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?
@ Q
BMWs do not normally have GPS built-in tracking devices on board. Some car insurers retrofit tracking devices, or the owners may independently retrofit them, but a regular BMW only has a GPS receiver on board (for the navigation system).
A GPS tracking system always requires both – GPS satellite reception and connection to a mobile phone network – because the car’s coordinates are transmitted via SMS.
At least Mrs AH used a BlackBerry, but BBs are just as trackable as any other mobile phone (if and only if you have access to the cellular network provider’s databases). In that regard, there is no difference between them and other smartphones.
If I remember correctly, I was the one who originally mooted the idea that the AH’s BMW might have had a GPS tracking device attached to it (after reading a number of articles asserting as positive fact that the AHs had been tracked by their killer(s) all the way from the UK), and I still think that this would be a possibility. I would *love* to know whether or not that was the case, but, thus far, I haven’t read anything about that.
@Dopey: One gypsum factory in Iraq with startup in 1946, after WWII. Did the al-Hilli family acquire it then, or later?
re: gypsum in Iraq
I posted this link a while back, it’s got a pretty little map showing the distribution of the gypsum deposits offered for investment, which is rather interesting, as well as a history and description of the industry.
http://www.geosurviraq.com/en/invistment%20files%20product/Production%20of%20Gypsum/index.html
I think its pretty straight forward BB.
He basically says when my time is up its up. He just sounds like a good fun chap.
@ Katie 15 Oct, 2012 – 5:41 pm
I’m shocked and horrified. I thought that you live in France?
The first quote of that obituary is a funny allusion to his own bald pate by FB: “If God wants to grab me by the hair and drag me to paradise, he’s not going to make it.” This is a witty word-play on the phrase “tiré par des cheveux” = literally: “dragged by the hair” (into the argument) = far-fetched, illogical. And so it goes on.
re: gypsum in Iraq
More here:
http://www.iraqmining.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=19&Itemid=7
‘More than 130 m.t. are proved in several localities of the Low-Folded Zone (Northern Zone) of Iraq. Mostly used in the production of plaster.’
That is in the mainly Kurdish areas of Northern Iraq, but there is a substantial non-Kurdish minority. This minority consists of Iraqis sympathetic to the Saddam Hussein regime.
@Peter: We likely won’t ever know that critical piece of info about whether or not a tracking device was found.
Also, it is my understanding that some GPS systems operate either via satellite or mobile phone tower, providing real-time information, which is certainly something SAH would have known, being in the business.
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/iphone/iphone-faq/iphone-gps-definition-assisted-gps-how-gps-works-real-time-navigation.html
I just can’t see SAH not knowing that his techno gadgets could be used against him. Surely he knew what I-phones could do, being in the satellite business. It would be incredible, like so many parts of this story, for him not to have known. I guess we’ll never know what kind of phones were found, either.
Does the mountainous Chevaline area have Wi-fi hotspots?
@Mochyn69: Not outlandish to think that the real reason behind many world conflicts is a battle over resources, rather than ideals.
So we have apparent MI6/CIA contractor WBM giving interviews and French government high court justice Rapporteur Phillippe Didierjean giving interviews.
At this scene there was an accident meeting of all security and intelligence services.they probably had some kind of conference in the woods.
Why Peter, translating that is irrelevant to the cause, it’s also why I said he sounds like a fun sort of guy ,
I have real problems also with Martin’s account of the “Green 4×4”. If the press reports can be believed there are accounts from him saying it passed him on the way up and on the way back, yet his descriptions would not even compete with a ten year old school boy’s. Remember Martin’s background is a RAF pilot and technologist. Do you know how difficult to be accepted as a pilot not to mention all the recognition training subsequently. Now add to that the fact that if this was an assassination crew plus motor bike it’s unlikely they dawdled. It is reasonable to assume they drove at speed which on bicycle would impress to say the least. It may even have forced Martin off the road or bike. Now don’t you think a man of Martin’s calibre would at least memorise the registration when it returned, not to say examined his memory when the full horror revealed itself? The paucity of his description is frankly unbelievable if events transpired as described. Then this is compounded by the French police response to it. Changing the colour several times until it ends up as a “black Mitsubishi Pajero” if indeed they regard this is the car Martin saw. Then we have them talking about a White Peugeot 4×4 although not mentioned by any of the witnesses as far as I can see. Now we have the literally incredible statement by the Prosecutor that the “Green 4×4” might have belonged to Forestry Authority. Apart from the small detail that if it had been, it would have come upon, and presumably reported, the massacre first, is he saying after six weeks it was not possible to identify and eliminate an public service vehicle?
There’s also a reference to mass graves near the village of al Mahawil ‘an abandoned brickworks’on the main Baghdad- al-Hilla highway here:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/mahawil.htm
This includes a description of mass murder of Shi’ite Muslims in March and April 1991.
Do we know for sure exactly where the victims’ families originally hailed from?
Katie
I am particularly interested into the sentence with hollywood and Indians/India?
Q.
I would guarantee it most certainly will not have hotspots, they are less frequent here than the UK.
In fact in my area I know of one only & that is the harbour ferry terminal.
This is six years old:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10805240/ns/technology_and_science-space/t/beam-weapons-almost-ready-battle/#.UHxAn4bMGSo
I find it interesting that micronized gypsum (calcium) also has uses in optical coatings.
http://www.thomasnet.com/about/optical-coatings-15821200.html
@ Q 15 Oct, 2012 – 6:15 pm
Let’s not get technical here, but that “assisted GPS” has nothing to do with the GPS system as such. In any event, you are quite right in saying that SAH must have been fully aware of how his electronic gadgets could be exploited against him – albeit only by state-sponsored actors.
Mrs AH used a BlackBerry. No links for that – I am all for sharing information, but not with people who develop a sudden case of Blueballs when it comes to stepping out of their comfort zones and making a few phone calls.
@Bluebird
15 Oct, 2012 – 6:21 pm
With SM possibly linked to the CIA and SAH undoubtedly a British asset ..
bluebird could I ask is this info on Didierjean accurate ir a some sort of “hunch”? If true I agree with you about the co-incidence. Does he “live locally” though do you know?
@Katie: No, I didn’t think so. More likely vehicles were rushing to the scene if they had lost track of the targets due to the mountains interfering with signals, IMO.
@Peter: Do you know that the al-Hillis carried their phones with them on this little picnic/hiking trip, whatever brand the phones were? Again, surely SAH would have known that some phones can be tracked even when shut off. Did they leave the phones behind in the campground, as would have been prudent? In other words, could those phones have been found in another vehicle of theirs, rather than the one on the hillside in Chevaline?
@Bluebird: A meeting in a grove: no redwood trees in those parts, though.
Q.
Two phones were found in the car.
I think the photos were probably taken with them too.
Thanks “Felix”. I have copied so much I couldn’t put my finger on it without search. As always we are dependent on second hand reporting, but if Didierjean thing accurate he couldn’t possibly have got through till about 4.25 which poses the HUGE question who did at 3.48 quoted bt the police and why they havent explained. I have kept repeating this point since the beginning hoping someone would appreciate its significance and ask police to explain.
I should think thre would have been satellite coverage. SSTL I believe did a deal with France in respect to satellite coverage of its forests.
Background, on the heels of the Francophonie Summit:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hp6Y9MJz6Tm9Z8L6C0uvqB5b24rg?docId=CNG.48a13d603883115f2e07106e77e273aa.2c1
http://ambafrance-us.org/spip.php?article3947
Q 15 Oct, 2012 – 6:37 pm
AFAIK, Mr & Mrs AH had their phones on their persons. In my opinion, leaving their phones behind at the camping site, where they might be manipulated in their absence, would not have been a smart thing to do if they feared that they were being tracked. Taking out the batteries and putting their phones into a metal biscuit tin would have been the professional thing to do.
@Tim V
15 Oct, 2012 – 6:31 pm
Who knows? He was originally referred to as Philippe D in the press reports and there was even speculation he may have been the well known photographer Philipe Desmazes,who got the Gaddafi execution shots.
Many of the early Chevaline photos were credited to Phillippe Desmazes AFP Getty, such as the photo of the flics at the caravan sites dated 6 September 2012.
Was he nearby to grab another global scoop?
Could SAH have needed to be found by someone on this rendezvous, someone on his side, and is this why he carried devices that would allow him to be tracked?
Re previous link concerning sanctions by EU against Iran and telecom:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gJp8ALB1NOWTqwELxK4lpfUVmwMA?docId=3c3d588593cc4fffb1f7b39549c43102
Q 15 Oct, 2012 – 6:53 pm
Thinking outside the box, as someone with your nickname always should: He might have worn one of those anti-kidnapping devices (GPS receiver + SMS transmitter) hidden inside a belt buckle, hidden inside the heel of a shoe, or sewn into the padded shoulder of his jacket.
But why would he, if he was expecting friendlies?