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?
Please search al hilli + al khawam connections tonight. The clean teams are probably on alert since the press knows her maiden name now.
@Katie,
So what’s your take on Al-Hilli being an intelligence asset? Seems quite reasonable to me.
BB,
how can you be sure that Jill Kelley (Khawam) family from Lebanon is related to the family of Ali al-Khawam in Iraq (oil-for-food etc)?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/10/the-one-where-israel-bombed-syria.html
” this is Israel’s attack on a Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007. This week in the New Yorker, David Makovsky leverages interviews with top Israeli and American officials to put together a granular account of the back and forth between Israel and the U.S. about what was happening at a suspected reactor site in the Syrian desert, and what to do about it. There is, however, an Iran connection: Makovsky tries to draw lessons for Iran from the Syria raid. But it doesn’t pan out the way he might hope.In Makovsky’s story, he recounts a “key consideration” about whether to strike or not: the Israeli “desire to minimize the potential of a response from Damascus.” The very secretiveness of the Syrian nuke program provided Israel an opportunity: if Syrian president Bashar al-Assad never had to directly confront the fact that he was doing covert nuclear work, he would not need to take a strong defensive posture against an attack. Assad has kept his borders with Israel quiet (like his father after the 1973 war)—an indication of not wanting a direct conflict with Israel. That meant if both Assad and Israel never acknowledged exactly what happened, things might not escalate.
Keeping a lid on the nuclear intelligence was essential, as was deniability for Israel:
Psychologists consulted by the I.D.F., who had profiled Assad for yeas, argued that Syrian retaliation might be avoided if Israel did not corner the President by publicly claiming credit for a strike, thus preserving what Israeli security officials called a “zone of denial.”
Because the intelligence on the Syrian reactor was shared with the U.S., American officials too were asked to keep quiet about what happened in Syria. They acceded (over objections from Vice President Cheney).
The Israelis read it right, and the gambit paid off. Syrian officials, after the raid, gave various reasons for the giant explosion on their turf; none involved a successful Israeli raid or a nuclear facility.
“The pressing question today is whether the lessons of that success can be applied to Iran,” Makovsky writes, going into a long, concluding section about Israeli positions and the potential threats posed by an Iranian nuke. But if the “desire to minimize the potential of a response” rested on providing Assad with a “zone of denial,” then the only response to Makovsky’s “pressing question” is a resounding “no”: The lessons of the Israeli raid on Syria in 2007 can’t be applied to Iran’s nuclear program.”
How can i be sure?
Logic. Sitting next to the CIA boss who was in iraq. No coincidence. Family clans in the middle east are family clans, whether or not they are related by their grandgrandfather or by their father.
Khawam is not a very rare name. Google gives >200,000 results.
We need proof for the connection between Lebanese and Iraqi Khawam families.
BAGHDAD 00001601 004 OF 006
Here’s a start:
“Muthanna. Thirdly, a prominent Bani Zraige sheikh,
Abdulillah al-Khawam, is forming a list composed entirely of
fellow tribesmen. Besides opposition to the religious
parties and the status quo, the platforms of these parties
remain ill-defined.
Finally, the Arab League appears to be
cooperating with Bani Zraige sheikh and wealthy businessman
Adnan al-Khawam to organize another nationalistic and
anti-Iranian coalition. Former Arab League representative to
Iraq, Ahmed bin Hilli, stated their goal:
“We must remind
Iraqis that they are first Arabs, and then above that,
Iraqis.” Sheikh Adnan then said to a PRT contact, “The
Iranians are sending sheikhs to Mashhad? OK, I’ll send
twelve sheikhs to Mecca!”
http://www.cablegatesearch.net/cable.php?id=08BAGHDAD1601&version=1314919461
@ Q 13 Nov, 2012 – 2:36 pm
@NR: You’re forgetting the Canadian spy Jeffrey Delisle, who communicated with his Russian masters by writing drafts in an email account that he shared with his Russian handler. Those emails were never sent. Both parties had the passwords to the account, and went into the drafts folder to communicate.”
Apparently that was exactly the method used by General P and Mrs B, except it’s worse since they used gmail. It’s a method well known to teenagers and terrorists, since it avoids the message being sent and a trail, but is hardly secure as all an outsider need have is the password.
@ bluebird 13 Nov, 2012 – 12:26 pm
“NR This is not about moral or sex. This is about money. And i am quite sure that SAH is the key person in all that mess in the USA and russia. ”
Always look to the money. In the case of General A and Mrs. K, we don’t yet know if they used the same method of email as GP & MB, but the latest is there were a few hundred very long emails that printed out to ten thousand pages. They’re once again assuring us there’s no breach of security. How do they know that? In that much text secret messages are easily inserted, old-fashioned style.
With it being Halloween season, the FBI should disguise its agents as shirtless farmers and open all leftover pumpkins in the fields as they will find secrets inside. More secure than email.
Yes I believe it Felix, I’m on record as saying so.
He has never struck me as a terrorist or against us…… somewhere amongst all this I believe he was duped.
@Katie
But is the idea that there may have been some play-acting around Zainab really so unbelievable? Stranger things have happened, even in dinner parties!
🙂
On the other hand, what really *is* unbelievable about Zainab is that the police’s helicopter-mounted thermal cameras didn’t pick up any heat signature from her whatsoever as she lay out on the open ground for eight long hours.
If she had *really* been alive, and had *really* been lying there, those life-seeking cameras would have picked up even the faintest trace of warmth and life. But they did not. Not a flicker.
Maillaud even went so far as to declare her dead. Not “probably”, not “maybe”, but definitively and unmistakably dead.
And then, suddenly and miraculously, she turns up remarkably alive, and with no explanation of why there had been a “mistake”.
So, Katie, why do you find this utter absurdity easier to believe than a little play-acting for the cameras?
The idea that whoever or whatever was lying on the ground was the real, live Zainab is simply not credible.
And the only feasible explanation, if we are to go by Sherlock Holmes’s reasoning (for which I thank you, Tim V) is that whoever or whatever was lying there was not Zainab.
Great find katie!
Al khawam are not by accident sitting next to the cia boss. I mean, not really every good looking woman is a friend of the cia boss posing with her sister next to him for pictures and he being guest in their house. That is unusual for an immigrant to say at least.
This is all connected to iraq and iran.
Now lets link al khawam to mr.x
I am sure we find family members in surrey, would we?
@CD
A note on the extraction theory.
In my view extraction is not impossible. It’s as valid as any theory which can not be disproven with the information available at this time. Those arguing against extraction seem to do so on the basis that extraction was an option chosen by those reportedly killed.
Given the circumstances of the two girls it is more likely, and only theoretically, that the Al-Hilli family were the subject of involuntary extraction, perhaps an official ‘rendition’, and that SM was a bystander who happened on the scene.
This theory may be as, or even more improbable than some of the other theories but we should keep it in mind until we are in a position to disprove it, either with first hand information or 100% reliable reportage from independent sources.
Very well put, IMO.
😀
@Q
All this talk of extraction makes me think of dentists, and the people in this story whose photos have not been made public by the authorities.
Tee hee hee. Dentists indeed!
🙂
And yes, good point about the total lack of photos for 3 of the “deceased”.
Oh dear Ferret, I think you are confused. Zainab did not lay there when the helicopter flew over with thermal imaging, she was found in broad daylight by BM & flown out shortly after …in broad daylight.
As for Zeena, I think it quite plausible she couldn’t be detected through her mothers & Grannies bodies & clothing.
What I find odd is that people seem to think she was awake all that time, my bet is she slept for most of it.
Yes BB, I was pleased with that too,getting both names in the same paragraph was sheer luck !
Bluebird.
Khawam started a private airline called Alnaser Airlines, to run alongside Iraqi Airlines. GMH bought 9 Boeings & 1 cargo plane…have found nothing for their use, but the UK agent for AA are IKB TRAVEL & TOURS LTD UK
Is it the same man ?
http://www.shiachat.com/forum/index.php?/topic/234976373-iraqs-first-private-airline-starts/
@Ferret
If you mean me with the forum sliding comment I can see why you might I do attempt to be careful when I say something not to interfere with things I was over tired and got a bit to enthusiastic sorry .
@TIM
I hear what you are saying and I try and follow all points of view as much as possible I really can’t contribute to the political angle as I have no knowledge to call on so I leave it to those of you who do have some idea ,I haven’t really settled on any idea so far and thought ahhh yes that’s it that makes sense .
On the crime scene I still do think the car was over by the sign face in and thats why there was glass over there, could Saad have made those skid marks running to his car and driving forward fast and braking hard to try and pick up Zainab before hitting reverse, if there was motorbike there he could have knocked it in the hope he would be able to get Zainab and get away .
There were 2 gouges in the layby that got filled in it was never clear exactly where they were I dont imagine dragging Sm would cause them but dragging the bike might.
I can’t spend to much thought on this tonight I have had a long day and need to get to bed at decent time for a change it to easy to start searching and have a few hours go by 🙂
@katie
I did read one paper that said Zeena was actually in a travel bag which I think may be possible and thats why she couldnt be seen if it was zipped she couldnt get out either .
“The terrified child remained there for eight hours before police discovered her “frozen in fear”. She had climbed inside a travel bag behind her mum’s skirt in the car footwell.”
Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4525062/Brit-girl-4-who-survived-massacre-in-French-Alps-asked-police-Wheres-my-mummy.html#ixzz2C8PLc7eP
@ Ferret 13 Nov, 2012 – 6:36 pm
“@Q All this talk of extraction makes me think of dentists, and the people in this story whose photos have not been made public by the authorities.”
“Tee hee hee. Dentists indeed!”
http://aangirfan.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/what-really-happened-in-iraq.html?m=1
“Adel Darwish, Middle East expert and author of “Unholy Babylon,” said that Saddam’s CIA handler was an Iraqi dentist working for CIA and Egyptian intelligence.”
Why a massacre and not a car crash IF it was an extraction ? Unless it was an extraordinary rendition of course.
But then you’d need a damn good (and damn dead) look alike of Saad (the others, who knows what they look like. The French police certainly don’t).
BUT then why kill Mollier ? If it he “saw” this “scene” being created, then the question is still, “why a massacre and not a car crash ?”
…then again they could have been “creating” a car crash when Mollier arrived. Hence killing him…and that means that you can’t have a car crash…and a “shot dead cyclist”, so the plan would change to a “massacre” at the last minute !
Yet more fun in SpyFall. Mrs. K has a twin sister who lost custody of her child because of her psychiatric problems and both Gen. P and Gen. A wrote letters to the court supporting the twin sister as a fit mother.
The media is now describing Mrs. K. as a “Socialite Sexpot” while both Gens are, for the moment, “Great, Patriotic Americans” and there is still no evidence of a security breach.
Conspiracy theorists claim it’s all a plot by Prez O. to discredit and remove all old white men from top military positions and replace them with women and gays (they didn’t mention blacks or Muslims – wait for that).
Hi Pink, that’s a first, I haven’t read that anywhere, yes there were travel bags in the back with the women, whether Zeena was in one or not it all adds to the mass making it difficult to penetrate.
Also the chopper could not fly too low due to surrounding trees.
Police would have been far wiser to use something at ground level.
@ bluebird 13 Nov, 2012 – 4:10 pm
“Al khawam. Al khawam
I knew that i read this family name before in connection with al hilli. They were leading figures in the oil for food smuggling. Jill kelley, born to lebanese family al khawam. Now we get first iraq connections.”
http://www.airportjournals.com/display.cfm/Centennial/0503022
“The chairman is from a prominent Iraqi family whose involvement in the country’s history dates back to the revolution of 1920. This was a first step in the forging of an Iraqi nation state. Speaking as an Iraqi, Sheik Hussain Al-Khawam asserts, “It’s my duty to help rebuild the country of Iraq. I must help my country.”
“Teebah Airlines, based in Amman, Jordan, selected Hamilton to refurbish Boeing 737s and 767s for the Iraqi national airline, Iraqi Airways. Teebah wet leases the aircraft to the carrier.”
Heat seeking equipment mounted on helicopters…
…and a certain Dr David Kelly !
( http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1048585/Why-did-heat-seeking-helicopter-fly-exact-spot-David-Kelly-8217-s-body–detect-nothing.html )
NR
Adnan al Khawam is a millionaire. He was the right hand of saddam hussein in his governnent. He was the guy who was doing the economy stuff of the country, including oil for food. Not even the iraqis know why he did succeed in staying in the government until today. The whole rest of the saddam government is no more. Speculations are there that he has supporters from the usa government or CIA.
The origin of the al Khawam family is south western iraq (samawa). They are shias. Some of them fell apart with the hussein baath oarty and moved abroad to jordan, lebanon, syria, uk and usa.
Interestingly, two brothers, Hazim and Razim married two women from the al Khawam clan. Hazim became an intelligence service guy while Razim fell apart with the government of saddam and went abroad. Hazim was best friend of Hasan Ibrahim. Razim became best friend of Ayed Allawi in the UK. Hazim and Razim were from the town of Hilla. Their name was not al Hilli but al Awadi. That is the only difference in their history as far as i know. Very strange.
Today the al Khawan family is investing in Jordan.
Somehow they must have friends with influence in world politics …
@Pink: Did the travel bag look anything like Felix’s avatar?
There is a product sold by hydroponics stores called Block-IR (developed by NASA). It apparently blocks thermal imaging by 97 per cent. This might appeal to people who grow plants indoors, but I can’t imagine anyone lining the family vehicle with it, or even a piece of luggage.
Going back down the trail of “facts”, it would have been nice to know the truth about exactly how many passports were found in the al-Hilli vehicle, who they belonged to, and which countries issued them. How many people had more than one passport?
Was the little one drugged? Who put her in the bag, if that was true? Did she have a passport that was found at the scene? This single item, if true, points to extraction, IMO.
Of course i found al-khawam in london, too. guess where they lived in 1975.
Kingston House, princes gate. That is the house next to the iranian embassy. And from there you go 2 minutes to princes gate 55.
Will look for later uk addresses ..
The american al Khawam family
John David Khawam, born 8/31/41
Marcelle Khawan, born 6/30/50
Children:
Natalie Kimberley Khawam, born 6/3/75
Jill (Gilberte) Gigi Khawan, born 5/3/75 (crazy when they are twins, 1 month difference?)
David John Khawam, born 2/5/72
First they lived in:
6930 eastwood street, philadelphia
Later
3239 oak rd. Huntington valley, pa.
Father John David Khawan has a car insurance snd checking business.
http://www.thebiznizdir.com/Pennsylvania-USA/B/ARUBA_AUTO_TAG_and_CHECK_CASHING_SERVICE-Philadelphia.php
He was once raided and seized and fined $ 5000 by the insurance deputy.
Arrest for suspected fraud http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-20297670
Dave