The Al-Hilli Conundrum 6629


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.


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6,629 thoughts on “The Al-Hilli Conundrum

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  • Ferret

    @Bilbo

    Ferret – a while back you asked about the mollier archery club photo – my first thoughts, deliverance. killers (and not just animals)

    Amen.

    It’s weird, isn’t it?

  • Ferret

    @Kenneth

    I understood from a previous poster that Saddam’s efforts to regain nuclear status were redoubled after Gulf War I.

    Did I misunderstand something?

    Perhaps someone can help me out here.

  • Kenneth Sorensen

    I hear some of you saying: “Well, Iraqs programme was terminated in spring 1990, why not do the same with Irans?” Iran is 4 times bigger. And Iran has not attacked another country like Saddam attacked Kuwait, which was the reason a record high number of countries was assembled (by James Baker, US Foreign Secretary) in a coalition to throw him out. Consequently James also knew that the war had to stop after Saddams forces was thrown out, cause that was what all the countries in the coalition — which crucially comprised all the Arab countries) had agreed on. There was the usual talk among the neo-conservatives to continue to Baghdad – but as we — thsi time everybody — know today, this would have meant that US forces had got bocked down, just like they did in the second Gulf War 2003-11.

  • Kenneth Sorensen

    Yes you misunderstood. They got redoubled after the unprecedented attack on Iraqs civilian nuclear reactor (which luckily was brend new and not yet in use – in contrast to targets in Iran, which are all in use, and therefore will contaminate a large area with radioactive polution – and which marks I think the first instance in modern history that a countrys military just flies in an attacks anothers (civilian) installations in peace time, without any warning or ultimatum let alone declaration of war) in 1981

  • phil t

    So you have a post shooting scene swarming with ‘military types’ … this is what you would expect in an urban environment … but in that particular place at that particular time

  • Felix

    Nobody has so far commented upon the car park at Le Martinet.
    Longitude:
    6° 13′ 27.28″ E
    Latitude:
    45° 43′ 43.85″ N

    Is this the one, rather than the area at the bend in the road??

  • phil t

    You might argue that, eg, the failure to spot the younger daughter below the back seat for ‘8 hours’ (+/-) was the result of ‘amateurs’ early on the scene…
    But … more likely … scene is ‘locked down’ for several hours …
    In other words amateurs/civilians would have found the child in the back quickly (natural human sympathies, etc), etc …

  • CD

    @Ferret: That’s odd… I thought you had to file more than that…?

    Not necessarily, may depend on size of company + subsidiaries etc. Auditors/accountants usually make a prefatory statement on accounts saying that certain regulatory requirements do not apply due to the size of the company/level of t/o and so forth.

  • Ferret

    @Kenneth

    Ah OK, thanks. I was thinking of your 25 Sep, 2012 – 4:38 pm post

    As Malfrid Hegghammer, Daniel Reiter, and Richard Betts have all shown, the destruction of Osirak led to an elite consensus that Iraq needed its own deterrent, and led Saddam Hussein to order a redoubling of Iraq’s nuclear program in a more clandestine fashion. This effort was so successful that the UN inspectors who entered Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War were surprised by how extensive the program was and how close it had come to producing a bomb. Indeed, if Saddam had been smart enough to wait a few more years, he might have crossed the nuclear finish line.

    So… what was SAH doing in the years leading up to 1991? And what do we know of Saddam’s nuclear ambitions/programme between 1991 and Gulf War II in 2003?

    There was the famous Yellowcake story, which of course as we all know now was a complete fabrication.

    BTW, you never replied to my question as to how you would propose to implement your mid-east peace plan?

  • Ferret

    @Kenneth

    PS. In that same post, you wrote “Very young Saad (Between 19 and 29 year old) helped Saddam? Okay posiible”. Have you changed your mind now?

  • CD

    So, to try to fill in definitive SAH biography:
    Born?
    Moved to UK?
    Lived where?
    Father set up engineering/manufacturing in UK (with his brother?) – when+where?
    Went to school where?
    Finished school when?
    Went to college/uni where?
    Qualified when?
    Qualified as what?
    Started work where?
    Started work when?
    Different jobs when/where?
    Travels outside UK – when/where?
    Marries when/where?
    etc

  • Kenneth Sorensen

    Ferret says:

    And what do we know of Saddam’s nuclear ambitions/programme between 1991 and Gulf War II in 2003?

    There was NO Iraqie nuclear programme (not a succesfull such at least) after the first Gulf War, because the UN inspectors were round and about scouting for evidence, and destroying depots and missiles (you prbably remember seing it itn the news: Now this depot get exploded , now these missiles get destroyed.
    ).

    That’s also why it’s so frustrating (must have been for Saddam) that after you’ve allowed all those inspectors in to detsroy all these things – a case could still be constructed in 2002, that Saddam was about to get WMD’s!!

  • dopey

    @ mochyn69

    Stopping missing teens getting “boffed” by their teacher (or boffed any more than can be helped until they’re found that is..) I guess is more important “news” than finding killers who wiped out a family and made two orphans.

  • Kenneth Sorensen

    Ferret wrote:

    PS. In that same post, you wrote “Very young Saad (Between 19 and 29 year old) helped Saddam? Okay posiible”. Have you changed your mind now?

    Ferret is possibly very young, but this comment of mine was ironic. Yes it is possible,- I could have added : “Is it likely”. but I chose not to, because it is good that you exercise those little grey cells of yours [H/T Poirot] regularly, right?

  • Trowbridge H. Ford

    As I understand it, most of Saddam’s nuclear establishment was destroyed during the bombing campaign of the first Gulf War – what most experts think was about two years away from producing a nuclear weapon.

    Then the Iraqi dictator was involved in a damage-limitation exercise which was driven by the fact that IAEA and UNSCOM inspectors were allowed to do their work in the country – what Saddam increasingly advised his reluctant scientists to assist in the hope of getting them out.

    Full disclosure of what Iraq actually had was not achieved until about 1995 when expert Hussein Kamel defected to Jordon, resulting shortly afterwards in Saddam turning over seventy steamer trunks full of documentation that the regime still had.

    Up until that time, Saddam could well have been working behind the scenes to stage its renewal if allowed.

  • Suhayl Saadi

    Ferret, your comments (2:36pm on 26.9.12) about possible reasons for the seeming decrease in media interest in the case/the girls are valid. Wrt the McCann case, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown has written of this type of phenomenon in The Independent.

    It’s interesting, because this ‘story’ (story, that is, in the journalistic sense) has a number of potential angles for ongoing media coverage – possible espionage, the traumatised children (and so, emotive), the multi-everything nature of British society as exemplified so beautifully in the recent Olympics, the successful immigrant narrative, the whodunnit crime angle, the international politics/war, etc. angle… and yet, after the initial reportage, it’s had far less coverage, I think, than, say, the Gareth Williams case. I guess the cases of still-missing children are ‘attractive’ to the media because of their unresolved, ongoing, dynamic nature. The Al-Hillis are dead; the kids are safe (one hopes) – it’s ‘history’, yesterday’s news, it’s no longer ‘rolling.’ And yet, like you, Ferret, I feel that there is more to this sudden dearth of reportage/investigative journalism and it may be a combination of some of the factors raised on this thread – tight control of information; self-censorship; institutional racism; security service involvement at some level, etc.

    Btw, Ferret, wrt your question earlier today (this morning, I think) on Muslim funeral practices, most Muslims will have a simple white shroud and a simple cuboidal coffin – minimal ostentation in that sense. Shia grave-sites/gravestones stones can be elaborate, with photos of the deceased and so on, but not, as far as I am aware, the shroud/coffin, etc.

    Mochyn 69 at3:46pm on 26.9.12, I think maybe the reason Megan Stammers’s face has not been concealed in the media is because she is a missing person and so publication of her face in the media might help someone to remember seeing her at such-and-such place and so might help with her recovery. Likewise, Madeline McCann and the kids who had gone missing (and who sadly, were murdered) in recent years. The Al-Hilli girls are not missing.

  • Peter

    http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/vierfachmord-in-den-alpen-ermittler-stehen-vor-einem-raetsel-a-857607.html

    A new article from Germany, not worth translating. In brief, the french prosecutor says that they are “still completely in the dark”, believes that the large number of cartridge cases tends to militate against the idea that a paid hitman was responsible for the murders, and refuses to rule out the possibility that the murders might have been committed by a madman.

    If that is the current official status of the enquiry, just where did those UK journalists get the information from that the AHs were “tracked” to France all the way from the UK?

  • Suhayl Saadi

    Dopey, at 4:14PM ON 26.9.12:

    Yes, I agree. Obviously dead (murdered) children’s faces can be revealed in the public sphere – it’s part of the public record. But why, then, no photos of Mrs Al-Hilli of her mother or of M. Mollier. Family sensitivities are one thing. But the search is menat to be on for the murdered(s) – they might do it again, who knows? It’s in the public interest that photos of the dead adults are circulated.

  • Suhayl Saadi

    Peter, I agree with your suggestion, made earlier today, that people ought to contact local and national jouranlists/editors, asking why the case is not being subjected to much investiagtive journalism. If enough people do this, the media will feel obliged to at least discuss the matter at their editorial meetings. Even more so, wrt the BBC. They really do worry about receiving shed-loads of correspondence/phone-calls, etc. Otherwise, the ‘story’ will be allowed quietly to die, until some or other ‘Barry George-style’ patsy will be hauled out of a French barn in the middle of a bucolic scene and framed for it.

  • Peter

    @ Suhayl

    Well, I have made a start, and I shall take your advice and contact the BBC as well. @ all are most welcome to do likewise.

  • Felix

    SSTL told everybody to shut up. Except someone called Derek Reed. Ex-RAF. (left 1996, correlated with FB entry) Only been at SSTL 4 years. Updated profile pic twice on 7 sept.
    Just for info:
    http://www.reedsweb.net/about.html

    Said at the time SAH wouldn’t have to sign the OSA

    May possibly be the director of Nexsys Consultants Ltd of Guildford.

    Just wondered why he was speaking out when all others weren’t.

  • Blue_Bear

    I submitted this complaint to the BBC:

    I would like to know why there is an apparent lack of any real investigative journalism or research into any aspect of the so called “massacre” in the French Alps. Why has it been dropped? Why has there been no appeals for witnesses? Why has there been no CCTV footage shown of their journey? Why has there been so few photos of the family (dead or alive)? Why have the professions of all concerned not been discussed? Is there an injunction in place? Is there pressure from an individual or organisation to keep the story out of the papers/TV? Why was RAF-man interviewed by Frank Gardener? Why has the mainstream media been unable to get basic facts straight such as the gunshots being heard by witnesses when it was apparently done with a silencer? Why was the neighbour interviewed so early on to give his opinion of the victims finances? Why did the BBC comply with pushing the ‘Muslim family/money/feud’ hypothesis when it has no basis in fact? Why would the bomb-squad go to the house? Why are we not seeing BBC journalists in Sweden where the “grandmother” was supposed to reside? Why are we paying our license-fee when we have to do your research for you?

    I will await their response…

  • CD

    Well done BB.

    I would suggest that it be put to them – and to other news media in the UK – that they are purposefully ignoring this story because the victims are not white, middle-class, and ‘British born and bred’. And that their de-prioritisation of the story is evidence of a shameful racial, ethnic and religious editorial bias.

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