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?
Oh, I see, Bluebird, just more of your total rubbish, which I shall now ignore.
Ferret, you are quite wrong about Hayward.
He had never been in action anywhere where he played any killing role in any murder, just did stakeout work.
He was in the Life Guards parading around London, served in Cyprus, Northern Ireland and Canada, driving vehicles around where others did what litte shooting there was.
His first action, the shooting of Francis Bradley as Soldier ‘A’,showed that he couldn’t even hit him seriously at 20-30 meters, though it didn’t really matter as he was going to shoot Palme in the back at just a few feet away.
Hershy had the assignment of just killing all the persons present at close range, what he found increasingly hard to do because of the kids, and the need to make it ceremonial killings.
His doing it is not potty at all, as he had a great alibi about not having done so, given his background and citizenship – as has been pointed out – and it only failed because he went berserk because of it.
Hershy looks like the ideal candidate to have done it.
off topic
For those who are interested into investigation (in any kind of terrorist or intelligence topics) and research. Here is a pretty fine database that could be quite helpful at times:
http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/
Thanks NR,
If the French did set up a no-fly zone, why open it when they did about 10/15 mins before the BMW was on the transporter. One photo does have a policeman giving a ‘dirty look’ towards the heli, but maybe thats just my interpretation as he would be getting flying debris from it.
The no-fly would be sensible to protect any normal crime scene, but that hasnt been done here.
Maybe low morning cloud prevented heli flights over the crime scene as its 3000 ft up and wooded I would expect some time before its clear most mornings.
I wasnt aware of the 3 month licence, and that for sure would be a reason to repeat use of photos unless a better one is available (probably not in this case).
@ straw44berry 24 Oct, 2012 – 11:15 am
“Thanks NR, If the French did set up a no-fly zone, why open it when they did about 10/15 mins before the BMW was on the transporter. One photo does have a policeman giving a ‘dirty look’ towards the heli, but maybe thats just my interpretation as he would be getting flying debris from it. The no-fly would be sensible to protect any normal crime scene, but that hasnt been done here.Maybe low morning cloud prevented heli flights over the crime scene as its 3000 ft up and wooded I would expect some time before its clear most mornings.”
Good point about possible early morning cloud cover, and if choppers were flying low they’d mess up the crime scene.
@Trow
You are clutching at straws by saying that Captain Hayward hadn’t seen active service.
The point is that Captain Hayward had been fully trained by the military, and presumably to quite a high level as he was an officer.
Hershy, on the other hand, had NO MILITARY TRAINING WHATSOEVER. He probably didn’t even know how to fire a gun, for goodness sake. He was a potter from surburbia, not a soldier, nor even a hunter.
So, which secret service, in their right mind, would send an untrained greenhorn to France to carry out an assassination? Of serveral targets??? The risk of something going wrong would be immense.
Never mind that Mossad is one of the best secret services in the world, with numerous fully trained agents at its disposal, with skill and support to get in and out undetected.
Your theory simply has no basis in reality and I for one am not going to discuss it any further unless you can provide some convincing EVIDENCE to support it.
Meanwhile, I think it’s much more interesting to consider that we’ve uncovered Mr Martin as an identity with 5 different signatures… (or at least 2, according to Felix).
somehow off topic:
For those who enjoy some conspiracy theories from the internet:
Those two are said to be the ancestors of the al Saffar family from Saffariya.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldwin_IV_of_Jerusalem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_de_Ridefort (10th Grand Master of the Templars)
Both of them settling in Saffariya and they had children with local women.
I don’t know whether or not this theory is valid because I am just a bird but no historian scientist. However, the documents presented seem to be valid ones.
quote:
On the morning of July 3, 1187, an army of the Franks settled in Syria, descendents of the crusaders, set forth from the village of Saffariya toward the besieged fortress of Caesarea on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, some four hours’ march away. The army, perhaps some twenty thousand men strong, comprised the bulk of the Western Christian military power in Syria.
Does anyone have any information to hand on the supposedly unrelated shootings in southern France after the Annecy murders, the ones where the victims were shot in head twice at close range? I’m wondering how many victims there were, and if they were men or women? Any info would be very helpful.
Regarding Interview of BBC with Ahamad al Saffar
What I really don’t understand about the jouranlist and his work:
The general public has got a lot of questions regarding the family. Why didn’t he ask just a few basic question when he had al Saffar in front of his microphone.
E.g.
Sir, what could you tell us about Mrs. al Allaf?
When did she go to Sweden and why?
What were her jobs?
Is Mohammed al Allaf one of her realtives?
What can you tell us about Iqbal al Saffar?
When did she live in Sweden?
When did she move to the UK?
What was her job?
What can you tell us about Mr al Hilli?
What was his job?
Where did he work during the past 10 years?
What do you know about his father?
etc, etc, etc
Nothing at all.
What kind of journalist was that who didn’t ask a single question? Who is working for BBC? Just idiots?
ferret
did you mean that one?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/9536224/Three-people-found-shot-dead-in-car-in-Corsica.html
@Bluebird
Thanks for that – it wasn’t what I was talking about, there were a couple of incidents supposedly by a serial killer, in mainland France?
And yes, BBC journalists, just doing what they’re told… look at the fiasco around Saville, total and utter failure to protect women, children and even the dead… total and utter failure to report anything.
Total failure to ask WBM anything awkward etc etc etc.
BBC = British Propaganda Corporation.
You are just blindly denying anything which doesn’t suit your agenda.
As Raymond Murray wrote in The SAS in Ireland about the botched Francis Bradley assassination:
“Bradley was shot many times and at close ranges, from 40 yards in the first two bursts from ‘A’ and ‘C’,at some 20 yards again by ‘C’and then closer still. Was there a challenge at all? Were the IRA weapons loaded? Did Bradley actually take one in his hand? Did he raise it in a threatening manner? Did the SAS and the RUC recieve definite information about the weapons? Could they have immobilised them? Francic Bradley was a nervous chap worn out by the worry and harassment. He had probably been asked to move weapons to another location and so was wearing gloves. One surmises that he was on the fringe of the IRA activity. The term ‘gunman’ seems loaded. Could he not have been taken prisoner after the gunfire bursts from ‘A’ and ‘C’ and even after the second burst from ‘C’? It was the last burst from ‘C’ into the young man’s stomach from close range that proved fatal.” (p. 356)
This is not how covert military operations should have been carred out by the British military in N.I. but a gross parody of what to do, but it still happened.
One could write a parody of how the Mossad kidon carried out the Annecy massacre where Hershy plays the role of Soldier ‘C’ aka Derek Bird, the kidon leader calls the shots like
‘Soldier ‘A’ aka Captain James Rennie, the guy in the 4 X 4
is just a replacement of an SAS driver, BM is the lookout and cleanup man, and the kids are just replacements for poor Bradley.
When the new Attorney General John Larkin called for a new inquest into the killing of Bradley in late May 2010, as I recall, Bird, thinking that he was going to be made the scapegoat not only of his murder but also that of Olof Palme, went berserk, shooting all those people in Cumbria.
If you cannot see the similarities, so much the worse for you, but I shall be writing an article about it in due course, and posting it on sites I have available.
You are of course welcome to write whatever you like, and post it wherever you can. Whether people read it or not is another matter.
The similarity which is glaringly missing for me is, as already stated, the lack of military training in the case of William Herskowitz, and the copious amounts of it in the case of Captain Simon Hayward.
Captain Simon Hayward had presumably been trained to load, aim, shoot, and reload, in the course of his military progress to the rank of Captain. (Probably over an over again until it was second nature.)
William Herskowitz, on the other hand, is unlikely ever to have even touched a firearm in the course of his career as a professional potter, and lately hotel kitchen assistant, in a suburban environment where hunting is not a common passtime.
About as unlikely a comparison as you will ever find?
You keep answering every question except this, including more and more irrelevant detail in your answers, a fact which I am sure our observant readers have noticed.
Until you can provide any sort of likely scenario for when and how William Herskowitz was trained on firearms, it’s hardly likely that any reasonable person would believe you when you say he was dropped into France by Mossad to kill people. (Unless of course you think he was going to do it by dropping clay on their heads.)
But, as you’re clearly convinced you’re right, carry on… Far be it from me to cloud your prejudice with fact.
Almost any adult who has grown up in America has had experience shooting guns, and I am sure that Hershy had as much experience as would require him to kill people at close range who he was told to kill as best he could.
You are crazily acting as if Hershy’s whole life was spent in Israel during August-September this year.
And while you are acting without any evidence that he, an adult, was completely unacquainted with weapons – what is just about as unlikely to happen around Hyde Park, NY as a camel driver going down main street – you act as if Hayward and Bird were completely skilled military operators who always knew what they were being asked to do, and did it.
Just read the pathetic statements that Hayward and Bird, it seems, provided the first Bradley inquest. (Murray, pp. 353-6)
Loved Hayward stating that he called ‘Halt’ to start the massacre, and fired one aimed shot which apparently missed everything, and Bird ran around and fired wildly while fearing for his life when they had completely staked out the site Bradley came to in order to move the guns.
I mentioned that incident in N. I., not to show that it was any kind of model for what happened elsewhere, especially near Lake Annedy, but to show that you have a most glorified idea about what a covert operation entails when they all too often turn out to be cockups.
And it certainly became one when Hershy discovered that he was ordered to kill children – what he had never expected, and refused to do after half-heartedly trying to kill the older girl.
The rest of the shooting was like shooting fish in a barrel, as the saying goes.
@Bluebird
I didn’t imply any suspicion. I just wondered why that Mosque was the location, what the connection was. The only other reference points relating to the funeral were the Swedish uncle, and Woking cemetery.
@Bluebird
re the mysterious unseen Mrs Al-Allaf – yes a good bunch of questions.
BTW I loved that description of Mollier in the Indy about him being a “middle ranking official”. Wasn’t this used about Dr Kelly when the government tried to bury his importance -as right hand weapons man of slippery Jack Straw – , a fellow Leeds University alumnus???
Question.
If people are reported killed, they have to have funerals. In general, can funerals be faked? How easy would that be?
And it certainly became one when Hershy discovered that he was ordered to kill children – what he had never expected, and refused to do after half-heartedly trying to kill the older girl.
I continue to be amused by your constant confusion of fantasy with fact.
Carry on…
🙂
@Felix
If people are reported killed, they have to have funerals. In general, can funerals be faked? How easy would that be?
Jackie Kennedy (on seeing the body in the coffin): “That’s not him.”
Yes, indeed, I continue not to be amused by your confusion of fact with fantasy.
The facts are that the girls amazingly survived the brutal attack – the older girl shot in the shoulder and head bashed, while the younger one was not even found, much less touched.
And I am sure that the spotters for the assassination knew of their presence there, but at least one shooter just couldn’t do it.
I should have remembered, as Captain Simon Hayward explained it all about himself when he wrote this about the injury to his right hand while serving in Cyprus in Under Fire: My Own Story:
“The driver in a Ferret sits directly in front of the commander, almost between his knees. I patted Jenkins on the shoulder, told him to stop,and thrust my hand under his eyes.
‘Look! No fingers’.” (Quoted from p. 37.)
You cannot change the mind of a professional soldier when it is already set in concrete.
@NR: Russell Williams’ stepfather has retired from ITER, according to reports. Another point of interest about him was that he used to work at a tritium removal facility in Korea, and as chief engineer for the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. He worked as project manager on the failed Maple reactor project at Chalk River.
http://www.uofaengineer.engineering.ualberta.ca/article.cfm?article=61246&issue=61230
http://www.iter.org/newsline/9/1090
http://thetyee.ca/News/2009/06/09/LittleReactorsCouldnt/
http://cyberwanderer.wordpress.com/2009/06/12/the-end-of-aecl/
That’s some background: tritium, telescopes, etc.
Totally OT, but I noticed that Nordion also has ties to Belgium.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordion
OK, Trow, let’s talk facts then.
🙂
In fact, less than 1 in 5 households in New York State owns a gun, with household gun ownership running at 18.1%.
http://www.vpc.org/press/1204death.htm
So the chance of him being unacquainted with handguns is, I would suggest, somewhere around 80%. Certainly a good deal greater than the chance of seeing “a camel driver going down main street” as you so colourfully put it.
So no, I don’t have any evidence that he didn’t know how to shoot, but the odds are in favour of this conclusion, statistically speaking.
If we were to believe what you write, however, we’d have to believe that every person in the USA knows how to shoot which would be a totally erroneous conclusion.
Your statements are littered with such inaccurate insinuations, along with flights of fancy and leaps to conclusions. So many, indeed, that it would take a good deal of time to provide referenced refutations in each case, as I have done here.
Unfortunately I don’t have time to do this but hopefully readers will beware of taking what you write at face value and will do their own research.
Background on previous news link regarding Iraqi oil:
http://www.tomhull.com/ocston/books/coll-private.php
More on the dispute between Iraq’s government and Exxon:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/22/usa-iraq-oil-idUSL1E8LMJPV20121022
Iraq’s pipeline deal with Korea:
http://www.myfoxal.com/story/19888419/iraq-resumes-oil-shipments-after-port-shutdown
Immediately after the news broke about the alleged killings at Chevaline, the following people rushed to talk to the media.
Manuel Valls French Minister of the Interior
Peter Ricketts UK Ambassador to Paris
William Hague UK Foreign Secretary
François Hollande President of France
David Cameron Prime Minster of the UK.
Since then all have been silent on the case
Dr Ahmad Al-Hilli of Sweden has complained on the BBC that he is not getting any information about the case, assuming he does want it. Perhaps some of the above 5 names can help him? Or perhaps these names can help him who have been silent so far about the alleged assassination of one of their citizens :
Carl Bildt, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Sweden
Fredrik Reinfeldt Prime Minister of Sweden
@Ferret
Compared with a lot of accepted distortions of the truth/official lies, it must be pretty easy, I would have thought. Wouldn’t need many people in the loop.
BTW re the “three bodies”, there is no trail whatsoever either side of the channel. As if it all happened by magic.
Correction, it is of course Dr Ahmad Al-Saffar. sorry.
More background on Iraq oil:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/06/us-turkey-iraq-pipeline-idUSBRE8750RY20120806
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18939172
http://www.neurope.eu/article/turkey-asks-iran-help-repair-pipeline-after-explosion
There was a lot of action with Iraq’s pipelines in the summer of 2012.
FWIW, Russell Williams’ stepfather was last reported living at Aix en Provence, France.