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?
More on the mass graves around al Hilla:
http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/country,,HRW,,IRQ,,3f4f59567,0.html
Then there was this in the DM
‘Neighbour Philip Murphy said of the £1million property in Claygate: ‘It was a family house, it was an extended family house and he took it over when his mother died ten years ago.
‘I think his brother moved the last of his stuff out 18 months ago.
‘Their father had been living in Spain as it is warmer there but then he came back for a little while and was living in the bedroom the brother had been living in so he couldn’t have been there then.
‘Then the father went back to Spain and died about a year ago.’
Talking of Mr Al-Hilli’s links to the Middle-East, he added: ‘I know he went out to Baghdad a couple of years ago and sought out his old family home as he still had the deeds, but he wasn’t very impressed. It was being used as a barracks by the military I think.
‘Eventually he sold it on for pennies as it was worthless.
‘He wasn’t politically active in any way, he had opinions on things, but he was a moderate Muslim and a moderate socialist.’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2198777/French-Alps-shooting-Police-question-Saad-Al-Hillis-brother-Zaid-inheritance-row.html#ixzz29OQYVeE6
Was it the al Mahawil brick factory and military base mass graves site?
Then there was this in the DM
‘Neighbour Philip Murphy said ..talking of Mr Al-Hilli’s links to the Middle-East, he added: ‘I know he went out to Baghdad a couple of years ago and sought out his old family home as he still had the deeds, but he wasn’t very impressed. It was being used as a barracks by the military I think.
‘Eventually he sold it on for pennies as it was worthless.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2198777/French-Alps-shooting-Police-question-Saad-Al-Hillis-brother-Zaid-inheritance-row.html#ixzz29OQYVeE6
Was it the al Mahawil brick factory and military base mass graves site?
(Edited version)
This is a link for a news video with some overhead footage of the crime scene after it had been cleared.
I was surprised to see the proximity of the other road that can be seen surely it would only be a short way through the trees to the lay-by?
It also shows the road by the lay-by is black has that been caused been caused by the road sweeper do you think ?
The overhead footage starts at about 2.02 the black road is at 2.11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pl5UjMBMmU
I also spotted this tidbit when I was translating a french page about the crashed 4×4 perhaps someone who is french speaking could check out if anything new came up to this story just in case there is any connection .
“Much Ado Friday afternoon Parmelan Avenue in Annecy.
The police came after the discovery of a body in the parking lot in front of the small Casino. The body of a man was found in a vehicle, a Peugeot 406. According to initial information, it would be a natural death. The intervention creates significant distortions in the sector. Especially a fire broke out earlier a few meters away. The fire took an apartment on the top floor of a building Parmelan Avenue in front of the Galeries Lafayette. The fire started from a studio for an unknown reason. Dwelling is destroyed. Nobody was injured.”
Written by Nicolas Marin in Miscellaneous Facts on 12/10/2012 at 17:41
Another couple of things I have come across is that the red mountain bike that Mr Al Hilli arrived at the campsite with was still there it was shown on a bit of footage of the police work at the campsite .
And on an interview I saw someone talking about Mr Mollier and saying he went out on his mountain bike about three times a week I got the impression he would have been on his mountain bike.
Tim v
There are 10 didierjean philippe on pages jaunes and all of them are more than 200 km from ugine.
The most intriguing one is our rapporteur. It seems that the whole didierjean family are rapporteurs at court representing the government at court of appeal. I found 4 of them as rapporteurs.
My strong guess is the matter of fact that all stories regarding the scene are profiled and made up by intelligence services and reported by made up “witnesses” who are all on the payrolls of intelligence. What they have told us is all lie and a fairy tale we should believe for being quiet and satisfied.
Interesting point Mochyn69. First he wasn’t mentioned, then he appears as “Phillipe D.” then eventually as Phillipe Didierjean. What I can’t quite understand is why if the official line was WBM made the initial call, both PD and WBM’s account disprove it. From an administrative point of view it must mean that these two are not reading from the same hymn sheet, so to speak. Someone raised issue with my observations. I can only say that everything has come from TV or Papers and is only as reliable as those sources. (As an example of unreliable was a Sky reporter at the scene on the 7th talking about the “cyclists coming DOWN the hill” which as far as I know, is wrong) Someone else here raised responded to my question why did fire personnel get there first. (Sorry I can’t remember who now) They suggest it resulted from misunderstanding of “fire” as in “forest fire” rather than “gun fire”. It was a possibility I suggested myself back along. Only by hearing the recorded call – if there was one – (I assume even the French record them) can these issues be settled. Of course the spooky possibility is that there was NO call at 3.48, and that response teams were sent because someone in control was in the know. It HAS to be that or someone unaccounted for made the call. Finally, if the Al Hillis were still at Doussard or wherever at 3.15, not only does it negate the evidence of the builder, that they went past him “between 2.30 and 3.00” WBM would have some explaining to do. His bicycle journey is reported to have taken half an hour, which would place him on the road between Chevaline and the lay-by from around 3.15 and 3.45. This would mean that the Al Hilli’s would HAVE to have passed him, yet he has made no mention of them doing so. Effectively an SUV on the same route would have to be right behind them and done the deed immediately Mollier had arrived and then be gone by the tim Martin gets there. This is all very “tight” we might say but just about doable. What is not possible is that WBM is telling the whole truth if the time on the recent photograph and the photograph itself is “kosher”.
@Peter: Agent Maxwell Smart he was not.
@ Pink
15 Oct, 2012 – 7:59 pm that’s interesting especially as it was a Peugeot seen driving dangerously away from the scene at just gone 4 pm. Also fire is a good way of destroying evidence when used for some nefarious purpose. Then there was the report of a woman being threatened by a man with a gun in a SUV on Friday evening. Do you have any detailed reports about this?
No Tim I tried earlier to search for follow up story but didn’t find anything. I can give you this link for the bit I translated I had translated a page and it was just a piece on the same page .
http://www.mannecy.fr/27574-un-appel-a-temoin-lance-a-annecy.html
I don’t think Saad was worried about being tracked. Being tracked, or whilst in France I don’t believe was a concern. Why? He took his family with him, so he felt safe in France.
But then, if you were worried about your home security would you leave the house for several weeks on a spur of the moment camping holiday? I wouldn’t..unless I felt safer somewhere else.. so there had to be a compelling reason as to why he decided to up and off to France.
If you felt in some sort of danger at your home, you may decide to move your family to another location for a while, hopefully just until things settle down. I wonder if this is why they left. He was worried about his and his family’s safety in the UK. Whatever was behind it came to a head hence the sudden departure.
He apparently didn’t use his phone whilst in France. I wonder where the nearest payphone is to the campsite, and whether he used it. Could this be where he went when he left the campsite several times a day for half an hour or so each time?
If that’s the location, it could come back to the stories of missiles/WMD again. Construction materials factories in the same area would make sense.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/mahawil.htm
On this story it says “Philippe and his two friends were immediately taken to a local police station where their testimony was recorded at the same time as the British cyclist.”
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/an-alpine-murder-mystery–why-were-the-alhillis-shot-dead-8125292.html
So it seems they were all interviewed.
@Mochyn69: Surely a gypsum factory would be located in the vicinity of gypsum mines. Old gypsum mines have many uses:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mines_of_Paris
That’s where Plaster of Paris came from.
Did the al-Hillis also own a gypsum mine?
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/shreen-ayob/alps-shootings-lazy-journalism-in-chevaline-case_b_1894806.html
No, SSTL is not a defence company, but it is owned by European Aeronautic Defence and Space, EADS, which has clients including Russia and China, MOD contractor Thales, and NASA.
It’s another technicality, one degree of separation.
I apologize if this has been posted previously.
Getting back to the many uses of gypsum, it is used as a food additive. I find that interesting, because Iqbal’s sister, the Pharmacy PhD who was doing postgraduate research at the University of Reading, had a supervising professor who was studying food safety. The professor is the one who mentioned that she uses the Diamond Light Source at Rutherford Appleton.
What did the father do once he arrived in th UK from the 1970’s until his retirement. That’s what I want to know. If he had a factory/factories over here why the silence/secrecy about them?
I don’t think you make Calcium metal from Gypsum.
It’s normally made with an electrolytic reaction in Calcium Chloride
Q, at 9:55pm on 15.10.12:
Indeed. And as has been pointed out before, one of the Board members, ex-Air Marshall Sir Joseph French was the Chief of Defence Intelligence at the time the ‘WMD’ dossier was sexed-up by the Blair ‘Kitchen Cabinet’ and (shamefully pressured) intelligence staff. He was called as a witness at the ‘Iraq Inquiry’.
iraqinquirydigest.org/?page_id=844
Now, as we know, such a senior intelligence figure does not become (an “independent non-executive”) member of a company’s board just for fun.
sstl.co.uk/about-sstl/management—ownership
[usual prefixes]
Over 10,000 comments on this subject on this blog (b/w the two threads) and that’s after the moderators have tidied-up. Amazing! The previous record was held by the thread concerning 11.9.01, some years ago, and that was something over a thousand. And though there is a certain amount of banter and to-ing and fro-ing, there is much that is useful and fascinating to other readers, I think. It also keeps the issue of the Al Hilli assassinations and of what might possible geostrategic dynamics might lie behind them, alive in the public eye on this, the third most-visited political blog in the UK.
@ all:
some distraction between hard work:
http://www.mediacorner.tv/index.php?2012/07/14/283-windhorse-gets-the-rights-to-lie-detector
Reading these pages for days- but haven’t dared so far, to take part at the highly interesting discussions.
Just a few possible strings (may be already mentioned by someone,but its not possible to read all those 10’000 posts.
– may be AH & family was about to “leave” Europe for……. Sources say, they had multiple passports on board….
– strange, that the police does not give free any pics of the women to the public/on TV! Who knows, how many people might have seen them on their way from UK to FR??
Could it be, that they aren’t dead? Can’t see any blood where they had been seating.
Did anyone ever have seen any pics of the deaths?
May be it was arranged to give them a “new life” somewhere?
– I googled SM for pics- he’s wearing a BBcap? Could that be the one laying on the dashboard?
@ Tim V: like your statements ie your list of questions. Great work!
–
At Pink
15 Oct, 2012 – 7:59 pm the location of the lay-by is crucial. Why has no one tested it for mobile phone reception to nail the issue of whether it was even possible to raise the alarm from there. The other point is, it is only about 175 m from a junction on the eastern side that leads all the way back to Chevaline and elsewhere. This would of course provide an alternative escape route if required. After shooting four people which escape route would you choose – one where you can fairly expect to meet other vehicles or one where you are less likely to? If they did choose this back route it has obvious implications for WBM’s “green 4×4” passing him before he arrived at the murder scene. As regards bike, the wrack can bee seen on the roof of the car. It’s possible he used the bike to test timings and locations in preparation for a meet. Alternatively if the killers lured him there, it might have been chosen because of poor reception and alternative escape route. After all who wants to afford the opportunity of a 999 call (or whatever it is in France) before the deed is done? Thanks to Bluebird
15 Oct, 2012 – 8:02 pm for the Didierjean research.
At Shelock H.
16 Oct, 2012 – 12:00 am – thanks for your appreciative remark.
@Q
15 Oct, 2012 – 9:42 pm
The site of one of the mass graves near al Hilla was a disused brickworks. I think I read somewhere, maybe one one of the links I have given above, that Gypsum is used in Iraq for the manufacture of bricks.
Yet most of the Gypsum deposits are found in Northern Iraq, in the Kurdish areas, and around al Tikrit, the hometown of Saddam Hussein.
Many possible implications here, if we accept the ‘gypsum factory’ assertion, which I think was first seen in the DM.
@Tim
16 Oct, 2012 – 12:56 am
More great points from you.
re: mobile phone reception, did you not see the photos of the flock of hacks at the scene, with their mobile phones, all trying to get a signal, no doubt. Why not ask them?
Morning Dopey.
I wish I could answer that question too, I’m convinced that’s where the answer to these murders lay.
Acceptance that AH has expertise which could be sold,would save a lot of wasted effort now, what it was is no longer relevant.
We need to know the exact reason why Kadhem left ?
Who exactly was it he fell out with ?
What did he leave with ?
What did he leave behind ?
Who did he leave behind ?
How did they get out ?
Were they seen as traitors by jumping ship ?
We’ve heard they left with nothing, then we hear they had a string of factories in the UK, if so how were these unlikely factories financed ?
One thing I keep wondering about is why these men left it so late to marry, Saddam’s first wife was chosen for him when he was five… yet our two Al Hilli men were 38 & 40. So is it any wonder if I think there maybe first wives & another family somewhere ?
Especially Saad,jack the lad,ladies man.
There must be many relatives,uncles,aunts,cousins somewhere…….or were they victims of this:
“Each body has a story to tell. Each person had relatives, parents, and a family that was later forced to pay for the bullets used to kill them when a bill was dispatched to each household. The state was not going to pay for their punishment. The obligatory payment was probably the hardest thing to do.”.
How amazing that AH can hate the Jews, when this is what his own people did to their own countrymen & women.
Long memories, old scores still waiting to be settled.
Good work digging out that Evening Standard article, with the 16.10 / 4.10pm time. Peter Allen, the author, a journalist based in Paris, supplies story to the whole of Fleet Street – quite a few on the Cheveline affair. I notice that his tweets haven’t mentioned this huge story since 9 september.
Peter Allen @peterallenparis
@Anthony_Bonnici Knew wasn’t random from day one – clear prof hit, and involved Mob-style ‘vengeance’ in my opinion…Yep, still on it.
But not any more I feel.
@ tim
the location of the lay-by is crucial. Why has no one tested it for mobile phone reception to nail the issue of whether it was even possible to raise the alarm from there
……………………..
Someone on Icke checked coverage maps in detail, and there was none at the carpark.
@ katie
Ye, they left it late to marry and, as a woman, Ikbal left it even later.
PS According to The Mirror a digital camera was used to take the photos, not a mobile phone.
Katie talking through her arse again:
[Or is this just something she FEELS deep down – and those feelings have just taken the easiest way out?) ]
It was not his own people, your arse! It was Saddam’s forces. Iraq is an artificial construct set up by the British. It is unnatural to set up a country consisting tree distinct peoples who hates each other. It worked alright when there were little overall governance and thus little interference on their way of life like under the Ottoman rule of the middle east. And the British just followed this tradition more or less, when they carved up that part of the Ottoman empire.
_______________
*)
Katie’s quote is lifted from this page:
{http://www.modarresi.org/english/article_mass_graves.htm}