Fatima Kama of Montreal was found dead at London's Heathrow Airport in 1999. Her body had been stuffed inside a suitcase. (CBC)

London's Metropolitan Police say they have charged a Lebanese man with murder in the case of a Canadian singer whose body was found stuffed in a suitcase at London's Heathrow Airport in 1999.

The force said Wednesday that 41-year-old Youssef Ahmed Wahid had been charged with the murder of 28-year-old Fatima Kama, whose body was found in a suitcase abandoned on the third floor of an airport parking lot.

Kama was born and raised in Morocco, but moved to Canada with her family about nine years before her death. In her last year she spent about eight months in Lebanon, where she worked as a singer at weddings and private functions.

Wahid, a former Kuwait Airways flight attendant, was arrested within days of the discovery at his hometown of Ramadiyeh in southern Lebanon, where he denied having anything to do with the killing.

He was eventually released and then went on the run. Police tracked him to the Gulf state of Bahrain, where he was arrested last month.

Kama had been scheduled to fly to her parents' home in Montreal on an Air Canada flight.