My post on the shootings in France has brought tens of thousands of people to this site – but not to read my dull contribution. People are coming to read the comments from other readers.
Today’s development of the bomb squad descending on the al-Hilli house does not in itself worry me enormously. You may recall the massive terror scare that was ramped up when some Muslim students in Manchester were found to own a bag of sugar.
In fact we have the opposite phenomenon today, with the spook-fed “security correspondents” on TV lining up to tell us it is probably just everyday household stuff. This deviation from the standard Islamophobic “Muslims = bombs” narrative is so startling it makes me wonder why the “move along, nothing to see here” line is being taken so quickly.
My own security services sources insist that al-Hilli was not a person of current interest to the UK intelligence agencies and was not involved in anything clandestine. I have no reason to disbelieve them. On the other hand, the limited and confusing information in the media is almost entirely from official sources. I find it very strange indeed how little attention has been paid to the murdered French cyclist, and how easily it is presumed he was just a passerby. Surely it is as likely he was the intended victim and the al-Hillis the accidental witnesses?
Please do read the comments on my first entry on the subject to see the debate unfettered by the censorship in the mainstream media. This is perhaps my favourite comment:
From Janesmith101
All comments regarding Sylvain, Al-Hilli and a possible nuclear link are being removed from sites I’ve posted on in The Guardian, Independent and Huffpo UK.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/sep/09/alps-killer-motive-baffles-police
Here was my comment, I added as a point of fact it was completely speculative and an unproven theory in a later comment, also removed.
Sylvain Mollier, the ‘passing’ cyclist, was in fact a nuclear metallurgist who worked for a french nuclear company called Cezus (a subsidiary of Areva). Cezus fabricates and processes zirconium into metal and nuclear grade zircoaloy for nuclear fuel assemblies – it also has other applications in aerospace such as components and ceramics for missiles and satellites. Mr Al-Hilli was also a skilled aerospace engineer, on what looks to be his first camping holiday.
What is the probability that two highly skilled engineers managed be at the same remote place, at the same time, yet still managed to end up dead as a result of what looks to be a military style assasination?
As someone else pointed out in The Independent comments, the deceased were found by a ‘retired’ RAF officer who, we assume, will recieve perpetual anonymity as a witness. If the police are looking for a motive, try an intercepted rendevous by a security service fixated on denying a hostile power illicit nuclear technology.
http://wrmea.org/component/content/article/162-1995-june/7823-israel-bombs-iraqs-osirak-nuclear-research-facility.html
The Huffington Post UK reports that this wasn’t the family’s first trip to the camp site. An earlier report had asked other camp site visitors whether they had seen the family before and they had replied they hadn’t. If this isn’t wasn’t the first visit by Al-Hilli, it might slightly increase the odds that he knew or had met Mollier before, this being the last in a series of rendevous of a transactional nature. Mollier lived and worked locally.
Again, I’m not sure of the truth of these reports, there is some very sloppy journalism, as there is always seems to be. I’ve read for example Mollier’s company Cevus descirbed as a steel firm something which it is patently not, but perhaps it may have been a detail lost in translation.
An interesting comment summing up some of the strange coincidences, at least, surrounding these murders. My other favourite comment calls me a “macchiavellian shill”.
I have only one thought of my own I want to add at the minute. Al-Hilli was a Shia muslim and had been on pilgrimage to Qoms in Iran. What if it is indeed true that he was in possession of no especial nuclear or defence secrets to pass on to the Iranians, but the Israelis thought that he was? The Israeli programme of assassination of scientists involved in Iran’s nuclear programme is a definite fact. It makes as much sense as anything else at the moment, as a possibility.
I am not saying that is what happened. But the directions in which the mainstream media is being so strenuously pointed by official sources, like the massacre of an entire family over an inheritance, are certainly no more inherently probable. Certainly as we are now told all the shots were from one gun, for the assassin to get each victim in the head with none of them being able to escape, indicates real proficiency with the weapon and a very high level of training.
Bilbo.
I can assure you the gunshots are of varied sounds., plus on the organised hunts they mostly shoot in packs, unlike the loners who use the noisy guns.
As you can see I’m totally gun ignorant so the sounds are all I know.
The French are tightening up on the laws, but until recently it was a free for all , night shooting is frightening to hear & yes a dog did shoot his master.
The idiot put the still loaded gun into the back of his van with the dog, the dog stepped on the trigger as the man was driving.
Sean O’Reilly Hilli is brother Zaid’s son who is a plumber (9.9 on checkatrade) in Walton.
Interesting theories being posted to try and explain away the reports of 30s of automatic gunfire being heard by several witnesses.
Hunting in a pack? What is that, exactly? Everyone shooting the same animal at the same time, for 30 secs?!? Wouldn’t be much “sport” in that, and there wouldn’t be much left of the animal, either…
Shooting competition? Again, if these took place nearby the locals would surely know about them and consider them normal.
So… if the pah-pah-pah-pah-pah sound was in any way “normal”, the witness would surely not have remarked on it. And she was shocked, too, judging from her reaction.
I posted a link to the clip a few pages back – no time to find it now, maybe someone with more time could look?
Thanks Straw. Son ?
He must be son in law surely with that name. He’s Irish & had the wife’s name tagged on ?
When are somebody going to the site with a video camera [remember to hold it still, or stay away] while interviewing people, and looking up the — in my view — crucial first witnesses who talked about “30 seconds of gunfire”. Who are those witnesses? Go there, set up camp in Chevaline and interview people. Also mount a camera on a car and travel those 3 kilometer up and continue some miles and let us see what the road looks like.*
*)When a mountain road is described as “dangerous” it is usually because it has fallen beyond repair and is not maintained, meaning that rocks have fallen down here and there, but it would be interesting to interview people (cyclist or motor cyclists) whether or not it is perfectly passable on two wheels.
——–
But i guess many people here are so afraid of their own shadow so that they don’t dare. I could do it, if I was able to leave Denmark, which I’m not.
We in Denmark consider ourselves the greatest strategic adversaries of the Israel lobby.
1) We are some of the worlds least authoritarian (not afraid of authorities), has an okay history with regards to saving Jews during WW2, so not inclined to overdue — and misplaced — niceties regarding the people [suspected to be] involved here, which is what is holding many people back from anything that smacks of criticism of Israelis,- ,most notable Germans.
2) Some of the best informed people in the world.
This combination is unmatched.Scottish people also are on a parr with regards to this “un-authoritarean” thing, but the “informed” thing…..okay, maybe. they would be able to pull it off. Anyway, they — or some like them — are likely to be the ones pulling it of, the fluency they hold in the English language is off course also a thing that play to their advantage.
Ferret I’m explaining why some ‘didn’t’ notice gunshots.
With this bloody scene I can understand why all concentration would be focussed on that .
(Kenneth Sorensen – seen quite a few duplicate posts from you. The one about Brett Martin at 7:10am has been approved; please only submit items once. The nature of this fast-moving thread means that posts are best kept short, and you can wrap URLs in braces i.e. {http://} to avoid it being auto-linked and, possibly, held for moderation).
@Sinbad
New Zealand
NZ decimalised its currency in July 1967 but did not metricate its imperial measurement system until 1976 with the Weights and measures Act.
The use of the term ‘sibling’ is not in common useage and would be considered strange and somewhat formal if used in everday conversation.
Thanks Sinbad. Take it you’re a native of NZ?
So… the UK decimalised in 1971, five years before NZ, and we’re still talking in yards, so they probably are too. Can you confirm?
Lends weight to the “sibling-is-odd” theory.
@Katie
Who didn’t notice gunshots?
Geraldine O’Reilly-Hilli died in 2007 with Cancer and the son Sean, 28 uses O’Reilly for work purposes. The plumbing business is PHS Plumbing and Heating Services.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/9529936/France-shooting-relatives-arrive-to-meet-children-of-murdered-parents.html
They appear to live with 2 lodgers per 192 or did in 2008/9.
@ Ferret
Yes and yes
Many still use imperial measurements although it would partly depend upon what was in use in your school during this rather long transition period.
Anyone born 50’s 60’s would be more comfortable with imperial.
Forget “sibling”
What about “I thought the cyclist (Mollier) was having a rest” !
I’ll just have a kip here on the floor in the carpark. That’ll be alreight. Perfectly normal that !
@Katie Sean is SAH’s son from a previous marriage
Zaid did definitely work for saad. See my link further above where zaid posted a question into a marhematics/software board about an algorythm regarding a computer board that is frewuently used in satellite technology (unfortunatrly also used in nuclear accelerator technology and therefore we are still clueless).
However, zaid wssnt just a fake employee at saads compny. He really worked for him. But how much did he get paid regarding that guardian article? Perhaps 150 pounds per year? We certainly believe that. They surely had an inofficial route for making money. Otherwise they werent able to make their living.
At first i thought that zaid was just a fake secretary at shtech ltd. However, his forum request (see link above) is a proof that he actually worked in this technology as well.
When did you last hear a pheasant /partridge/Grouse shoot, Ferret ?
As for locals knowing,how, if you don’t belong to a club ?
The first I know is hearing the shots.
Anyway, some heard & some didn’t. End of.
Guy, son from a previous marriage, so the mother of that son is Irish ?
Unusual.
Not very lucky our Zaid, so he was divorced & his second wife died 7 years ago……whom I believe he’s still mourning…according to a friend of his.
Guy,
Sean isnt Saad’s son but his brother Zaid’s.
Just seen your 11-04 post Straw so that clears that up.
Zaid got a luxury pen for working for the Burhill Group for 10 years.
Burhill Group -golf and leisure industry inclding Burhill Golf course near Hersham/Weybridge
I think Straw44berry, Katie and Dopey are all women. Correct?
All very good, but not the people who are likely to travel to Chevaline, and set up shop there and call people in for interviews.
@Felix
“Perhaps Mrs Al-Hilli was a trainee dentist there?”
She trained at a dental practice in Baker Street, London. There is an obituary to her on their website.
People in rural France are extremely used to La Chasse, it’s a way if life. They are used to the sounds of a hunt – dogs, guns, men. Therefore they would be able to distinguish very clearly between that and 30 seconds of gunfire, shotguns let off in unison sound more like multiple fireworks going off (the boom). Katie i’ve been shooting for over thirty years and in my experience there is a huge difference between the sounds of an organised shoot or hunt and those of a battlefield. yes, some members of La Chasse carry rifles rather than shotguns but unless they are hunting the invisible man i can’t think of a reason for letting off 30 rifle shots in 30 seconds….
Baker Street, you couldnøt make it uo. Like a certain Mr. Holmes.
when are somebody of you starting to speculate about a connection with Moryarty and the Reichenball Falls. Remember they are not that far away, in Switzerland.
The initial statement about a dead child suggests a garbled or misinterpreted official communication to the local Gendarmerie. In other words, the statement may reflect what they were told by persons other than the witnesses first on the scene.
In certain respects Ferret’s suggestions are more logical than the conflict between the early official accounts and the statements of BM and PD.
If it is true that BM and SM were members of the same cycling club does it suggest that they knew each other? Is it just a coincidence? Might BM have joined the cycling club to get close to SM? What might it suggest about BM’s statement that a cyclist (SM) passed him en route to the murder scene? Would he not have recognised him?
Thanks @straw44berry, got mixed up on that one
Iqbal was a dentist in Dubai in 2002 when they met
Absolutely CD. He would have said: “Allo Sylvain, how are you doing” or something to that effect.
I’ll give you my version of how I think the shooting happened – then you can, erm, shoot me down 🙂
The al-Hillis have just finished their picknick and are packing up their belongings (those “big bags”) and getting back into their car (hence the open door of the boot). The elder daughter is answering the call of nature before they leave.
A strange, menacing-looking man appears from his hiding place underneath the bridge on the opposite side of the road, from which he has been watching the al-Hilli family for some time. He shouts something unintelligible and pulls out a gun to which he has attached a home-made silencer, such as the muffler of a lawnmower. Panicking, SAH starts the car and hits reverse, even though one of his daughters is still outside the car. The shooter fires at the windscreen as he approaches the car, the shot goes high and misses.
Not being familiar with RHD cars, the shooter then first approaches the “wrong” side of the car. Realizing his mistake, he fires four, five shots at SAH, because incapacitating the driver must be his first priority. (SAH could, and indeed should, have tried to run the shooter over with his car.) The shooter moves around to the driver’s side of the car, pausing along the way to lean on the bonnet and shoot SAH through the windscreen at close range.
Standing by the front driver’s side window, he reloads, fires some more shots at SAH and also at the female passengers in the rear through that window, always aiming at their heads, but frequently missing his mark.
He reloads and returns to the other, left-hand side of the car, to get off some more shots at the passengers in the rear. He does not “double-tap” them in the head as a coup-de-grace, he merely aims at their heads and achieves *at least one hit* to the head for each victim. (If you read closely, it doesn’t say “two shots to the head” anywhere, only “at least one shot to the head”.) He is not that good a shot, as evident from the fact that he also hits the B- and C-pillars of the BMW (those pink spots are the noise-insulating foam that the pillars are filled with.)
The cyclist appears, realizes what is happening, turns around and shouts at the shooter to stop. He is hit with three bullets to the torso plus two to the head as he is already on the ground. He is the only victim to receive two shots to the head as a coup-de-grace.
Finally, the killer turns his attention to the elder daughter who has seized the moment in which he was gunning down the cyclist and had his back turned to the car to try to run away. She is screaming in terror. He has to shut her up somehow, quickly, before another passer-by appears on the scene. He beats her around the head with his gun, she falls onto her back. He keeps hitting her on the head but she still keeps wailing and struggling. He shoots her in the shoulder to shut her up, but not to kill her.
@straw44berry
“Iqbal was a dentist in Dubai in 2002 when they met”
I thought it was 2003?
james if i’m that good why waste time with body shots ? Odd. Double taps all around, once you’ve disabled the driver the rest are sitting ducks, sadly. A moving target in the back of a car isnt moving very far after all.
Someone posted a link to the essex range rover murders t’other day, i seem to remember they were shot with shotguns – if you can stomach it you’ll see in the photos that there is not only surprisingly little blood splatter but their heads are relatively intact. they too did not have time to move and these were people anticipating danger everywhere. meanwhile our tourist were apparently only identifiable through dna ? what ? of course, mossad is ‘known’ to use certain bullets to cause maximum wound damage, just as an example. while i agree it seems odd to sit there and take it, as it were, it was probably over in the blink of an eye. or they were killed some other way and shot in the head as a diversion.