Not Forgetting the al-Hillis 22278


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?


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22,278 thoughts on “Not Forgetting the al-Hillis

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  • Paddy

    Long text, Hashim al HIlli mentioned several times:

    http://users.physics.harvard.edu/~wilson/Fadhel.html
    EXPERIENCES IN ARAB AFFAIRS
    1943-1958
    Mohommed Fadhel Jamali..M.A..Ph.D., L.L.D.
    Former Prime Minister of Iraq.

    Search term “al-Hilli”

    => ” I was accompanied by Hashim al-Hilli, an official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs whom I had chosen to be the Secretary of the Legation.”

    => “The first thing we request is that you should try to find a place for the residence of the Algerian delegate in Baghdad. Otherwise “It may procure an Emergency Order from the Revolutionary Command to be billeted in your residence so that it will be the Algerian home. Isn’t it so already? Or the choice will be among one of three homes — brother Hashim’s (al-Hilli), brother ‘Abdul Kareem’s (Kanna) and yours.”

    => “As was his habit, Nuri Pasha issued no instructions whatsoever for the delegation, and he left it to me to choose my colleagues for the Bandung Conference. I chose Dr Abdul Majeed Abbas, a former colleague in my Cabinet, Dr Abdul Hameed Kadhim, a former Minister of Education, General ‘Abdul Muttalib al-Ameen, Iraqi Minister to Indonesia, Faisal Damlouji, a member of Parliament, Hashim al-Hilli ,and Rasheed Raouf, officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. ”

    => “While at Bandung I received invitations to visit the Philippines, Nationalist China, Japan, Thailand and Pakistan. I notified the Iraqi government who promptly approved my acceptance of the invitations. I was accompanied by Hashim al-Hilli on the visits to these friendly countries.”

  • straw44berry

    Tim V,
    I have been thinking about these split saplings and dont think its from bullets or even from a car driving at it. I think to split it like that it would need to be a pulling motion – my only thought is that a bike was thrown in there and when it was hastily pulled out it split the branches like that.

  • Tim V

    @ Katie
    29 Oct, 2012 – 8:13 am I am the last one to take WBM’s words at face value but locked doors would be an understandable reaction to an outside threat. then there is WBM’s report that he had to smash driver’s window to turn off the engine which ties up with the famous photograph from the air on the 6th. Then there is the puzzle of the open rear door. No one as far as I know has cleared up whether this was opened before or after the attack and by whom. I’m assuming the police and that it too was locked initially? Typically Frenchies/press could have settled this ages ago.

  • kathy

    @ Ferret

    Re “-ise” vs “-ize”

    Thanks but doubt that will satisfy Kenneth due to his dogmatism!

  • bluebird

    To sum up about waht facts we have learnt in the past 24 hours:

    1) Hashim al Hilli was a high ranked diplomat or intelligence officer for the Iraqi government since WW2. He was living in the Iraqi New York embassy at the United Nations in 1959. He emigrated with his family in 1958 to the UK and from 1958 – 1971 in the Iraqi embassy in London at 22, Queens Gate. in 1971 they moved to Putney.

    2) Kadhim al Hilli apparently came to the UK in 1970/1971. He first had a house 2 minutes away from his brother’s house in Putney. Then he moved into a flat in a great looking house at March Court, Putney, that was 1 minute away from his brother’s house. March Court houses are offered in UAE and Dubai for rent and obviously are owned by Arabs or even by the Iraqi government (or Saddam?). There is an obscure intelligence and security office in the same house where Kadhim and family lived. They lived in flat 90 while that Iraqi intelligence office did reside in flat 103 in the March Court house.

    3) There is a 95% likelyhood that the two brothers had a sister or a cousin who came to the UK with them. Her name is al Hilli but we don’t know her first name. She was obviously married with a guy whose surname is Hussain and she gave birth to 3 children in Northern Surrey (Putney?) in December 1971 (Mohammad Husssain) and in March 1973 (Tarq Hussain) and in March 1974 (Rezyya Hussain). We don’t know very much about this woman and we don’t know anything about the father and the three now grown up children.

    To sum up, I believe that we have come a huge step further with what we do know today.

    LOL, What would the media have paid me for that information? I guess that they are already reading this BLOG. If there were some clever journalists anywhere then they would have researched that long ago. It took me a few hours only, and of course I wouldn’t have found this without the links of felix, ferret, thomas, dopey and katie. I guess that we are a pretty good international investigation team, aren’t we?

  • Mochyn69

    Wow, BB .. this is explosive stuff.

    I think it was always obvious this was no ordinary refugee family, but I doubt anyone could imagine just how influential they had been

    I remember someone once asking if the al Hillis were Jewish. I thought that was a bit far fetched at the time,but now I’m not so sure. The Baghdad Jews were very rich and influential,including in their midst the Sassoons.Also very pro-British.

    Your General Abd al-Karim Qasim brought some relief to the Jewish community.

    ‘Relief came under Brigadier ‘Abd al-Karīm Qāsim (1958–1963), who toppled the monarchy by a military revolution on July 14, 1958. Qāsim canceled all the restrictions against the Jews. He also released Yehuda Tajir and let him go back to Israel. The Jewish golden age under Qāsim was affected however by the confiscation and destruction of the Jewish cemetery, located in the middle of the capital, in order to build a tower to immortalize his name.’

    There is a reference to him here:

    Ha-Yehudim be-Irak bi-Tekufat ha-General ‘Abd al-Karīm Qāsim,” in: Pe’amim, 71 (1997), 55–82; idem,

    http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0010_0_09571.html

  • bluebird

    Thomas,. I know that she said that she lived abroad for 35 years. That would be 1970. However, I have the immigration documents of her when she was a little girl in 1958. Perhaps they returned to Baghdad from time to time. However, their father worked at the embassy in London in 22, Queens Gate and he took his family (wife, daughter Balsham and son Ali) with him in 1958. Travelling by ship from Iraq via Durban (South Africa) must have been pretty tough for little kids and I doubt that they didn’t do that too often with the kids. However, I have no emmigration tickets, just the immigration in 1958 and Hasim’s phone land line number in the British telephone book together with his address in Knightsbridge. In 1971 they moved to Putney. There his family is definitely with him.

    Perhaps Balsham was ordered not to mention her time when she lived in the London Iraqi embassy from 1958.

  • kathy

    @ Bluebird

    Great stuff! They are obviously a very well-connected family going back a long time. With such a history, I can’t see them not trying to regain their power base in Iraq.

  • bluebird

    paddy, WOW! Thank you. Great investigation.

    That link is the last stone to fulfil the puzzle.

    Oh yes, and I am curious what press and media are writing tomorrow regarding of what we found today. Are they being quiet? I know, Sandy is much more important.

    I simply don’t understand why hogh paid journalists weren’t able to find out what we “bloody amateurs” could do. Thanks to craig for providing us a possibility to share our thoughts. I feel like Winston in Orwell’s 1984. Now I am just waiting for the TRUTH police knocking at my door …..

  • Felix

    @Bluebird – both March and Roehampton COurts are next to each other, despite being in different postal districts. Both in London Borough of Richmond – perhaps they keep archived rate books. (I don’t think archive electoral rolls would help here)

  • bluebird

    felix,

    I know that they are next to each other. I was studying google maps for a long time (including street view and public transport) before I posted their address for the first time here on this board. I did also study the likelyhood of Saad going to school in Pimlico while he lived in Putney, but the public busses are easy and he has got a bus every 5-10 minutes to Pimlico. Travelling by public bus on schedule takes 25-30 minutes from Putney to his school in Pimlico. Many kids need much more time for going to school. I mean, I really did reaserach all that and I was also looking how close the family members were living next to each other at that time. March Court was even closer to Hashim’s house in Roehampton Courts than the house of Kadhim’s first address (where he stayed for approx. just 1 year).

  • Kenneth Sorensen

    why would we be fed the story that tKadhim al-Hilli fell out with Saddam and came here in 1979, if it weren’t true? I believe he came here in 1979 with his 2 sons. I want to see PROOF that he was in London from 1971-79. Otherwise I’ll just stick with my fiorm belief that he came in 1979.

  • Thomas

    @Bluebird
    29 Oct, 2012 – 2:55 pm

    Agree. Balsam might have lived with the Kadhim al Hilli family in Baghdad, while her father was busy as a diplomat. And moved together with Kadhim and the rest 70/71.

    Some far-fetched speculation: Is it possible that Balsam is the “al-Hilli” mother of the 3 kids? And the Hussein father really was Saddam – which could be a reason why they had to move from Baghdad?

    Find it strange that the mother is just named “al-Hilli”, or is that normal in UK?

  • bluebird

    Thomas, unfortunately this is normal in the UK that in the registry the first name is only given for the kids. However, we must research the originals. Usually there should be original documents but not just the register book. Somebody would have to go to the Northern Surrey birth registry and look at the documents. I did add the document numbers when I cited the names and DOB of the three children.

    Well, Balsham got her first child in 1982 with the father being wealthy Greek shipping company owner George Xanthis. She might have been old enough in 1971 to give birth to a child (she was 17 or 18), but I don’t want to think about that because it’s pretty disgusting. My guess is that there was a sister or a cousin who was approximately as old as Kadhim. If I were a journalist in the UK I would have already driven to the Northern Surrey birth registry BEFORE MI6 or CIA were there fore destroying those documents.

  • Kenneth Sorensen

    Disgusting,- all this far fetched speculation about the Iraqie dictator being “father” to any Al-Hilli’s DOH!. The very word “Al-Hilli”, meaning “man from Hillah” (in central — Shia –Iraq), would for the proud Saddam Hussein Al-Tikriti be equal to a word of curse.

  • bluebird

    sorensen,

    with all respect, but your response is completely insane and nuts. I told you twice that there IS PROOF with those two addresses in the British telephone book. After only 1 year they moved to March Court, Putney. I can’t copy a telephone book for you, but when you would apply for a membership at ancestry.com and pay the 39.90 per month then you can read that telephone book scan, too. I don’t think that Kadhim’s family were registered in a Northern Surrey telephone book printed in 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, etc. if they weren’t there and if they had no address in the UK at that time. Why would his name be in a 1971 Surrey telephone book if he arrivbed in 1979 for the first time? Clairvoyance of the British phonebook office?

  • bluebird

    sorensen,

    iraq is full of intermarriages between sunni and shia. Saddam had a lot of Shia friends and Baath collaborateurs who were his friends, at least until the time of the Shia uprise that came up right after the first Iraq war of Bush Sr.

    Shia-Sunni marriage is allowed due to quoran. When men fell in love wth women in Iraq, they didn’t ask whether or not she was a Shia. They rather asked about how rich her family was.

    http://www.questionsonislam.com/question/marriage-between-shia-and-sunni-permissible-islam

  • bluebird

    This came to my attention when I read paddys’s fantastic link above:

    quote:
    On the 14th of July 1958, one chapter of Iraq’s history was closed by the fall of the Hashemite monarchy. The story of that chapter remains to be written, but some facts are already completely lost to future historians since many documents were destroyed by the 1958 revolution. Besides, the Iraqi government under the royal regime did not care much for publicity, nor did they keep well-documented records. This was especially true of foreign affairs where secrecy was observed. Bold Some secret papers were kept in the private possess­ion of those responsible for handling the affairs, and in certain cases, nothing whatever was put on paper.

    That’s exactly what some of us had in mind from the very first minute:
    Could Kadhim have had such documents in his remains when he died?

  • Kenneth Sorensen

    You could just take some screenshots of those telephone books. I know for a fact that Felix is not shy of taking screenshots, as he has done so 5 times regarding Brett Martins signatures

  • Tim V

    bit off line but indicative of how rotten is the state of Denmark

    from “intercept” . bit like the orchestra playing as titanic sinks.

    This week financial news organization CNBC gave some mainstream attention to the largest money laundering and racketeering lawsuit in United States History, in which “Banksters” and their U.S. racketeering partners are being accused of laundering of 43 trillion dollars worth of ill gotten gains.

    The lawsuit is said to involve officials located in the highest offices of government and the financial sector.
    Since this information was surprisingly revealed by the mainstream news organization there has been a very suspicious and deadly fallout at the CNBC headquarters.
    Within hours the original page for the article was taken down, and CNBC senior vice president Kevin Krim received news that his children were killed under very suspicious circumstances.
    It seems that the murder happened first and then the page was removed later.

  • dopey

    Kenneth

    Saad was 50 years old. By 1979 Saad would have LEFT school. He was obviously here way before 1979. Saad is reported as having done O levels and A levels at the local secondary school too.

  • Trowbridge H. Ford

    So now French investigators are looking for a psychopath who matches what Israeli apologists and Ferret have been claiming about William Hershkovitz all along – though don’t expect them to connect the dots any time soon about the alleged motiveless killing by an apparant gun enthusiast.

  • Q

    Anna likes herring, probably even the red ones.

    @BB: Well done!

    Can you find out where in Pimlico Kadhim and family lived when they came to the UK? Was it in a safe house near MI6 HQ?

    @Ferret: Back in 2010, I started learning about a number of deaths that all connected with X-ray crystallography.

    http://www.lightsource.ca/louis_delbaere.php
    http://www.iucr.org/news/newsletter/volume-19/number-1/lachlan-cranswick-1968-2010

    Then there was the August 2006 death of a son of the co-developer of X-ray crystallography using synchrotron radiation. He was a gifted mathematician and grandson of one of the Manhattan Project scientists, Egon Bretscher of Switzerland. It was called a suicide, although very obliquely. He drowned in a river. The 20-year-old did not appear suicidal to family and friends at time of his disappearance. His brother was a scientist who had studied terrestrial gamma flashes, but gave it up to study sociology.

    There was a National Research Council of Canada scientist from the same city, who disappeared about two weeks later, in September 2006:

    http://z13.invisionfree.com/PorchlightCanada/ar/t1460.htm
    https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:oo2wY3bjNSsJ:www.actabp.pl/pdf/1_2001/1-20.pdf+piotr+drabik+x-ray+crystallography&hl=en&gl=ca&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjT_j3VeH5FBAD732NAStNA4W2ho5sLaz_Sv1CC4wTGIjWXWNgc5xzEiw7Utbn9u6Y5VnR-kXCY4kBUo2khJXkxrIzepenZajyqhi1cF9JSqtq3na3t7CFBjIc8bgdxWBe9Odwc&sig=AHIEtbT1laS_LjhEPETM80H38I5FH2LBXA
    http://molpharm.aspetjournals.org/content/66/5/1192.full

    Note Piotr Drabik’s work in pharmacology and nanotechnology.

    One of the deaths was attributed to a heart attack, two disappeared and later turned up dead. One disappeared and has never been found.

    The reason I mention this is that lasers are used in non-destructive testing:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondestructive_testing

    I am not aware of any deaths of scientists involved specifically in laser research, but I haven’t followed that angle. Many who work at nuclear facilities or in biochemistry have died mysteriously, as we know from all those dead scientist lists and news stories.

  • Tim V

    at NR
    29 Oct, 2012 – 9:01 am I did chunks of it way back NR and the differences are illuminating as previously discussed. They do say if you want to lie you should keep it as close to the truth as possible. Leave out only the incriminating or inconvenient bits and add as little as possible. It is possible he was far more scared than he admits and did far less than he claimed. As an “ex RAF Pilot” he may wish to cover up any suggestion of cowardice. If PD is not a stooge, his testimony indicates he was far more panicky when they met than you would gather from his television interview although he does admit to fear both on the first occasion and on the second when he went back, it would appear rather reluctantly with PD. On not one but two occasions the decision was taken to leave the wounded 7 yr old Zainab that seems somewhat surprising, especially the second time when the car was only fifty yards or so away. No doubt they would argue by that time they knew help was on its way (that is if they were able to phone after they met) but even so leaving an injured 7 yr old in possible danger (twice) is not necessarily the action of a big strong trained RAF “hero” is it?

  • Thomas

    @Bluebird
    29 Oct, 2012 – 3:23 pm

    She would have been 17 year and 11 month when giving birth.

    That could been a couse to leave Iraq 1971, and also explain why al-Hilli family had such a huge amount on the Swiss account orgin from Saddam – if it´s correct.

    It would be interesting to find out what the 3 al-Hilli/Hussein kids are doing today.

    When was Hashim diseased, or is he still alive?

  • Q

    @BB:

    Sorry. Short question: did Saad al-Hilli and his family ever live in Pimlico, or did the children just attend school there (as seems to be my understanding)?

    As a bizarre bit of info, killer colonel Russell Williams had lived in Deep River, Ontario as a child. That is the town where scientist Lachlan Cranswick vanished in 2010. Questions arose as to who owned the rental house of Cranswick. Those questions were never answered in public. It would have been interesting to know the list of residents during the lifetime of that house.

  • Felix

    @Bluebird
    I only meant by the proximity that you could search records in Richmond borough archives, viz Ratebooks to see who was living there. Did you notice someone at Pimlico school on Friends Reunited who remembered Saad Hilli there? Certificates are problematical to obtain for births under 50 years ago for obvious reasons. However, such records would would flesh out connections. I guess journos, police etc would be able to access these very quickly. And probably have done!

    Re Surrey Northern Reg dist.- recreated 1965 (until 1996) out of
    Surrey NW – Woking, Weybrige, Walton, Egham areas,plus Middlesex South – Ashford, Staines, Twickenham districts
    http://www.ukbmd.org.uk/genuki/reg/districts/surrey%20northern.html
    I guess you know this – just for the record again. All Surrey NW registers now held at Weybridge plus Hounslow, Richmond and Kingston boroughs for the ex-Middx S.bits Chertsey the main hospital.
    However, NB on 1.4.1974, Surrey N.
    Gained the unparished area of Esher from Surrey Mid Eastern registration district.
    Lost the parishes of Chertsey, Egham, and Thorpe, to Surrey North Western registration district.
    Gained the unparished area of Walton & Weybridge from Surrey North Western registration district.

    Richmond, Kingston, Hounslow etc. births were recored as such after LG reorg in 1965.

  • Kenneth Sorensen

    The American Tim wanted to show off some great wit by mentioning a quote from Shakespeare about Denmark. First of all 1) Its all fantasy, springing form a poets mind, lets be absolutely clear about that. Second 2) 500 years ago and concerning a “prins Hamlet” (also made up) what was “rotten” was in all likelihood something in the Kings Court, as Shakespeare never set foot in Denmark and so had no clue about how common folks thought.

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