1970s murder in Trinidad makes British movie plothttp://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_news?id=161286909Monday, March 3rd 2008
executed: Abdul Malik
A ghastly murder in Trinidad that involved a British socialite and a self-anointed Black Power leader of the 1970s, among the main characters, is the backdrop of a new movie that opened in Britain at the weekend.
It stars Jason Statham, popular from his Transporter movies, and is about the real-life unsolved heist at a bank in London in 1971.
The film is titled Bank Job.
The heist is linked to the murder of former socialite Gale Benson, the daughter of British Member of Parliament Lord Leonard Plugge.
Abdul Malik, who anointed himself leader of the British Black Power movement in the 1970s before he was hanged for murder in Trinidad, is being depicted.
And the man who called himself Michael X will also have a fourth book published about his life this year.
The book is titled A Life in Black and White.
Malik, whose given name was Michael De Freitas, is portrayed as a man who captured sexually compromising photographs of Princess Margaret which he stores in a vault at the bank.
He was arrested and convicted under the Race Relations Act and returned to Trinidad in January 1971 to avoid being arrested for extortion.He started an agricultural commune in Arima.
It was there that police found two buried bodies, Joseph Skerritt, a member of Malick's group and Benson in 1972. She was buried alive.
In the movie Benson is portrayed as a British agent who was killed because of her investigations into the photographs of the Princess.
Malik was hanged in 1975 despite an international effort to stop the execution.
