Not Forgetting the al-Hillis 22278

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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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  • Tim V

    Straw44berry
    16 Nov, 2012 – 12:35 pm “Tuesday, the National Transportation Safety Board and Citizens Energy announced their tests indicated there was no evidence of natural gas leaks in the lines or valves leading up to the epicenter of the blast.

    The official cause of the blast is still being investigated.
    Copyright © 2012, WXIN-TV”

  • Tim V

    Getting back to the Al Hilli’s somewhat, the circumstances of the killings have been well chewed over. Despite the secrecy and false trails put out by the French, and to a certain extent British, investigators, and an absence of much vital information that must be available to them but not us,I believe much valuable stuff has been revealed by bloggers such as these, a good deal of which is quite contrary to what Maillaud et al would have us believe. The credibility of the investigators has been seriously damaged and will not be repaired until they provide adequate explanations for the inconsistencies and anomalies, which to date there has been no attempt to do. Perhaps one can understand them holding back on significant pieces of information that might be later used to secure convictions, but there can be no explanation for holding back the information relating to removing people and things from suspicion. Maillaud has belatedly indicated that both the green 4×4 and white Peugeot, with presumably their occupants/drivers have been traced and eliminated from their enquiries. So why, given their central importance, has this not been fully explained? It would appear the French investigators compound their apparent incompetence with irrational silence that only increases suspicion, rather than lessen it.

  • Ferret

    @Tim V

    Getting back to the Al Hilli’s somewhat, the circumstances of the killings have been well chewed over.

    Despite the secrecy and false trails put out by the French, and to a certain extent British, investigators, and an absence of much vital information that must be available to them but not us,I believe much valuable stuff has been revealed by bloggers such as these, a good deal of which is quite contrary to what Maillaud et al would have us believe.

    The credibility of the investigators has been seriously damaged and will not be repaired until they provide adequate explanations for the inconsistencies and anomalies, which to date there has been no attempt to do.

    Perhaps one can understand them holding back on significant pieces of information that might be later used to secure convictions, but there can be no explanation for holding back the information relating to removing people and things from suspicion. Maillaud has belatedly indicated that both the green 4×4 and white Peugeot, with presumably their occupants/drivers have been traced and eliminated from their enquiries.

    So why, given their central importance, has this not been fully explained? It would appear the French investigators compound their apparent incompetence with irrational silence that only increases suspicion, rather than lessen it.

    Isn’t it so much easier to read with paragraphs?

    BTW, I didn’t see that the white peugeot was eliminated from enquiries… if so, that’s very odd… why was it speeding down the road? Wouldn’t they have been a prime witness at the very leaset? Didn’t they even get a ticket for almost mowing down that poor witness?

    Maybe they also flashed some credentials at Maillaud, and the poor frenchman shrugged his gallic shoulders once more?

  • Tim V

    Earlier I posted the famous Conan Doyle axiom “when you have eliminated all the possibilities, what ever is left must be the solution however unlikely it appears”. Crime solving is a process of deduction ie observation and interpretation of facts to reconstruct events and thus explain them, hopefully leading to the identification of those responsible. Just as reason and intelligence is used to break a code, so reason and intelligence was used to create it. Irrational, motiveless crimes are very difficult to solve. Presumably this is why the French Prosecutor has now come up with the single crazed murderer. It lets them off the hook. However I prefer to believe quite the contrary was true – that this was a highly planned and executed operation, indeed one that is unlikely to have succeeded without the passive or active assistance of the French authorities themselves, as demonstrated by the ineffectual investigation. Believing something of course is far removed from proving it, especially if vital information known to the investigators is withheld from everyone else but this is where Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes’ dictum can prove very handy. This and the earlier thread of over ten thousand observations has examined the scene in minute detail dependent on what information has been made public. Numerous theories have been expounded. Let’s take a look at them bearing in mind Holmes’ advice.

  • Ferret

    Yes Tim, by all means let’s take a look, but pleeeeeeeeease could you break up your long monoliths of text with some paras?

    Spare a thought for your readers… make it easy for us… my eyes want to give up after 3 lines (if that) which is not what your thoughts deserve.

    http://www.alistapart.com/articles/whitespace

  • James

    Katie…

    I wrote “Guess they got p*ssed off they couldn’t go for Iran directly” on hearing the news of the recent Israeli air strikes.

    You relpied
    “No they got P****d off with rockets being fired at them”.

    I second your recent statement that “I do not criticise you or your opinions” on the grounds that I believe in freedom of speech and the rights of the individual.

    I should add that I also don’t mind people who wish to import concrete, colouring in books and pencils into their own “country”.

    …further, I understand that when a people are “not allowed” to do so (!!!!) they can, at times, be forced into other actions.

  • Tim V

    It was that if we eliminate all the possibilites, what ever we have left MUST be the answer, however unlikely it might seem. So what ARE the possibilities. Maillaud and the French Gendarme have been very helpful in suggesting some of them.

    1. A ROBBERY THAT WENT WRONG. So how would this pan out? First the obvious point that nothing appears to have been stolen. Nothing appears to have been in the car worthy of being stolen. If the little girl was outside and the motive was theft, why was she not used as a method of securing the objective? If theft was the prime purpose there was the car. There is no evidence an attempt was made to steal it. Weapons are often used in the pursuance of theft and indeed some are callous enough to use them, but such an extreme reaction when there was actually nothing worth stealing. And don’t you think if they were after the car Mr Al Hilli would have gladly handed it over if his daughter was imperilled and a threat was made. No the evidence is clear shots were fired so quickly and efficiently that there was no delay here involving negotiation that would have been required for theft. But what if this was a hold up that was interrupted by a passing bicyclist (Mollier) who tried to interfere, was shot which necessitated the deaths of everyone else as witnesses? First it is highly unlikely that an unarmed man would tackle a gunman but also it is clear that Mollier didn’t arrive on the scene of an attempted theft, he was there already. Indeed he was one of the first to be shot. Do thieves slaughter four people with semi automatic pistols in a remote mountain location just on spec. and with no benefit? I don’t think so. There are many thieves but few who demonstrate such propensity for violence that are not already known to the police or have not had a notorious past. All these factors rule out attempted robbery.

  • Tim V

    Sorry ferret i forgot and I didn’t se your plea till i posted this last one. Will try to do better in future.

  • Tim V

    Hope this is a bit better….It was that if we eliminate all the possibilites, what ever we have left MUST be the answer, however unlikely it might seem. So what ARE the possibilities. Maillaud and the French Gendarme have been very helpful in suggesting some of them.

    1. A ROBBERY THAT WENT WRONG. So how would this pan out? First the obvious point that nothing appears to have been stolen. Nothing appears to have been in the car worthy of being stolen. If the little girl was outside and the motive was theft, why was she not used as a method of securing the objective? If theft was the prime purpose there was the car. There is no evidence an attempt was made to steal it.

    Weapons are often used in the pursuance of theft and indeed some are callous enough to use them, but such an extreme reaction when there was actually nothing worth stealing. And don’t you think if they were after the car Mr Al Hilli would have gladly handed it over if his daughter was imperilled and a threat was made. No the evidence is clear shots were fired so quickly and efficiently that there was no delay here involving negotiation that would have been required for theft.

    But what if this was a hold up that was interrupted by a passing bicyclist (Mollier) who tried to interfere, was shot which necessitated the deaths of everyone else as witnesses?

    First it is highly unlikely that an unarmed man would tackle a gunman but also it is clear that Mollier didn’t arrive on the scene of an attempted theft, he was there already. Indeed he was one of the first to be shot. Do thieves slaughter four people with semi automatic pistols in a remote mountain location just on spec. and with no benefit? I don’t think so.

    There are many thieves but few who demonstrate such propensity for violence that are not already known to the police or have not had a notorious past. All these factors rule out attempted robbery.

  • Kenneth Sorensen

    James wrote:

    I should add that I also don’t mind people who wish to import concrete

    why would anybody be so daft as to import concrete, when you can mix it yourself in your back garden, using gravel, water and cement.

  • Q

    James might be referring to Lafarge’s assets in Iraq?

    http://www.aggregateresearch.com/articles/25223/Lafarge-says-Iraq-cement-demand-is-growing-10-per-cent-a-year.aspx

    https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:Ova-TADxcVsJ:www.lafarge.com/04082009-press_themabook-themabook_Irak_april09-uk.pdf+&hl=en&gl=ca&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjaZSbn2FOwVRzbDvRpXXU7QUvaGwd9E6pZCQPFRyLJxnfOQZUqpxD0zqf4h1URm-oAmcJAQnF6Z0G613za6CKCyLNMktGVnLcLujSpaoPugv7-yScxAenBDWVQyhhRcdNjWIqL&sig=AHIEtbSYzg-skIRc5eZhhNPugkbVeCkchA

    Gypsum used in building materials and concrete is worth a lot more than chicken feed, so if the al-Hillis did own a gypsum factory in Iraq, it is understandable that they might have wanted to reclaim it:

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-14/etex-to-buy-lafarge-gypsum-units-in-europe-latin-america-for-1-4-billion.html

    I don’t know if that is what James meant, though.

  • James

    Kenneth !

    It’s a tongue in cheek reference to the naval siege of Gaza, where the Israel finds “educational material” (by that I include pencils) threatening !

  • Q

    @James: I have wondered if SAH’s companies were a sideline to his full-time job. Could that job have been at Qinetiq in Farnborough, as Bluebird and I discussed yesterday? The companies didn’t bring in enough money to support the al-Hilli family, from what we have seen. Iqbal was retraining, and we haven’t found any evidence showing jobs or income from her. The estate money is a recent development.

    Saad al-Hilli’s work at Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) began in November 2010. Qinetiq had announced further layoffs early that year. Coincidence?

    Aerial surveys require pilots.

  • Q

    James, there is a country inn with horseshoes in the name. There is also NSC. Many companies use that name. This is one example:

    http://www.nsc-ksa.com/

    Now that would make for a bizarre client list, so I think it’s unlikely.

  • bluebird

    James, interesting guy that pilot, and he’s living so close to everything (Saad, QinetiQ, BM). RAF pilots can make a great career.

    It’s a small word …..

  • James

    Blue and Straw.

    Especially if you have Boeing hours !
    Think they are doing the 737 max aswell. The new one.

    Now if Al Hilli WAS with QinetiQ …and Martin involved early with the Dreamliner…and so with QinetiQ in the UK, then that would be something !

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