Date: 16th January 2003

Bee Gee Mourned In Private Funeral


About 300 people attended today's ceremony at the Riverside Funeral Chapel near Gibb's home in Miami Beach.

Jackson was seen among mourners along with Gibb's brother and fellow Bee Gees founder Robin.

POP superstar Michael Jackson has joined family and friends at a private funeral for Bee Gee Maurice Gibb.

Stephen Gibb, the son of the third band member Barry, was also spotted.

Maurice, 53, suffered a heart attack while undergoing emergency abdominal surgery after collapsing at his home. He died at Mount Sinai Medical Center.

The two surviving Bee Gees have questioned whether doctors were right to perform the surgery.

"The fact that they had to operate on Maurice during the shock of cardiac arrest is questionable," Robin told the BBC.

"We will pursue every factor, every element, every second of the timeline, of the final hours of Maurice's life," he said. "We will pursue that relentlessly. That will be our quest from now on."

Maurice, Robin and Barry founded the Bee Gees, short for the Brothers Gibb, in 1958.

They became one of most successful pop acts of the 1970s, writing dozens of hit songs as well as much of the soundtrack for the 1977 film Saturday Night Fever, which catapulted disco music into the mainstream.

Agence France-Presse

Source: Press Release