drinking becoming out of control and trying to stop it by looking after him '24 hours' a day.

'My sister and my family said 'you're crazy',' she recalled.

One night, after Jamila went to a party alone in Monte Carlo and returned in the early hours of the morning, she claims she found young women running around the house, wearing 'my clothes'.

Anthony Ashley-Cooper, the 10th Earl of Shaftesbury, went missing from Cannes in November 2004 

The Earl's second son Nick (pictured with his wife Dinah) is understood to be battling to stop Jamila from using the title 'Countess'

She claims they were rifling through her children's belongings and asked her husband who they were - to which he replied they were his 'friends'.

From this night, the relationship continued to disintegrate, and soon they separated.

By April 2004 he had met another woman he hoped to marry, a nightclub hostess named Nadia Boche. 

Within months of meeting her, he bought Nadia a house and showered her with money and gifts - just as he had done to Jamila when they first met.  

As their marriage crumbled and he told her in 2004 that he wanted a divorce, she gave him an ominous warning, telling him: 'You'll be sorry.'

Shortly after their angry exchange, the Earl was dead, having been murdered by the Countess' brother Mohammed, who carried out the killing on her order.

They almost got away with the murder with the aristocrat's badly decomposed body not being found for six months.

Speaking about the murder in the documentary, Jamila maintains it was all an accident and Mohammed killed the Earl in self-defence after they got into a fight.

She claims that, after leaving the hotel bar where he had told the bartender he'd be back to his drink, the Earl travelled to her house in a taxi and was 'drunk' on arrival.

Jamila claims she and her then-husband got into an argument, which awoke her brother who was staying with her and sleeping in the next room.

She said: '[Mohammed] woke up and the fight starts. Big fight.' 

While the violence continued, Jamila claimed she put her hands over her ears and begged them to stop, but 'nobody wanted to'.

She then claimed the Earl put his hand on Mohammed's throat, and somehow Mohammed ended up on top of him.

Then, without explaining how, she claimed the Earl died suddenly, before Mohammed disposed of his body.

The Earl and Jamila married in Holland in 2002, just months after they met (pictured in a registry office)

Jamila has previously lamented what she believes to be a lack of justice after the court didn't believe her and her brother's version of events. 

Speaking to the Daily Mail last year, she said: 'The trial was a joke, there was no justice, the judge just wouldn't accept anything I said. How can it be premeditated? Why would I ask my brother to kill my husband in the house where I live with my children in the middle of the day?

'This is not justice, it's racism, if my name had been Jennifer or Caroline, I wouldn't have been convicted of murder, it's because I am Arabic and because of that I was given 25 years for a murder I didn't commit.'

She insisted: 'It was a fight between two men and it happened in front of me in the hallway of my house. I tried to stop it but there was nothing I could do. They were hitting and punching each other and then Anthony was dead.'

When the case came to trial in 2007, two years after the Earl's body was found, key to the case was a wiretap police had of her talking with her sister about £100,000 she had paid in the weeks leading up to the murder - though her sister had no knowledge of or involvement in the plot.

She dismissed this while speaking to the Mail and said: 'They don't have a proper translation for the recording, I was speaking Arabic slang with my sister, I told her I had paid my brother £100,000 over many years, not in one go and not for killing Anthony.

'We didn't plan anything together, I just wanted my brother to help me tell Anthony to respect me more and not come home with prostitutes and gangsters.'

The Earl's family suffered more tragedy just a month after his body was found when his eldest son, Anthony, died of a heart attack.

Now, as Jamila retains the title of Countess which she boasts on her Instagram page, the Earl's second son Nick, who is now the 11th Earl of Shaftesbury, is understood to have pledged to do all that it takes to strip his stepmother of the title.

She said last year: 'Nick has said he will take the title from me but he won't have it easy. I will take him on in court and I will fight him and I will win.

'He has no right, I married his father and so legally I am the Countess whether he likes it or not. He can pay for all the expensive lawyers he wants but I will still fight him and win.

Speaking today to MailOnline, she added: 'Anthony's death was an accident, I'm sorry he is dead but it wasn't anything to do with me.

'But what I do want from the family is my rightful share of the inheritance, I am his legal spouse and therefore I am entitled to what is mine.

'It is my right, I was convicted, and I have served time, in jail but I am legally entitled to a share of the estate.

‘This was a quarrel between two men, I didn’t have anything to do with.

'I will keep fighting for it and I have lawyers looking into it, I'm sorry for the family but his death was an accident as a result of a fight, and this is not over.'