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.
@Roger et al:
Surely the object on top of the vehicle was nothing more than tent pegs. 😉
End of story as far as Sweden is concerned, and just makes one wonder what Borgnäs really knows.
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The trouble with Sweden is they are Anerica’s puppets.
Cf. J Assange
Norway stood up to Israel, and look what happened.
I am not in the least surprised that Sweden France UK are burying this.
@Roger et al:
Surely the object on top of the vehicle was nothing more than tent pegs.
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A reference to CANADAman at GLP.
So Q, I asked you pretty please TWICE the other night to boil it all down for us.
Still waiting 😉
@ Trowbridge H. Ford 25 Sep, 2012 – 4:23 pm
Re Mrs. Suhaila al-Allaf – was she also known by another/married name, or is al-Allaf her married name?
And is her son’s surname, Thaher, that of his father? And is it of this man you are saying and what the father might have been doing for the Saddam regime for his STV program, Striptease, over the years? Can you expand on this?
@Anders6666:
Point of history about the Manhattan Project. It wasn’t just Americans working in secret. People like Egon Bretscher of Switzerland (and Cambridge University) were very much involved. There was also that little project in Chalk River, Ontario, Canada, which was kept quiet. You know, the same place where a scientist on a walk around midnight in the middle of winter went missing in 2010, turning up dead in 30 inches of water in a river months later with his work ID safe in his pocket. What a tale those tunnels under Columbia University could have told. Sadly, they were demolished in 2003.
As you may recall, there was a spy scandal borne out of the Manhattan Project, involving Klaus Fuchs (who had worked at Chalk River). Names like Igor Gouzenko and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were also caught in the web.
Anyhoo, I’m thinking the Chevaline shootings are part of a bigger picture, which would take this OT.
Let’s look at this family.
We had before the French farce:
2 dead Fathers [ Ikbals & Saad’s ]
1 dead wife [ Zaid’s.]
1 son Zaid, married to an Irish someone who had children + his own son Ali. None of whom speak to Saad’s family.
1 sister who may or may not be married to the Ahmed mentioned earlier.
1 Swedish mother [Iraqi born ]
1 Swedish son [ ditto ]
Last year Zaid was ousted from the firm & replaced by Ikbal. Why ?
Before departure Saad collects mother in law [ from the sister in law in Reading] who has left son in an institution.
Zaid did not rush over to France on hearing the news he went to the police station… to clear his own name….nor did either son rush over to Spain when their Father died…. this looks as though both sons had distanced themselves from him & each other.
Why did the child not recognise her ‘grandmother ‘ ?
I’m assuming from all this that it is Ikbal’s sister & Ahmed [?] who went to France & have the daughters & Zaid has completely cut himself off from his family.
Deduction:
Is Zaid a blood brother, the two look so completely different, did the father marry twice, is that why they fell out over the will ?
Or was Zaid a fostered child. [ adoption In Islam is not allowed in the English sense ]
@Kathy:
You’ll also find that some stories claimed she studied dentistry in Sweden. She is Iranian, no Iraqi, no Swedish, no British. Maybe there is some truth somewhere in the official line, if only it would stop transmogrifying.
@ anders7777 25 Sep, 2012 – 5:02 pm
I disagree. I think the inanities or small details may get us to the point where the truth of what happened – be it extraction or rendition or assassination – is more credible.
For instance – in what name or names were the grandmother’s passports? How long had she been living in Sweden? When did she travel to the UK? Where is her son being treated?
Q
Yes, whether it is just sloppy journalism or something more sinister, the story keeps changing. Until lately of course when it completely disappeared.
Too true CD, you can’t finish a puzzle without ‘all’ the pieces.
Katie/Anders – your ongoing dispute is not adding to the discussion, so I have deleted items from both of you. It would probably be best if you didn’t interact, unless you are willing to work together on more detective work about the case.
I am quite happy for people to disagree, but it is still possible to do it politely. And if you do disagree with something that someone has said, please explain why, otherwise the statement has little value.
See here, Granny took them to Stockholm last year, but still Zeena didn’t seem to know her granny from a photo:
“In Sweden, relatives of Mr Al-Hilli’s mother-in-law said they were shocked at the murder of the well-dressed retired English teacher.
Mrs Al-Allaf lived alone after the death of her husband in May and they said she ‘longed’ to spend more time with her daughter and grandchildren.
Last night her nephew, Hasan Ahmad Al-Saffar, 18, paid tribute to Mrs Al-Allaf and her ‘perfect family’. He said: ‘What has happened to them is so terrible, it’s almost impossible to talk about.
‘We had a lovely time together when they visited us a year ago.
We took them around Stockholm to see the sights with the children, who were just two wonderful little girls.”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2200542/Alps-massacre-What-murder-VICTIM-wrote-brother-seven-year-old-girl-comes-coma-sister-returns-Britain.html#ixzz27UzChX89
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Ok we have to think if there where 20 intelligence officers at the scene quicker than you could say terrorist conspiracy! that the real investigation is being done by MI6/MI5 Intelligence officers in France, switz, italy, Iraq, sweden and the UK whilst the UK & French Police are probably working with as much of the true information as we are!, just as in the Gareth Williams case.
This is why there really is no news, the news wouldnt come from the CPS, Police or the media as its a closed shop and thats without any D Notice in place………..hidden behind the curtain of national security.
We can speculate endlessly about motive (to a degree it’s academic) – and I tend toward the belief that they walked or were walked into a trap, believing themselves to be safe – and I think the likelihood is that a state agency is more likely to have been responsible than someone acting out a personal motive, however warped or desperate.
So I come back to opportunity – the thousands of little details around and leading up to the fateful trip to France, and the preparatory actions of everyone reported to have been present.
I have to point out that Iran is 3-4 times greater — in square miles, in population — and add to that American (and British) war-wariness, and how they were led into Iraq on a lie about non-existing WMD’s. I just have to say this, because I know that primitive minds would start to ask themselves: “Hey after the first Gulf War UN inspectors went into Iraq and neautralised its nuclear program. Well you just can’t do it versus Iran, due to its size and due to aforementioned war-weariness and feeling of betray about being misled.
Couple that with Steve’s arguments above, and you will see that any attack on Iran very likely will result in them actually wanting the bomb as a deterrent.*
*) Let’s be clear: Nuclear weapons are the ultimate deterence, and insurance against an attack; noboby in their right minds will attack a country that posses them.
I always understood that Saddam’s WMD were chemical, taken into Syria & that’s why none were found, that would be very easy to do.
So why didn’t we hear more about nuclear before the invasion ?
Thats’ also why it is nuts to talk about “Iran will dominate the Gulf” if it gets nuclear weapons”. It is just sheer nuts. Because as I said, they are the ultimate defensive weapons,- an insurance against being attacked.
And Iran couldn’t use them against Israel – not without a massive retaliation. and they couldn’t give them to terrorists either, because very quickly it would be found out from were they came, and the reaction would be the same as if Iran had fired them.
I am posting the correspondence below which I had with the Orthodox Union about the release of spy Jonathan Pollard, and with Svenska Dagbladet reporter Peter Carlberg about the murder of Foreign Minister Anna Lindh because it has recalled a telephone conversation which I had with Lars Borgnäs the night she was dying in which he dismissed my analysis as complete bonkers.
This all inclines me to think that Borgnäs has been working with the Mossad throughout, and it was in its interest that he closed out Swedish coverage and investigation of the al-Hilli massacre.
—– Original Message —–
From: TROWBRIDGE FORD
To: [email protected]
Sent: Thursday, September 11, 2003 10:55 AM
Subject: official action concerning the Palme assassination, etc.
Dear Mr. Carlberg,
Enclosed is expression of interest by the leading Jewish group in America, and probably the Israeli government itself, in securing the release of spy Jonathan Pollard, what could throw Washington and London into the greatest turmoil if successful. Pollard provided the locations of vital Anglo-American command-and-control centers around the world, and how they would operate if the shooting started – what would have given Moscow war-winning possibilities with the West. Fortunately, the spying by Aldrich “Rick” Ames, and Robert Hanssen prevented this from happening. Still, Palme was assassinated.
What I sent was the draft article about why it took so long to capture them, and an e-mail to cryptome.com about Pollard’s plight.
The interest by the Orthodox Union is what I have been trying to get out of Sweden for the last few years, but without success. Stockholm’s failure has apparently encouraged Washington and possibly London to take out Anna Lindh whose assassination has two advantages – it helps promote adoption of the euro, the success of which will save Tony Blair’s government from falling into the political abyss, and will send to the grave the Swedish minister most critical of what London and Washington have done, and are doing. It seems like a repeat of the Palme shooting.
Let’s hope that the press and the police conduct a more relevant inquiry this time, one which could lead to a successful conclusion to what happened 17 years ago.
Sincerely yours,
Trowbridge Ford
P.S. 19:50, 2003-9-11. My theory is that Israel’s Mossad had Anna Lindh killed in the hope of persuading Washington to release a muzzled Pollard, thanks to my information about all the dirty operations during Reagan’s quest for, and tenure of the White House. Now all I have to worry about is what will happen, once Pollard is released. I have discussed the matter with the Swedish police, and I think that I shall ask for their protection when and if this happens.
—– Original Message —–
From: webstaff
To: ‘TROWBRIDGE FORD’
Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2003 7:15 PM
Subject: RE: jonathan pollard’s plight
Hi Mr. Ford
Thank you your e-mail, we appreciate your interest. Your e-mail has been forwarded to the IPA Department of the OU (Institute for Public Affairs), they will be responding directly to you as soon as possible.
If there is anything else that we may help you with please do not hesitate to email us at [email protected].
Best wishes,
Bluma Nussbaum
ou.org webstaff
—–Original Message—–
From: TROWBRIDGE FORD [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, September 05, 2003 4:22 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: jonathan pollard’s plight
Dear Sir,
I am a retired American political science professor, writing a history of covert operations, intelligence, and espionage during the Cold War, and living permanently in Sweden, I believe, for political reasons.
In my research, the political excesses of the Reagan administration figure large, starting with its planned assassination of President Jimmy Carter if he pulled off an “October Surprise” in the hostage crisis – resulting in the near assassination of the President himself when John Hinckley, Jr. realized how he had been set up in the process – and ending with Iran-Contra – what covered up its plan to trigger a non-nuclear conclusion to the Cold War with the USSR by the assassinatin of Sweden’s statsminister Olof Palme. The reason why this didn’t happen was because of the spying by the Agency’s Aldrich “Rick” Ames, and the Bureau’s Robert Hanssen.
The spying by Jonathan Pollard would only have proved essential if Navy Secretary John Lehman’s attack submarines started sinking Soviet boomers, and Admiral Trost’s Task Force Eagle started taking out Soviet air and land defenses in the Far North. Thanks to the spying by Ames, and Hanssen, it never came to this, so Pollard’s satellite and signal intelligence never came into play. If the shooting had started, however, his spying would certainly have given the USSR increased war-winning chances, as it would have given Moscow every indication of what to hit where, and how to protect its own vital capabilities.
As you can see from the attachments – essays I have been writing for a book, and correspondence I have been having with various American web sites – the White House, American intelligence community, and the US Navy have much to answer for because of these wild plots, explaining why leading Republicans, especially Senators Lott, Shelby, and Cohen, and former SOD Caspar Weinberger; leading intelligence operatives, particularly DCI Tenet; and all the members of the Navy’s Team Charlie have been so opposed to Pollard’s release. They are afraid of all the skeletons he might expose, once he gets back to Israel. That’s why they also want Ames, Hanssen, Hinckley, Chapman, and ‘Unabomber’ Kaczinski locked up for life too.
Why I have not said more about Pollard up to now is because I didn’t know that there were steps afoot again to get him released.
If you want to communicate with me more about this, and I have written draft articles about why Ames and Hanssen were obliged to start spying for the Soviets, the roles of North, Lehman, and Thatcher’s government in the process and its cover up, I can be reached at [email protected]
Sincerely yours,
Trowbridge Ford
@Anders:
So sorry you feel that way.
The dead scientist from Chalk River had worked at Columbia University in “map room 31”. If you do a search you’ll find information from the LDEO, and disaster monitoring. Wouldn’t satellites provide that kind of information?
The dead scientist from Chalk River had also worked at Grenoble, using the beamline for analysis of materials. He had also played a role in determining the cause of a tritium leak at the heavy water reactor there, using diffraction methods. Yes, zirconium comes up.
By the by, the RCAF killer Russell Williams’ metallurgist father had developed a patent using iron as part of zircaloy-2 while at Chalk River.
The dead scientist had provided free software for X-ray crystallography, etc. There’s a conference in Grenoble next month with a software fayre in his name. The lab where he worked had examined parts of space shuttles.
And of course, the dead scientist had worked in the UK. He left a most interesting personal website behind. It has many broken links now.
There were many parallels to this story, including stories that changed with the wind, fairytales about wolves and aliens, and how his death couldn’t possibly have anything to do with his work, at the nuclear reactor which played a role in the Manhattan project.
The investigation of his death was in the hands of the Deep River police department, which had less than 10 officers at the time; they have issued many bulletins about lost and stolen bicycles. One of the officers went on to start a paramilitary operation.
What did Lachlan Cranswick know? Too much of too many pieces of too many puzzles? How he ended up in the river in January 2010 is anyone’s guess. He’d have had to chip through thick ice to do it. It’s a tangled tale. Some might say that working at a nuclear reactor is not just dangerous for Iranian scientists, and that motorcycles for such things aren’t good on snow and ice.
Katie,
Your 2 posts 4.58 & 5.17 both made me check that you were the poster.
I’m sorry if that comes across in a bad way, but they are a decent summary and well thought out, not what I normally expect from you.
Please carry on.
I thought a 4yo not recognising their grandma who lives in another country quite possible. Until now.
The early discrepancies with identifying the grandmother may be down to the Swedish passport showing her as 74 and the other passport showing her as 77. I want to say an Iraqi passport but that cant be right, can it?
@Kathy:
How about the the name of Mrs. al-Hilli’s mother’s husband? Would that be common in Bahrain?
@Anders:
Heavy water reactor leak was at Chalk River, Ontario, Canada, for clarification.
Thank Q 🙂
. Some might say that working at a nuclear reactor is not just dangerous for Iranian scientists, and that motorcycles for such things aren’t good on snow and ice.
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The Nordics do use spiked tires.
Straw, I hesitate to post anything ‘well thought out’ when comments are constantly ridiculed. 😉
The passport conundrum ? I did say earlier today, that we are assuming they are for the same woman .
You may remember I mentioned days ago that it’s possible someone else was in the car, the passenger seat, that’s why the older child was out of the car,she had been sitting on the knee of that passenger.
Could that person have been the real granny,or was Zeena shown both passports ?
Re my last post for example some girl runs off with her teacher and the CCTV footage has just been on sky news?
Re my last post for example some girl runs off with her teacher and the CCTV footage has just been on sky news?
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BINGO!
@Katie – ignoring insults from a poster does take practise, but in my experience it is the only way to deal with it without adding to the derailment. I’ve unapproved the offending post – carry on posting research, and I will deal with the off-topic messages.
So, after 5,500 posts and a very interesting ride, let’s take stock – whodunnit? An interim view, provisional, obviously, no-one can be held to it. One line only from each of the posters here, please and just give your most likely culprit, not a series of them. Feel free. Do venture. I think it would be interesting. Thanks.
Good to know you are there ,Jon, thank-you.