The man jailed for his role in the brutal murder and rape of teenage tourist Rebecca Middleton has been deported from Bermuda.

Sources said Kirk Mundy was flown by private jet to his homeland Jamaica last week after more than two decades in Bermuda’s prison.

Carol Shuman, who founded the Rebecca Middleton Foundation to fight for a retrial for Mundy and co-accused Justis Smith, said: “Bermuda does well to see the last of Kirk Mundy.”

Dr Shuman, who wrote extensively on the case, added: “However, his exit neither removes the island’s shame regarding its judicial handling of the murder of Rebecca Middleton.

“Nor, of course, does it bring Becky back or erase the international shock that for many is not forgotten.”

Mundy is understood to have been deported on Wednesday of last week.

He was sentenced to five years behind bars in 1996 after he pleaded guilty to a charge of being an accessory to the murder of Ms Middleton.

Murder-accused Smith walked free from court after then Justice Vincent Meerabux threw out the case against him.

A later bid to try both Mundy and Smith for the murder of the Canadian 17-year-old, after new forensic evidence, failed because the UK’s Privy council in 1998

ruled that the case could not go ahead. The Privy Council also ruled that Mr Justice Meerabux’s decision on Smith could not be overturned.

Mundy was on bail at the time of Ms Middleton’s murder and was sentenced in 1997 to 16 years in prison for the armed robbery of a Bank of Butterfield security van two years earlier. His sentence was increased in 2009, when cannabis was found in his cell at Westgate. A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Home Affairs said: “The deportee was transported via private jet due to associated security risks for transit via the UK, US or Canada.”

Mundy was 21 when he and then 17-year-old Smith were arrested in connection with Ms Middleton’s murder — which drew international attention.

Ms Middleton’s body was found by the roadside at Ferry Reach in the early hours of July 3, 1996.

The 17-year-old had been sexually assaulted and stabbed multiple times.

The handling of the case, particularly the failure to reopen proceedings against the two suspects, caused outrage in Bermuda and overseas.

Human rights lawyer Cherie Booth, the wife of former British prime minister Tony Blair, called the case “a terrible, terrible story — one that no family should have to endure”.

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