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?
James… are you on drugs? SH Tech accounts to Jan 2011 show nothing of the sort! £30k write-downs? Several hundred k in HiFx acct? I want some of what you’re smoking!
😀
@ ferret
Good work on the nuclear angle. I’m reading, but not commenting because it’s all over my head and I’ve not a lot to contribute to it myself. Just thought I’d say so you know your posts on it all aren’t going to waste/being ignored.
Thanks Dopey, appreciated.
😀
Re mobile phones, apperently Mollier didn´t carry one. Otherwise it would have been easy to identify him immediately, by making a call from his phone.
Sounds odd that you don´t bring a phone when biking in the Alps.
Ferret…
re read my post again please.
Did I mention Shtech in that “30K”.
Erm..no.
I see therefore you didnt check, “the other person” then.
I am smoking….I have read Silver Fern accounts.
It’s a great smoke !
I say nothing I can not back up mucker.
341.782 is the HiFX acc
..and operating is ex’s are 39.302 !
You haven’t read the accounts then ???
Iranians are Arabs huh !
@Ferret
4 Oct, 2012 – 12:19 am
“On 31 August a truck carrying 1,000kg of zirconium silicate supplied by a British firm was stopped by Bulgarian customs at the Turkish border on its way to Tehran, after travelling 2,400 kilometres (1,500 miles) from Britain, through Germany and Romania, without being stopped. Zirconium can be used as a component of a nuclear programme. According to one expert, it is used in nuclear reactors to stop fuel rods corroding and can also be used as part of a nuclear warhead. The metal can be extracted from zirconium silicate. It is because the compound can be used for military purposes that its trade is usually tightly controlled.
—–
There are technical rules that control the trade in zirconium silicate. These controls focus on how much of the material contains hafnium, another rare metal. The British view is that zirconium sulphate with more than 0.05 per cent of hafnium does not require a licence, as it is difficult to refine – although this is challenged by some experts. After a two-month investigation involving the British and Bulgarian authorities, it was agreed that the British cargo did not need an export licence and could be released and driven to Iran.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/jan/08/iran.observerpolitics
@James
Well aware of Silver Fern and its accounts.
But your posts are cryptic and all but unintelligible.
Please could you express yourself a little more clearly in future?
And please could you stop churning this thread, and having a mass debate all on your own?
Sorry couldn’t be bothered reading all the posts today, too busy with that work thing. BUT if Google is censored as per earlier posts, and bing is just bing, what is a reliable search engine ?
@Ferret
Unintelligible ?
More clearly ?
Stop churning this thread ?
1. someone “else” had a hell of a lot of “write downs
2. He would also have an “old” BA contract, which would be good.
3. “churning > I have asked (witout answer) about DMCii work undertaken !
Think again Ferret
Ferret..
re may post
To be clear (Unintelligible) who else could we be talking about ?
Clearly…who else worked at B.A, ?
Churning ? No one has answered or looked at DMCii 15 million rise !
@Call me Dave
So if it turned out employees of Cezus (owned by Areva) had been flogging Iran zirconium, it could cause embarrassing for France?
=====
You’re not English are you?!?!
😉
don’t worry, irish and jewish james, i am here as an ordinary folk reading all the posts and only pop in now & again to eat the cheese when i feel peckish…. i am not anders, i am freeman 🙂
@Dave
Missed this gem last evening…“if RAF man is telling anything like the truth”
Still RAOTFL hours later.
I’m pretty certain of a DA notice. Poor old Laura Proto – has a world scoop on her doorstep, and can’t write about it.
Her last post,after a long gap,
http://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/local/kingstonnews/9954258.Police_conclude_search_of_Al_Hilli_home/
has a kind of “wooden” feel to it. As if it is not her style. She didn’t even tweet it!
Wonder what London’s top department of Journalism and Publishing at Kingston University makes of DA notices?
Wonder if Al-Hilli will pop up in the agenda of the November meeting in a month’s time?
http://www.dnotice.org.uk/records.htm
“They’re a complex family, to put it mildly.” Dopey, at 7:33pm on 3.10.12.
Actually, if one looked at many families today, scratched the surface, one would find such complexities in both provenance and behaviours. What was it Tolstoy said? Just think for a moment of one’s own family…
With respect, Anders7777, you’ve still not really explained why you twice posted a link (re. Israel’s assassination of Iranian scientists) to the website of an organisation – or perhaps really, it’s just one person – that calls itself, ‘The British Defence League’ and which clearly is White Supremacist in nature and which seems rather similar to the English Defence League, but with Japanese flowers and lots of pink. If it was just an oversight on your part – we all make oversights and mistakes – might be best just to say so. I don’t want to derail the thread with his. Just asking for clarification. Thanks.
Just to put that 20.000 GBP computer thing to rest: SAH was a CAD engineer. Thus, his PCs would be a touch more expensive than the average: two or three high-end monitors (Eizo or something similar at a thousand plus each) with a high-end graphics card for each hooked up to his primary workstation, a striped HD-array for speed, a proper graphics tablet, an A0 plotter etc. In addition, he would have wanted another seriously powerful PC just for rendering tasks.
I can easily see his PC hardware collection adding up to 20.000 GBP.
“Now re zirconium smuggling to Iran…
Hardly likely to get you “offed” by Mossad.”
It’s a key part of Iran’s nuclear programme.
“There was a huge shipment of Zr that got stopped by customs somewhere in the balkans, wasn’t it? It was from the UK and got clearance after calls were made to the UK.”
That’s some sort of powder used in ceramics, similar name different stuff, Iran had a big ceramics industry, so that’s why it was allowed and let through in the end.
“And, how much Zr could SAH carry in his BMW??? Not exactly a shed load… and would he put it in his checked bags, or hand luggage on the plane out of Geneva? Not exactly a likely plan…””
He’d not drive it to Iran in the back of his BM, they’d falsify export documentation so that it seemed to be going to one country, but ended up going to Iran via Dubai.
They’d need men at the top of the firm for that.
Or, they needed Mollier’s expertise in the production process.
@Suhayl
Anders already explained: for him, the site isn’t relevant – it’s just a great article. Not expressing my opinion (I haven’t read the article or looked at the website) just repeating what Anders said.
Agree with you about families, although most of us probably don’t have as much money as the Al Hilli’s!
🙂
@James
I went to bed, sorry. But thanks for not having verbal dihorrhea all over this thread last night.
😀
@Thomas
Thanks for the link and for setting the record straight re the zirconium shipment I referred to. Turns out it was zirconium ore after all.
Mind you, some experts disagreed, didn’t they, claiming that even that lower-grade ore could be refined into nuclear grade zirconium, didn’t they? And no one got whacked, did they?
Which leads me back to my senior point, in that nuclear smugglers to Iran (eg the Tinners) don’t usually get whacked. They get arrested. Ditto suspected terrorists, such as Adlene Hicheur, who also worked at RAL by the way. Arrested, not whacked.
If you disagree (and you are welcome to), can you find an example of either where they were whacked in such an obvious and public fashion? (Not offed in a quiet “accident”, induced heart attack, etc etc…) I’d be keen to hear of any.
It sounds like you’re new here (which is fine, by the way, and welcome). Some of us old-timers have been through this line of thought in some detail on the first thread so please forgive me if don’t quote chapter and verse about the Tinners & Hicheur, I think it’s been done to death quite frankly (no pun intended). And I expect you can find references on the previous thread, if you’re interested.
So…
All in all, considering the normal treatment of nuclear smugglers and suspected terrorists is to ARREST them and put them on trial, the fact that the Al Hilli family and Mollier were WHACKED to me is highly indicative that this is anything other than a zirconium deal gone wrong.
““On 31 August a truck carrying 1,000kg of zirconium silicate supplied by a British firm was stopped by Bulgarian customs at the Turkish border on its way to Tehran”
This is a different sort of zirconium, no use for their nuclear industry.
“Re mobile phones, apperently Mollier didn´t carry one. Otherwise it would have been easy to identify him immediately, by making a call from his phone.
Sounds odd that you don´t bring a phone when biking in the Alps.”
If you’re on a clandestine mission you leave your mobile behind, as you can be tracked with it.
“But they are not. Why is that ????”
Because the passports were bent and they’re not who they are supposed to be?
1995 / USA / Ukraine / R/N: Federal authorities arrested three employees of the New York company ‘Interglobal Manufacturing Enterprise’ for trying to sell some tons of Zirconium to undercover custom agents posing as arms buyers from Iran. The Zirconium was smuggled to the U.S. from the Ukraine (Rensselaer W. Lee, ‘Smuggling Armageddon’, New York, 1998, p. 120).
1998, July 1 / Turkey / N/R: Turkish police arrested six suspects, one of them an Iranian national, the rest Turks, in Van, eastern Turkey, for smuggling 13 glass tubes suspected of containing nuclear material from Iran into Turkey (Caelsium, Tanium, Copper, Zinc, Lead, Iron Rubidium, Zirconium, Manganese and Sr (stable) isotopes). They had 13 cylinders, all marked UPAT UKA3 M8 and carrying stamps with three stars, containing an unidentified substance. The suspects claimed the cylinders contained only snake venom, but police suspected it might be nuclear material. The suspects confessed that they were going to deliver the tubes to Istanbul for a fee of $1,000 per tube.
From: Illicit Radiological and Nuclear Trafficking, Smuggling and Security Incidents in the Black Sea Region since the Fall of the Iron Curtain – an Open Source Inventory
by Alex P. Schmid & Charlotte Spencer-Smith[1]
http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php/pot/article/view/schmid-illicit-radiological/html
These two examples are taken from a VERY LONG list of smuggling activities.
Seek and ye shall find…
“I can’t in my mind reconcile these two roles: one is the head of production, the other is a technical specialist in the properties of metals.”
Surely the head of production would be as a matter of course a technical specialist in the properties of metals?
This is like a complex alloy that not just anyone can knock out.
“These two examples are taken from a VERY LONG list of smuggling activities.
Seek and ye shall find…”
Iran mustbe getting the raw materials for it’s zirconium facility from somewhere, they’re making 10 tonnes of the tubes each year, so they’ll need a bit of it.
“Disinfo and you know it, LOL!”
Do you have anything positive to add to this blog?
James is right about you.
Another Ukrainian research and development firm, based in Kiev, was presumably
engaged in the illegal trade in hafnium and zirconium. Ukrainian
police operatives seized 3.2 tons of zirconium and 800 kg of hafnium on a plane leased by the company bound for Estonia. More than 6 tons of these materials had allegedly been smuggled to Estonia on two previous flights (“Firm Illegally Exports,” 1992).
http://iis-db.stanford.edu/pubs/20357/abs_zaitseva.pdf
Nobody whacked.