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?
Felix, didn’t early reports say they had identified AH through the car registration ?
From the Mirror (link above)
a new ballistic report on the atrocity…
The analysis of bullet trajectories and forensic tests on the victims’ shoe soles show Mr Al-Hilli was outside his car with Zainab….
So, not apparent in the first (if there ever was one) ballistic report???
Initial reports only mentioned being shot once. Then, a second bullet was added to each alleged victim in a later press conference..
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/9530410/France-shooting-police-confirm-victims-shot-twice-in-head.html …to make it look like a professional killing. Now the “investigators” are back tracking towards a non-professional killing. Hence the “double tap” is inconvenient. “All four were killed by several bullets and all four were hit twice in the head,”
Question: Can anyone tell me how bullet trajectories tell us anything about Al-Hilli being outside his car?? Was he shot in the head in the car-park, but somehow walked back to his car, climbed in, locked the doors, and then was shot again through the glass? So, how to explain the double tap on all three in the car?
It is pure fantasy.
@Katie
Yes, from France24
He told told reporters that it was still unclear if al-Hilli and the woman were the parents of the two girls, one of whom was critically injured, who were found at the scene of the crime.
“The BMW’s registration was traced to the owner, and with this information we were able to get a passport number,” Maillaud said. This passport number corresponds with one that was given to a nearby camp site.
http://www.france24.com/en/20120906-british-driver-killed-france-iraqi-origin-annecy-maillaud-france
I pointed out some time ago whether it is realistic that the passport number would be traced so quickly to a campsite in France…
Notice in this France24 video – it is still dark, and Maillaud is explaining the failure to find the younger child, allegedly.
The interviewer says no witnesses have come forward (which often takes several days or even weeks) so the emphasis is put on the children telling the official narrative already….
http://www.france24.com/en/20120905-five-found-fatally-shot-french-alps-haute-savoie-chevaline-uk-bmw
“As yet no witnesses have come forward…the key to solving these killings then will likely be the two survivors..” [September 6]
@Tim V
We have spent weeks discussing who seemed like lies and disinformation. The only good to come out of this is that they appear more and more like lies and disinformation. e.g. in the latest mail article about specatacles and bicycle pump, we still don’t know how many times Mollier was shot:
“up to seven bullets” – i.e zero to seven.
Paris Match was touting seven bullets on 5 October
http://www.parismatch.com/Actu-Match/Societe/Actu/Chevaline-saisie-d-un-compte-bancaire-en-Suisse-436802/
[any idea what that car is doing parked in the photo by Stefan Wermuth?]
and previously on 11 September
{http://www.parismatch.com/Actu-Match/Societe/Actu/Chevaline.-Les-analyses-balistiques-parlent-428273/}
Sylvain Mollier, qui se trouvait vraisemblablement là par hasard, a reçu sept balles.
Felix, you make a good case, it’s not only the car which is full of holes it’s the fabrication of this story.
Look at this from that article:
“The gendarmes were unable to open the doors of the family’s BMW for fear that bullet-pierced windows would shatter, potentially compromising the work of the IRCGN forensic team.”
Well excuse me,didn’t Brett Martin smash a window & reach in to switch off the engine ? Yes !
So why didn’t the Gendarmes reach in & unlock that door ? Doh…….because they didn’t think of it ?
Has anyone read this anywhere before I say where I found it?-
“The cyclist’s blood was on al-Hilli’s pant leg and on the soles of his daughter’s feet, even though al-Hilli was shot through the window as he sat in the driver seat.”
Speculation only
I have always favoured the car being face in by the sign so I have been thinking about what might have happened if that was the case ,SM ,SAH and daughter are stood by passenger side of car ,shooting starts SM and then SAH are hit and daughter runs screaming ,gunman aims shot at daughter giving SAH time to get round car ,get in and start reverse move ,maybe to try and get daughter or hit shooter with car, not sure how SAH got hit as he did that but if shooter was on the Chevaline side of parking he must have been hit on the reverse move as the car came around and car carried on into bank and got stuck.
SM is always the problem so I wondered do you think its is possible he hung on to the roof rack and got dragged around with the car as it reversed and that how it got broken and how he came to be across the other side of parking ?
Could he have been on his bike and pulled around holding onto car does it sound possible?
P.S. The only reason I favour standing passenger side is because the roof rack is broken on that side it could be drivers side.
SAH could have been shot again as the car came around in reverse but the shooter would need to be in a different place for opening shots the shooter would then be on the bike track side .
Feel free to pull it apart as an idea.
I didnt find it here but this is the source:-
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/20/french-alps-murder-mystery-s-forensic-breakthrough.html
Why arent UK papers mentioning these facts in their reports?
I went to the Scotland Yard blog which quoted the Daily Beast.
Maybe no one noticed the points I made earlier about Eric Maillaud’s observations about little Zeena. In the one I heard he said she was hiding behind the front passengerS. PassengerS you notice. He also said she was sitting BETWEEN her mother and grandmother. The question I raised was how did he know? Why not sitting on the lap of one or the other. He seems to say that Zeena had provided no significant information. Zainab was still unconscious. All the other witnesses were dead so I say again, how did he know she was sitting BETWEEN them. I suppose it is fanciful to imagine that either WBM or the killers might have been the source?
Tim V – in the early days of these threads we had discussions about child seats and why there werent 2 and that that was illegal in France, the Police said there was only 1 and they assumed Zainab had been sitting in it. This was the reason they didnt believe there was a second child.
In the last 5/6 weeks child seats have never been mentioned again and weather this was the right size for Zainab we still dont know.
I even suggested at one point they were travelling in convoy with another car and it was in this car that Zeena’s car seat was.
I didnt believe they would undertake a 600 mile + journey with 1 child seat too few. They have been to France before and wouldnt want to be stopped on such an obvious matter and I believe the French are now very hot on this.
@Straw:
this is what Ms Nadeua wrote recently
Even the past of Brett Martin, the retired Royal Air Force official who was first on the scene, was probed in case he might have been involved, but he has no link whatsoever to the crime.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/09/mystery-of-iraqi-british-family-s-murder-in-the-french-alps-deepens.html
er, how was he probed, and by whom?? I thought he just walzed off back across the channel.
She hasn’t yet tweeted the latest piece of hers
{https://twitter.com/BLNadeau}
…The first shots at Mollier didn’t kill him, based on his autopsy report and his trail of blood on the ground.
has she read the Autopsy report???
My guess would be one child seat in rear and booster seat on front passenger seat maybe dislodged onto floor when car reversed I have an 8yo in family and he uses a booster seat.
Straw, no that’s a first !
From that I’d say Mollier was inside the car sitting in the passenger seat when a bullet hit him & blood spurted onto AH, could Zainab have been sitting on her fathers lap without any shoes ?
Now we need to know if she was barefoot when found !
Straw, my reply is mysteriously in moderation even though it contains no link !
Felix I think its come out that SM was shot but not fatally to start with and Sm was hit at least once before he made it into car .
We almost need to all take part in a reinactment to see if the little snippets coming out in any possible way begin to piece together.
If the official line is a fairystory they must have a goal they are heading towards, you would think. All they have done so far isnt to confuse, it is make almost impossible to believe there is any truth in the story.
6 weeks ago I would have taken this story like any other news story, by believing it.
Now I question almost every major happening in the last 10/15 years : –
9/11
7/7
Soham Murders
Diana
Jimmy Saville et al
I am questioning the original moon landings.
JFK was the only conspiracy theory I believed in.
I no longer believe the BBC.
What is my world coming to? Or am I finally seeing the light?
Oops messed that up SAH was hit once before he made into car but I see you mean her seeing the autopsy report ,not what she said I should read more carefully, sorry
Strawberry
what’s striking me as these extra bits and pieces about the case come out, is that the time they were all up there during the shootings is looking longer than originally thought.
Dopey thats what I thought all these extra things that are coming out are going to take more time, I did ask yesterday if anyone wanted to guess at a time frame for it all to occur and every second more is getting BM closer to the scene.
Question: Can anyone tell me how bullet trajectories tell us anything about Al-Hilli being outside his car?? Was he shot in the head in the car-park, but somehow walked back to his car, climbed in, locked the doors, and then was shot again through the glass? So, how to explain the double tap on all three in the car?
One or more of the traced bullet paths in AH’s body could be at an angle close to parallel with the ground. The bullets he took sitting in the car would be from above from a standing assailant shooting down on a sitting victim.
INSPECTOR’S NOTE–Mollier had been shot but not dead, Al Hilli and family pulled up, the gunman hid. Al Hilli and daughter got out of the car and rushed over, thought Mollier had a cycling accident. Gunman had to finish off Mollier but went after Zainab first. Would explain blood on pants leg and on daughter’s shoes..
Mollier knew the gunman.
http://scotlandyard.blogspot.co.uk/2012_10_01_archive.html
I had the chance to view the sky interview. Thank you whoever pointed me in that direction. I don’t know how I could have missed it earlier.
sky interview 12 49 at http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4537634/.html
The accompanying article strangely refers to him as “William” not Brett in the sun report and that he works for Boeing! Has anyone seen this mentioned before? This in a way is a more interesting and informative interview.
The first part follows an almost identical script as in the BBC interview. In fact so similar one would almost think he had learned it off by heart or had rehearsed it. Much of what followed was new but the detail about what he did at the scene on the BBC interview is missing on this one.
On this one he doesn’t say what time he started his ride but he does say it took about an hour and a half and that the climb up from Chevaline took about half an hour. There is no mention of Mollier being “in front” or overtaking him as early reports had it. On this one the questions are a bit more searching and inquisitorial. For example, he is challenged on the matter og the “Green 4×4”. He only refers to the vehicles passing him coming down the hill and no mention of it overtaking him on the way up, widely reported early on. He also refers to a motorbike and rider with a helmet. He also adds the interesting detail he had to move in to the side of the road to let it pass (presumably the RHS?) but could not remember any further detail than colour and that it was four wheel drive. (Not whether the driver was on his side or the other, whether is was British or foreign make, how many were inside let alone registration numbers) He says specifically it passes him at a leisurely pace – as it would have to, on such a narrow road if wasn’t to seriously endanger him.
This time not so much detail about what he did at the scene. Instead we jump from Zainab moaning in the recovery position to him going off on his bike to get help. Then we have more detail about him meeting Didierjean and his two female companions about “300 or four hundred yards down the road”. He confirms he had difficulty getting the gist of the message across and infers, though does not say specifically that Didierjean phoned emergency services there and then, though it could have been later. “Did they have a pho…. (with a?) signal and therefore could they phone the rescue services, which they did”.
Didierjean and passengers then he says, drive ahead of him and he follows on his bike. They turn the car around ready to make “a prompt getaway if anything turned bad” and walk together from there leaving the girls in car. Elsewhere not in this interview, it is reported this was about 50 yards away. He says little about what they did on the return trip apart from “I followed them up which I was quite apprehensive about because I was very prevalent (prescient?) about where the shooter was” This you notice must relate to following their car as he says “them” although he says only he and Didierjean did the last 50 yards, unless of course it was a slip of the tongue and the women did in fact go with them?
After checking the girl, who was now unconscious in the recovery position they decided “there was frankly little they could do” and to leave her and the scene “really for fear of … we had no defence against someone who had a weapon and might be going to use it again”. Before they get back to the car, first three fire/rescue vehicles, then an ambulance, then several police cars with sirens blaring pass them in the direction of the lay-by.
This interview fleshes out a lot of the detail not in the BBC interview and I don’t know how I have missed it before. However it still doesn’t solve the issue of the 3.48 call. Leaving aside for a moment earlier reports that the call was not made by Didierjean until he had returned from the site and he did not meet Martin until 4.10, let us assume for a moment that their meeting was actually at 3.45 which it would have to have been if he made the call at 3.48. This would allow only three minutes for Martin to get his message across and Didierjean to get through (tight I would say). This immediately creates major time-line problems.
From the BBC interview we have seen how Martin would have needed at least 20 mins to do what he said he did and get to meet Didierjean “3 or 400 yards down the road”. This must take his arrival at the lay-by back to no later than 3.25. Then again this would clash with Martin’s own version of the ride “starting at 2.30” (from BBC interview) and that it took “an hour and a half” (from this one) making an arrival time of about 4.0 pm.
Something definitely has to GIVE if these conflicting accounts can be reconciled. One or other of Martin’s statements MUST be untrue. If he started his ride at 2.30 and it took an hour and a half he MUST have arrived about 4. As this is after 3.48 he couldn’t have made the call at 3.48 and significantly nor could Didierjean have. Nor could he have spent the time at the site doing the things he said he did. There simply would not have been time to do it and cover those 3/400 yards to bump into Didierjean and his two companions.
Alternately if the hour and a half journey time is a lie, as Olifant’s ingenious calculations suggest, it places Martin at the scene precisely when the pistol shots are heard at 3.30! That a call WAS made by SOMEBODY or that information was otherwise transmitted, is confirmed by the arrival of the emergency services on their way back. As this is said by the authorities to be about 4.00 which would tie in with Didierjean making it at 3.48 perhaps. Isn’t it about time the press demanded a definitive account of the timeline from Mr Maillaud?
How long would it take to cycle rapidly downhill 300 yards? A minute?
I doubt it took five minutes, if that, for him to cycle down the hill, speak to Phillipe D and drive back up the hill to the carpark in the car…depending on the duration of the call to emergency services that is.
I can’t see it taking 20 minutes for BM to do what he did in the car park either. Arrive, check pulses, move two people, break a window, switch an engine off, take a look around the scene then scarper – more like five minutes IMO, ten minutes being generous.
So when they say blood on feet they actually mean blood on shoe !
@TimV
I mentioned this Sun footage on the other thread.
New Sun article here
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/4600767/sun-visits-murder-scene-of-saad-al-hill-and-family-in-alps.html
Graeme Culliford visits Chevaline for the Sun, article written jointly by the ever present Peter Allen in Paris.
Both Zainab and Zeena are back in Britain at a secret address The Sun can reveal [actually, revealed weeks ago at Craig Murray…] that Sylvain lived with a pretty young pharmacist called Claire Schutz, who is believed to have given birth to his baby in June. [did]
He also shared his semi-detached home with his two teenage sons from a previous marriage. The property appeared abandoned when our reporter called this week.
How did the Sun find out the alleged photo outside which the family photographed themselves in Doussard?? Why not, then, show the photo with the family on it???
The Sun shifts it back to a frenzied killing, owing to the number of bullet cases – but doesn’t square to two bullets to each head.
In an exclusive interview, one officer on the case revealed that they no longer think Saad had arranged to meet anyone at the remote layby where he was killed, but was simply there to enjoy some hiking or sightseeing.
oh yes!! They’re starting to panic now, going round in circles.
BTW what are the links for SAH’s other non-fatal bullet wounds??
Martin was always a prime suspect in anybodies book, yet he was promptly declared an ex-RAF hero and invited to leave the country before any physical evidence could be processed.
I think he still must be in the frame as his time frame doesn’t add up, his actions at the scene (moving victims, smashing car windows) making sure there was plausible rationale for his traces to be all over. His fingering of the green 4*4 which nobody else saw. His business’s connections with private security companies etc.
“but was simply there to enjoy some hiking or sightseeing.”
Yeah right. How many 74 year old women (and 4 year old kids) go hiking up mountains?