A British construction worker was murdered by his kidnappers just minutes after a joint UK and Nigerian rescue operation stormed into the compound where he was held, an inquest has heard.
Chris McManus, a quantity surveyor from Oldham, was shot six times in a toilet – both through the door and then from just outside it – as special forces tried to save his life, but they were under AK-47 fire from the kidnappers at the compound in the north-west Nigerian city of Sokoto.
The hearing in Salisbury heard the soldiers stormed the building on 8 March last year after intelligence in previous days told them that McManus, 28, was there with fellow captive Franco Lamolinara from Italy, who also died during the rescue.
The go-ahead for the operation had been given by Cobra, the government's crisis committee, at 11.15am, just 45 minutes before it started, after a senior officer had reviewed the evidence amid fears for the men's safety.
The team, which included British special forces, had been sent to the area the previous day and burst through the compound's front gates at midday local time on 8 March last year, senior investigating officer Detective Chief Inspector Grant Mallon said.
The soldiers were soon under small arms fire; Mallon said the weapon was an AK-47 with its distinctive "crack" sound. The men killed at least one militant and then Mallon said they heard further shots with the same distinctive crack in the north-west area of the compound.
"Muffled gunshots were heard by the team in sector one in the north-west corner of the compound. They were from a high calibre weapon. It seemed to them they were in a room and it was rapid shots.
"Two insurgents were then seen leaving the compound from the north on a ladder at 12.04," the policeman said.
The soldiers then systematically went through the compound until they came to the north-west end of the compound and found some tarpaulin obscuring a building.
The men saw single beds and a room with a barred window. They then went into another room with a single and double bed and saw a Manchester United football shirt similar to one McManus had been wearing in videos released by his captors in the months before his death.
"They called out for Franco and Chris but received no reply," Mallon said.
"To the right there was a metal door to a toilet and they noticed there were bullet holes to it and the team noticed there were 7.62mm munitions and cases on the floor.
"The door was partially open and when the soldiers looked inside they could see two white males on the floor and they immediately recognised them as Chris and Franco. Chris was lying to the left of the toilet. Both men had visible gunshot wounds. It appears they were killed fairly quickly into the engagement."
McManus was pronounced dead at 1.38pm local time by a doctor.
A postmortem examination found that he died from a single gunshot wound to the head from a 7.62mm round that killed him almost instantly, the hearing was told. "Friendly fire" was ruled out because the rescue forces were using 5.56mm munitions.
The men had been kidnapped in May 2011 and held for months before their killing, with three videos released showing they were alive – the last on 23 February 2012.
The failed operation caused a diplomatic row between Britain and Italy after the Italian president, Giorgio Napolitano, said it was "inexplicable" that Downing Street had not alerted Rome to the plan to rescue the men in advance. The foreign secretary, William Hague, insisted that that had been impossible.
British officials at the time blamed a splinter wing of the Boko Haram sect for the abductions, but a sect spokesman denied the group's involvement.
McManus was working for the construction company B Stabilini, which builds shopping centres and stadiums in Nigeria, when he was kidnapped on 12 May by gunmen who stormed his apartment in the city of Birnin Kebbi, about 110 miles from Sokoto. The gunmen stormed into the heavily guarded compound 500 metres from the construction site where the men were working and tied up the guards.
Lamolinara was also abducted. A German colleague managed to escape by scaling a wall, but a Nigerian engineer was shot and wounded. Another Italian, Eduardo Cavallieri, avoided capture and raised the alarm, the inquest was told.
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