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?
Thanks Thomas.
There’s a glaring error in that write up, that is the RAF man is not dead.
@Dave
Al Hilli, Jewish, sends duff zirc to Iran, offed by Mossad.
Brilliant.
Dave, what a great twist that would be !
Looking at the pic of AH, he could easily be Jewish don’t you think ?
For the benefit of all those who believe that 7.65 denotes a calibre, I should like to point out that the gun claimed to have been definitely identified here
http://alpes.france3.fr/2012/10/04/tuerie-de-chevaline-l-arme-identifiee-116739.html
is a Swiss Army “Pistole 00” in calibre 7.65 Parabellum (aka 7.65 x 21, aka .30 Luger), a long-defunct calibre that was hardly, if ever, used outside the Swiss Army, because it was quickly superseded by 9 x 19 Parabellum elsewhere. Apart from the diameter (7.65 millimetres) it has nothing whatsoever to do with the widely-used 7.65 Browning calibre.
Why were the family kicked out of Iraq in the 1970s?
“Looking at the pic of AH, he could easily be Jewish don’t you think ?”
He’s got the nose for it.
His friends called him “big nose”.
Just seems odd that he went all publically fundie, given he does not seem to be that way inclined, and for someone who hated Israel so much he seemed to be surrounded by Jewish people?
@Peter
As previously pointed out to you, dictionaries are unaniumous in their view the word “calibre” means the “internal diameter” of a weapon. Look it up.
There is of course a difference between parabellum and Browning, that’s why you’ve got to specify 7.65mm Browning or 7.65mm Parabellum when ordering ammunition.
But 7.65mm *is* a calibre, ie an internal diameter.
For someone who claims to be an expert, you sure do make a lot of errors.
Regarding elekta crawley
http://www.sunnuclear.com/testimonial/ICP_Hunt.htm
All property was confiscated in the preceding years and……..
” In response to international pressure, the Baghdad government quietly allowed most of the remaining Jews to emigrate in the early 1970’s, even while leaving other restrictions in force.”
@Katie
5 Oct, 2012 – 9:47 am
That´s right, the poster is totally wrong re the RAF-guy. I would not even then ignore the info from this poster, who says in other posts that he worked with laser in the same field as al-Hilli ( but never together ).
It´s the first and last part of the text that is more interesting. The poster is also the first one to connect al-Hilli with Elekta, and seems to know people who worked with al-Hilli at the Swedish company.
No beard,no mosque,no mention of muslim community, genius,mixing well with locals, western type hobbies,holidays in France.
The only strongly Islamic act seems to be a pilgrimage to Qom……..which is THE place to visit for pious muslims in Iran.
Why were we fed this snippet ?
@ Ferret 5 Oct, 2012 – 9:43 am
I don’t write for Guns & Ammo, but I think that I can contribute a few details. 1. I don’t think that all that many of these pistols were issued, because AFAIK they were only issued to officers in the Swiss Army and to all those personnel who did not carry a rifle as their standard sidearm. That is the practice nowadays, too. There are lots of government-issue assault rifles in swiss households, but few pistols. 2. 7.65 Parabellum is approximately twice as powerful a calibre as 7.65 Browning. More pertinently, at least according to ammoseek.com, only full-metal jacket ammunition is currently available in that calibre. (As the Geneva Convention bans military forces from using anything other than FMJ ammunition, it would appear quite unlikely for banned ammunition ever to have been mass-produced for this military pistol anyway.) Thus, for the shooter to have used anything other than FMJ, he would have to have reloaded the ammunition himself. I don’t think that he did, though, if he intended to shoot through car windows. Hollow-point ammunition would have been quite severely deformed by passing through the car’s windows.
Very interesting last sentences in this Daily Mirror piece from yesterday (which Peter linked to earlier):
[My emphasis]
{http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2213013/Alps-murder-carried-brutal-rigour-suspect-found.html#ixzz28PX9DbIt}
@Katie
5 Oct, 2012 – 10:07 am
Is “the pilgrimage to Qom” confirmed, or just been mentioned at Indymedia?
The nuclear plants in Iran are also located near Qom, so there might be other reasons in case al-Hilli travelled to that area.
Ferret you need to open your mind, it is not only Mossad killing scientists, it’s Iran.
They are so paranoid they hang their own scientists saying they were Mossad trained !
Why focus on the Luger being used by the Swiss, when it is known as a weapon used by the Nazis and many thousands of them were supposedly brought back by US soldiers etc etc.
Surely if the gun was a Luger it could have come from anywhere, and used by someone from anywhere too?
Ruthless people who already are wanted for war crimes, and life long imprisonment CANNOT be punished any further, because you have only one life – so they are the ideal people to have carried this out. And I should think that Israel also have cordial relations with Serbs, whose anti-muslims views are well known and proven.
And the Luger weapon was just a way to throw everybody off the scent. Now we wait for news as to how many Lugers were used.
Surely if the gun was a Luger it could have come from anywhere, and used by someone from anywhere too?
Sorry, Dopey, but that is wrong. According to the report cited, it was a Swiss Army pistol chambered in a calibre specific to the Swiss Army.
Thomas, precisely, the Qom visit has been jumped on by the nuclear conspiratists, but was also written in early reports backing the Shia muslim message.
As this has largely disappeared now, maybe it has been found to be inaccurate or deliberately misleading ?
@Everyone
Has the Luger been confirmed by the prosecutor?
Or is this just another media-generated rumour passed on by Herr Peter?
Remember, we’ve been fed this sort of thing before (Skorpion etc)…
@Katie
Why are you answering for Dave?
@Katie
Thomas, precisely, the Qom visit has been jumped on by the nuclear conspiratists
I see what you did there. Suddenly anyone who believes that SAH’s background at RAL and his work at Elektra just might have been anything to do with beamlines or radioactive materials is a “nuclear conspiracist”, are they?
I thought we were supposed to have open minds, Katie?
Or is it just open to the ideas YOU want them to have?
Ferret, you & Anders have banged on about Mossad from day one.
I repeat look at what the Iranians are doing to scientists .
@Katie
Yes Katie, Iran do execute people they have convicted through their court system of collaborating with Israel of sabotaging their nuclear programme, and this is not just scientists.
However, they are not in the habit of going round the world blowing people away, though.
That’s, erm, more of someone else’s style.
Point taken?
Now, can you open YOUR mind to the idea that there might be a nuclear angle, and not just diss it at a “nuclear conspiracy”?
@Peter
Assuming for the moment that the murder weapon were a 7.65mm Para of Swiss origin, with FMJ ammo, what damage would that do to a human head at close range? What would you expect in terms of blood, brain, and skull tissue in the car? And what possibilities would there of silencing the weapon? Also, in how many seconds could the magazine be emptied? And how many rounds does it carry? If, say the shooter (or shooters) had two or three, and were firing rapidly, would it sound anything like automatic fire?
Since this thread was intended to take over from earlier ones in hopes of making the discussion more focused, it has clearly failed.
I suggest posters post what they think is their explanation of what happened while indicating what has been established, clearly disproved, and still uncertain or that this thread be closed down too, as it is getting nowhere.
PS. … and how quickly do you imagine the magazine could be ejected and replaced with a full one, thus effecting a complete reload?
Stop being so petty Ferret, you seem to think my comment was aimed at you.
Do not flatter yourself…the word conspiratist is factual & for many ………. my mind IS open to all possibilities.
Do not expect any more from me to you on this. .
“Dave, what a great twist that would be !”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/may/16/rachel-shabi-iraqi-jewish-heritage
http://www.jewishfederations.org/page.aspx?id=40270
“In Iraq, the years after the 1967 Six-Day War saw arrests and disappearances of Jews, who fled to Iran — the only open border at the time — shrinking the population of the Iraqi Jewish community to 100.
Now, about 250,000 Jews of Iraqi descent are spread throughout the world, the bulk of them living in Israel, according to Nassim.
He estimates that 45,000 live in London,”
Speaking of keeping an open mind, provided that the gun used *is* indeed confirmed as a pre-1945 Swiss Army pistol, it is worth considering that Marilyn Z. Tomlins may not be that far off by noticing certain parallels between this case and the murder of Xavier Baligant
http://www.marilynztomlins.com/articles/chevaline-the-forgotten-victim-sylvain-mollier/
who was shot with an ancient Swiss-made Schmidt Rubin K 31 carbine whilst returning home from a camping holiday in France.
I have already checked where in France Baligant stayed (300 kilometres away from Chevaline), but, still, the parallels would be astonishing: vintage Swiss Army weapons used in both cases, victims killed during or after a camping holiday in France, victims’ children left alive. Of course, there are also huge differences regarding the location and the specific MO, but it still is an interesting angle. Could there be a maniac out there who picks his victims on french camping sites and follows them with the intention to kill them?