The mainstream media for the most part has moved on. But there are a few more gleanings to be had, of perhaps the most interesting comes from the Daily Mirror, which labels al-Hilli an extremist on the grounds that he was against the war in Iraq, disapproved of the behaviour of Israel and had doubts over 9/11 – which makes a great deal of the population “extremist”. But the Mirror has the only mainstream mention I can find of the possibility that Mossad carried out the killings. Given Mr al-Hilli’s profession, the fact he is a Shia, the fact he had visited Iran, and the fact that Israel heas been assassinating scientists connected to Iran’s nuclear programme, this has to be a possibility. There are of course other possibilities, but to ignore that one is ludicrous.
Which leads me to the argument of Daily Mail crime reporter, Stephen Wright, that the French police should concentrate on the idea that this was a killing by a random Alpine madman or racist bigot. Perfectly possible, of course, and the anti-Muslim killings in Marseille might be as much a precedent as Mossad killings of scientists. But why the lone madman idea should be the preferred investigation, Mr Wright does not explain. What I did find interesting from a man who has visited many crime scenes are his repeated insinuations that the French authorities are not really trying very hard to find who the killers were, for example:
the crime scene would have been sealed off for a minimum of seven to ten days, to allow detailed forensic searches for DNA, fibres, tyre marks and shoe prints to take place.
Nearby bushes and vegetation would have been searched for any discarded food and cigarette butts left by the killer, not to mention the murder weapon.
But from what I saw at the end of last week, no such searches had taken place and potentially vital evidence could have been missed. House to house inquiries in the local area had yet to be completed and police had not made specific public appeals for information about the crime. No reward had been put up for information about the shootings.
Behind the scenes, what other short cuts have been taken? Have police seized data identifying all mobile phones being used in the vicinity of the murders that day?
The idea that the French authorities – who are quite as capable as any other of solving cases – are not really trying very hard is an interesting one.
Which leads me to this part of a remarkable article from the Daily Telegraph, which if true points us back towards a hit squad and discounts the ides that there was only one gun:
Claims that only one gun was used to kill everybody is likely to be disproved by full ballistics test results which are out in October.
While the 25 spent bullet cartridges found at the scene are all of the same kind, they could in fact have come from a number of weapons of the same make.
This throws up the possibility of a well-equipped, highly-trained gang circling the car and then opening fire.
Both children were left alive by the killers, who had clinically pumped bullets into everybody else, including five into Mr Mollier.
Zainab was found staggering around outside the car by Brett Martin, a British former RAF serviceman who cycled by moments after the attack, but he saw nobody except the schoolgirl.
Her sister, Zeena, was found unscathed and hiding in the car eight hours later.
Both sisters are now back in Britain, and are believed to have been reunited at a secret location near London.
There are of course a number of hit squad options, both governmental and private, which might well involve iraqi or Iranian interests – on both of which the mainstream media have been very happy to speculate while almost unanimously ignoring Israel.
But what interests me is why the Daily Telegraph choose, in the face of all the evidence, to minimise the horrific nature of the attack by stating that “Both children were left alive by the killers”? Zainab was not left alive by design, she was shot in the chest and her skull was stove in, which presumably was a pretty serious attempt to kill a seven year-old child. The other girl might very well have succeeded in hiding from the killers under her mother’s skirts, as she hid from the first rescuers, and then for eight hours from the police.
The Telegraph article claims to be informed by sources close to the investigation. So they believe it was a group of people, and feel motivated to absolve those people from child-killing. Now what could the Daily Telegraph be thinking?
“the first thing I saw was a bike on its side, I had seen a cyclist ahead of me much earlier”.
nothing about the cyclist passing him
Kathy can you remember which golf club Zaid works for, do we know who owned it………..not GMH by any chance ?
Burhill Group Ltd
@Kathy.
“look at Sa’ad’s job and you will know who killed him”
Never more truth spoken. Spot on.
But which job ?
Nota bene. Gary A said “other companies” (not Shtech or AMS) in the Radio Four report.
You have a “company” to get paid.
Even the CIA know (do) that Iver Johnson, Rich Aviation, Southern Air Transport etc, etc, etc.
Burhill Group is owned by the Guiness family
…and the other thing the CIA do, is use other people to do their work !
Barry Seal ! Oh, sorry. He was shot by the cartels !!
Small diversion: Claygate is a racy place;
Wife ‘kills her womanising husband with a hammer’ before driving to Beachy Head and threatening to jump
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1303481/Sally-Challen-Beachy-Head-suicide-threat-killing-husband-hammer.html
The interesting thing from this 2010 story is that the male victim and his wife were friends with a retired accountant and “fellow Ferrari enthusiast” and his respective wife, living only six doors away from Saad al-Hilli. No connection really, because Saad was introduced to Julian Stedman by the latter’s son and both shared a love of caravans.
Something has dawned on me which Katie wrote ages ago – that the paintwork around the house entrance/garage was quite scruffy. It, plus the garen, looks now more like a house which is being rented out. It certainly is shabby compared with its neighbours.
Sorry, correction, the accountant living 6 doors away is Tim Lewis. Not Jones.
But there is still an accountant 6 doors away…
http://www.360clicks.co.uk/business/uk_accountant_details.asp?accountant_id=16054
or was
@Felix12 Oct, 2012 – 9:48 pm
It´s probably another neighbour that let the intelligence service borrow a room, as the one in “The Sun” only talked about the driveway.
The neighbours seems a little bit odd, as they don´t have any idea why the family was killed – even they know that the house been under observation earlier.
Early it was mentioned that al-Hilli been known for 20 years:
“It is understood that Mr Al-Hilli has been known to British intelligence officials for around 20 years.
In 2003, during the U.S. and British invasion of Iraq, officers working with the intelligence services mounted a surveillance operation on his home for several weeks, a neighbour who hosted them told the Mail.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2198777/French-Alps-shooting-Police-question-Saad-Al-Hillis-brother-Zaid-inheritance-row.html#ixzz297fNk8Tu
wrong again, Jones, not Lewis. too many accountants called Timothy.
Thanks Dopey,I shall check it out.
Felix,
I thought the whole place looked neglected, someone said he was a keen gardener…….well hellooo,he most certainly was not.
Anyone looking at the aerial photos can see there is no ‘garden’, what there is is a flat bit of grass & hedges, plus those white roses which take care of themselves.
All that tacky junk around the shed looks very down market.
There are lovely gardens either sides,the sort one would expect to find at such a prestigious address.
@thomas – they might have been protecting him.
With neighbours like that I don’t know why Saad was worried about security. NOTHING would get past that curtain twitching, peeping tomming lot…and no wonder they decided to evacuate the street to poke about in Saad’s house.
Re the surveillance…
I have always thought that it might as easily have been SB or MI5 minders as someone keeping them under surveillance. I wonder can it be relevant that SAH was granted British citizenship around this time? Might it suggest that he was offered the protection of citizenship as he was doing some work for UK interests? This is also close to the time that he was out in the UAE, met Iqbal and got married.
I think there may be a lot of background context concerning intelligence services interest in expat Iraqis in the UK from the late 70s on. Saddam had people in the UK up to all kinds of dirty work (including Allawi before he changed sides) so it seems likely that there would have been active engagement. SAH could have been recruited while at Kingston – a college with a significant intake from the Iraqi community.
One very telling thing is the absence of comment or engagement with this story from members of that community in the UK. Why not? Why no pressure to have the culkprits brought to justice? I’m open to correction but to me it strongly suggests a compromised community.
A fleet of expensive computers…and a house like a tip.
@ CD
Re the surveillance, we’ve covered the same points in a previous thread. 2002/2003 was certainly an eventful time for the Al Hillis. I’ve always wondered whether this period of surveillance was why the father moved to Spain that year.
I wish we knew if the father ever got British citizenship and if so, when…and likewise for Zaid too, and Ikbal for that matter.
It was said that the father moved to Spain for the climate. Could he have done so without an EU/UK passport? Perhaps yes, provided he could show that he had the financial wherewithal?
@Felix
12 Oct, 2012 – 10:45 pm
It´s a possibility, but if they wanted to protect the family, it would be easier to do that from inside the house of al-Hilli, instead from a neighbours house.
It looks more like they wanted to find out who visited the family, and what people the brothers meet when they went out driving.
“It was said that the father moved to Spain for the climate”
It was said he wouldn;t return to the UK for the climate either…but he returned and for a while in the months before he died.
Maybe he did just retire to Spain. Maybe he decided to retire to Spain because of what was going on. Who knows.
It seems likely that the father suffered from ill health which wasn’t helped by the climate here. In fact I think I read that somewhere.
On Marilyn Tomlin’s blog there is a comment from someone who was called up for jury service which brought her into contact with an Iraqi man also on the jury. He told her that they were a very weird family and that the rumours were that the father didn’t die of natural causes. All hearsay of course.
For what it’s worth 192.com has Kadhim, Fasiha (mother), Zaid and Saad on the electoral roll in 2002 (all at Claygate). Would they have had to be citizens to be on the roll?
EADS sends two more satellites into space:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19933989
This is competition for the US GPS:
“The system is intended primarily for civilian use, unlike the United States system, which the U.S. military runs and uses on a primary basis. The U.S. reserves the right to limit the signal strength or precision of GPS, or to shut down public GPS access completely, so that only the U.S. military and its allies would be able to use it in time of conflict.[citation needed] The European system will only be subject to shutdown for military purposes in extreme circumstances. It will be available at its full precision to both civil and military users.”
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_%28satellite_navigation%29
There was a baby born in Dubai who also has the name Zainab. Her uncle was raising money for a children’s hospital. What came of this, and does anyone know the middle name(s) of Zainab al-Hilli? I’m going over old ideas about why the family’s attackers allowed her to survive.
@Kathy
12 Oct, 2012 – 11:32 pm
In “The Sun” they wrote:
“The papers also reveal that wealthy Kadhem — who was living in Malaga, Spain — had been missing for six days before he was found dead in August last year.”
In the spanish “Olive Press” there is more strange circumstances re the death.
The father also had Parkinsson since long time.
“Olive Press can reveal that millionaire businessman Kadhem al-Hilli passed away in a care home in Benalmadena without any of his family present.
Intriguingly detectives are now probing his death after it was claimed he mysteriously went missing for six days prior to his death at the SAR care home in Torrequebrada last August.
—
While Zaid has strongly denied the fued, claims that both brothers had been present at their father’s side on his deathbed last year do not ring true, as the Olive Press has discovered.
Neither son, it emerges, is listed on his death certificate, which is held at Benalmadena register office.
—
But in his early 80s he became frail and started to suffer from Parkinson’s disease.”
http://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2012/09/20/costa-link-to-french-alps-murders/
Hi there, blinking fans…
Check out the facial expressions of French Home Secretary/Interior minister , Manuel Valls saying what a good job the French police had done at the car park in not spotting the girl in the car for 8 hours…with French story
http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/societe/20120907.OBS1636/chevaline-manuel-valls-prend-la-defense-de-la-gendarmerie.html
@CD
They could be citizens of other countries too, eg Sweden, marked on the roll.
Elmbridge council,perhaps in Esher, or perhaps Surrey cc in Woking should keep records of old electoral rolls,year by year, It seems like the spooky Guardian newspaper already did this and released the limited information that 8 family members lived there at unspecified times.
If you ask for a stack of voters’ books on Claygate central or whatever, there might be the odd discrete phone call made by the archive staff to Mount Browne…
@Dopey
With neighbours like that I don’t know why Saad was worried about security.
RAOFL
Didn’t France win The Gold at f**king up investigations ?
Yes, I’m sure they did. They even made a documentary on. The pink Panther.
What a place to have a shooting party !
@Thomas
Thanks for the link. The friend probably knows a lot. Very callous behaviour of the brothers.
Meanwhile, back at the funny farm, Joe the journo states on his titter… “can you remember the last car you saw on the way home from work” !
Well, I’d have a stab at that one if I lived in the middle of nowhere, enhanced by yocal onion punters…and I had just come upon the biggest mass murder I’d ever seen !
But hey, the French “investigateurs” will sweep into action…and they’ll be there in ohhhh 16 hours !
Are they having a laugh !