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?
Just 45 minutes drive from the campsite to the center of Geneve.
http://www.gomapper.com/travel/dynamic-directions.html?from=saint-jorioz&to=geneve
The alarmcall is 3.48 PM.
Seems there is time to go to a bank in Geneve and withdraw money, while the kids are eating (can´t see they wait to let the kids eat “picnic” until after 3 pm ).
If he’d withdrawn a significant sum the press (and probably the cops too) would be milking a robbery motive for all it was worth now.
Instead, the police have just cryptically said he had reason to go to Geneva, have thrown in mention of the Swiss bank account and bingo- everyone starts thinking he went to the bank to take out or put in money.
Considering how cryptic the police have been on this I don’t reckon the bank account was touched. I’ll say it again – safety deposit box.
Aside from that, after so long saying nothing, I believe the police have released this information about the visit to Geneva for a reason. Any guesses why?
Hi Thomas
He could have possibly nipped to Geneva and back IF the builder was wrong about the time he saw them passing.
Obvious question is now did Al-Hilli’s dad come to have lots of money in a Swiss bank?
Two refs to Iqbal being born in Iran appear on a Google news search (as below); but actual articles have bylines quoting The Times 11/09/2012. These are both News Internat newspapers. Did these originate from interviews in Australia? (the Australian online is behind a paywall after 1 or 2 articles)
Al-Hilli father held mystery meetings before French Alps shootings
The Australian-10/09/2012
Saad al-Hilli had suddenly moved his family from one campsite to another less than a … describing the attack in which her mother Iqbal, 47, grandmother Suhaila al-Allaf, 74, … Mrs Hilli was born in Iran but grew up in Sweden.
One gun used in Alps shooting
The Australian-10/09/2012
Mrs al-Hilli was an Iranian-born dentist who was brought up in Sweden. It emerged yesterday that her sister and another relative who arrived in …
@ dave
Thats what I’d like to know. When they fled Iraq and the business and property was sequestered by the government how much did he manage to shove away before he fled?
There have been reports that he did have a business in the UK- but what was it? Not one mention of what it was.
I find it all very fishy in respect to the father too.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/french-alps-shooting-still-a-mystery/story-fn3dxix6-1226489568056
Dave brooker, money quesion.
Read my “oil for food” post further above from here and you will get the answer about how iraqi exile people with links to iraqi politics made lots of money left in swiss banks.
That they had money in switzerland isnt any surprise, knowing the facts about this oil for food program.
However, i do not see any sense about why he shoul have travelled with (assumingly) lots of money to that lonely place in the middle of nowhere. Did he want to dig his money in that forest? Certainly not. Did he want to give two bags full of money to a cyclist? He would not ba able to carry that lot.
There is something foul in that theory abput money since if i had the cash in the car i would not go there to “nowhere” for picnic. Perhaps the cash was dedicated to an unknown third person who was there and who was mollier’s partner? That might make sense. Perhaps the unknown did betray his friend as well as his customer? Possible. For big money some people would kill if there is a criminal mafia business happening.
“Read my “oil for food” post further above from here and you will get the answer about how iraqi exile people with links to iraqi politics made lots of money left in swiss banks.”
But if they’d fallen out with the regime?
Brooker
Yes. Even if the regime was their enemy. Money never is your enemy. And of course the regime (the saddam mafia) got 25% from every deal (deposited into swiss private banks). Saddam had hundreds of millions in swiss banks.
Of course the saddam mafia used all their contacts to rich ex iraqis in exile to make money with the oil for food program. Ask nadhmi auchi and his bnp paribas how they made their money back then …
@Dopey
5 Oct, 2012 – 10:34 pm
The buider was a little bit vague re the time, it was like around 3 pm he saw the car with al-Hilli.
As nobody was following, a traditional robbery seems unlikely.
More than one bank account in Geneva?
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/french-alps-shootings-swiss-bank-1363077
And from this, they haven’t “siezed” any bank accounts, but requested access to them.
Safety deposit boxes in Switzerland aren’t subject to the same rules as their bank accounts are either btw.
Hey Jon: I submit below a piece of libelous satire, way off topic (excepting for how the press works) and too long. Delete if unsuitable. I won’t complain as others are known to do.
World Exclusive – Help Us Find the Monstrous Kitten-Killing Paedophile. £1,500,000 Reward! The Full Moon (moonfull.co.uk) can now reveal the identity of the fiend plaguing the world for years in a string of child abductions and kitten killings.
It is none other than Alex West, using the clever cover of a mild-mannered reporter, he appears within hours at the site of every murder of fluffy kittens or abduction of excruciatingly cute white children. Much like an arsonist watching the result of his fire.
Here he is in 2010 pictured with world famous porn star and kitten-killer, Luka Magnotta, as they connive to dispatch more innocent cats solely to boost circulation for West’s newspaper.
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/archives/sunnews/world/media/2012/06/20120601-190323-g.jpg
And here he is, in 2011, secretively meeting again with the devastatingly good-looking Magnotta, in a dimly lit hallway, as they plot the murder of Magnotta’s estranged lover, the brilliant Chinese computer scientist and spy, Jun Lin.
http://img.thesun.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01519/SNN0107AA-_1519623a.jpg
Luckily a neighbour had her ear hard against the door, and told us they whispered in a mix of Russian and Mandarin, and while she understood neither, she made out the words icepicky, red Magik Markerski and photoshoppy Casablancski, but made no sense of the words’ ominous import.
Our photographer, using a long lens, caught this view inside the blackguard’s flat, where he is seen posing in womens underthingies. After sufficient Guinness and fistfuls of notes his housekeeper revealed exclusively to us that the closet behind him contains over £50,000 worth of womens designer gowns and shoes plus an incriminating red wig. He may well be disguised as a woman.
http://img.terra.com.br/i/2010/10/19/1680937-8207-atm14.jpg
We employed the services of famed Russian hacker Эдриана Ламо who surreptitiously decrypted the scoundrel’s files and found a list of the names and addresses of 450,000 fellow Paedophiles around the world. Why would an innocent man have such?
We confronted the brute’s father, Baron West of Spithead, in a cloakroom of The House of Lords, who could only bury his face in his lordly robes and sob, ““He hurt us when he was younger and we haven’t been in contact with him in a while.”
Witnesses recently report seeing the savage leaving the notorious Killing Kittens Club, then entering an exclusive female impersonators show, and at midnight, clad in a black, hooded robe reappearing at the Ordo Templi Orientis where, our sources tell us, workings of Great Magik are performed involving diabolical, ritual human sacrifice and cat worship, all captured on video and encrypted for transmission to corrupt elites worldwide.
One witness told us, “I remember him because I actually stopped and grimaced as he walked by. He exuded an air of irreverent, effeminate flamboyancy that made my skin crawl. I think he was wearing his tilted top hat with a loose fitting tie.”
Our pleas to police in Montana, Miami and Toronto for help in capturing the lowlife were ignored, and at home, Scotland Yard said we were lucky to get off with a warning for needlessly mocking the aristocracy.
Should you sight The Fiend or anybody who looks a teeny bit like him, do not hesitate to point directly at him and yell loudly, “It is he! The Paedophile serial killer of kittens! This will prove especially effective if bands of yobs, chavs, old ladies, hooligans and bikers are nearby, and neatly unburdens overburdened taxpayers of the cost of trials, incarceration and such nonsense.
Still nothing more about William Hershkovitz of Poughkeepsie, NY.
The BBC hasn’t even added the killer’s identity to its story about the shootout,and the Daily Mail is comparing the shootings to the woman in Jersey who still cooked meals for her husband afer she shoot hin dead in the head, etc.
Guess Hershkovitz has no personal history or the media would certainly have supplied it!
Al Hilli, his family members, and Slyvain Mollier are hardly better known.
Everyone seems to be some kind of mystery in our whacky world.
Has the night shift at Vauxhall been knocked on the head?
Robbery? No, a sex game gone wrong is more likely, or a multiple outbreak of heart attacks verifed by a pathologst.
Before I climb into my NFSB, a bit more on the postman.
192.com gives a Worcester Park address, shared with (wife?) who… works in Claygate…
Julie Clegg at British Heart Foundation Shops, Crown House, Church Road, Claygate, Esher, Surrey, KT10 0BF or to [email protected].
One of the few genuine witnesses in the whole case.
@Olifant (FWIW…)
Swanborough Farm…
21 Apr 10 – Michael Sarling – Braintree
“ I have now visited Swanborough Farm twice, both on business and it is a great little known airfield. The owner was very friendly and when I asked him on the second occasion about a landing fee he told me a bottle of wine would do nicely. The taxiway up to the hanger needs full power as it is very steep and going back needs a lot of braking. It is well worth a trip, but do phone the owner and ask nicely for PPR!
”
http://www.ladieslovetaildraggers.com/jacqui-manley-uk/
“We enjoy holidays in our Jodel, mostly to France as it is so close, just a 20 min hop across the channel”
@Ferret
I know you like coincidences….
http://www.slageneva.org/membership.htm
Sri Lankan Association of Geneva.
One pair of members stands out among all the Singhalese names.
Mr. & Mrs. Brett MARTIN
No stories about the Eital shootings and William Hershkowitz in either The Guardian or Indepedent.
Another DN about the covert mission having gone badly wrong, or has the press just learned to keep quiet when anything the least bit smelly occurs?
Even CNN does not identify the killer in the Eilat shooting – just another one, you know,of those aimless shootings;
U.S. man fatally shoots hotel worker in IsraelFrom Guy Azriel, CNN
October 5, 2012 — Updated 0936 GMT (1736 HKT)
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
NEW: The shooting may have been linked to the man’s dismissal from a hotel job, police say
The American man may have grabbed a gun from hotel security, police say
He was killed by an police anti-terror unit
Jerusalem (CNN) — An American man opened fire in a hotel in the Red Sea resort city of Eilat Friday, an Israeli police spokesman said, killing a hotel employee.
The American was then shot dead when a police anti-terror unit responded to the alert at the hotel, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
An initial investigation suggests that the man grabbed the gun from a hotel security guard and opened fire on one of the workers, according to Rosenfeld.
Police spokeswoman Luba Samri told CNN that the man was not a tourist, as police had initially thought, but a sous-chef who had been laid off from his job at the hotel.
The suspect was shot by Special Forces following an exchange of fire, she said.
Police believe the shooting was related to his dismissal from the hotel, she said.
Felix,
Probably the famous Brett Martin
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brett_Martin]
http://www.srilankaholidayhotels.com/wiki-Brett_Martin
Felix, the more interesting apparent coincidence is why Ferret simply disappeared after I mentioned the Eilat shootings and William Hershkowitz when he only said he was taking a break?
Ferret would be a suitable handle for an investigative journo
Trying to get my head around Geneva bank visits.
What if he wanted to show SM something before returning it to the safety deposit box later that day.
@Ferret
You are right about the accounts, there is not much activity. Only question is was the French property bought in 2010 and is it in the name of Silver Fern Sussex Ltd?
Morning
A couple on Icke saying access to this site is “blocked” for them? I don’t know whether they’ve tried posting and can’t, or can’t view it?
From marilynztomlins.com
Saad Al-Hilli did NOT go to the bank on the day of the killing.
As reported this morning in the French media and it quoting ‘La Tribune de Geneve’, he went to the Geneva bank ‘A LITTLE BEFORE HE TOOK A WEEK’S HOLIDAY’ in Annecy.
Also quoting ‘La Tribune de Geneve’ the account in question is HIS and not his late father’s.
The amount in the account is ‘a little over A MILLION EUROS’ and he himself deposited the money in the account ‘DURING THE SUMMER’.
According to the popular Paris daily ‘Le Parisien’ – their word is as good as any other – the gun used was a German-made LUGER P08. The Swiss army used such Lugers until the beginning of the 1950s.
On request from the French, Swiss and German police experts in firearms are now studying the bullets and casings found at the murder scene.
Those Lugers are very noisy, according to ‘Le Parisian’, so as no one had reported hearing gunfire, the killer would have had to use a silencer. A silencer would have hindered the gun’s precision, it is also being reported. Also, those Lugers had an 8-bullet charger which means that the killer would have had to reload three times. (That needs a steady hand and an even steadier head!)
I am not a gun expert, but we do have one here now – RVA524 – so he could perhaps tell us about these Lugers.
So, what was Al-Hilli up to which caught up with him on September 5, 2012?
Norfolk, thanks!!
A little over a million euros ……I’m thinking back now to that £800k deal he told someone he had gone to Iraq to try to do.
Interesting Norfolkeagle. So he deposited 1 million euro within the last few months.
Could he have got hold of some of his father’s money without the brother knowing?
Why was the french prosecutor so negative about being able to solve the crime, after only a few days ?
Q and Peter I love your posts.
Jeez ! Now the “Swiss” banks are involved, this could mean “anything and everything” !
Anything from.. his fathers “Sparbuch” held by another for “way back when”, in Iraq”…and awaiting it’s “release”…on a settlement ???
To everything.. including “laser trigger for Hf” !
Now the web is going to get “even” more tangled than before !