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.
Two sets of buildings at the top of the slope – reachable by the mountain path from the murder location (but not for cars).
0.8 km from cords http://goo.gl/maps/A8dbL
1km from cords http://goo.gl/maps/zSxug
Anyone know what they are?
Like the pretend RAFman bit, as in, they were waiting for Sylvain to arrive, then RAFman does the hit, with help from others.
They all set off, collect pretend RAF man on the way, so both kids and both women end up in the back, either they drop off RAF man down the road a bit to watch from the undergrowth, or with an hour to wait he nips off for a pee.
Next up Frenchman arrives on his bike, before much else happens, killer appears – shoots Frenchman, then before BMW has chance to escape, shoots driver, giving wife time to hide smaller girl and push the other one out of the open window, she gets shot from over the car, explaining why killer missed head and just hit her shoulder, kills women, does the old double tap thing to make sure everyone is really dead, and then either out or bullets or getting short of them, uses pistol butt to try to kill girl, before doing a bunk.
Raf man gets back to find dead bodies all over the place, and needs 10 minutes to speak to HQ and try to come up with an excuse for being there, spots bike on top of car, perfect excuse…
I just want to state that I have been dropped off for hikes or bike rides at close to the area where the assassination occurred and would never expect someone to drop me so deep in the forest .. i still think that the fact of the whole family so far into the forest is relevant. The road is tarmaced but still a bit of a hassle to navigate not an easy drive as it bends and switchbacks. Bikes tracks branch off at earlier point.So either the family wanted to pass through the forest maybe to escape to Switzerland or Italy and make it difficult for followers. Or some kind of extraction.
“So…4X4′s…surely SatNaV fitted a standard on exactly these types of vehicle.
Should be easy enough,then,for the authorities to comb the SatNav datbanks with these co-ordinates for a specific time-window..”
No such thing, a Sat Nav is a self-contained device which only receives radio signals from GPS satellites, it does not transmit.
They might be able to trace who was in the area through mobile phone records, but given the remoteness of the spot and the steepness of the valley that mobile coverage would be non-existent:
http://opensignalmaps.com/index.php?lat=45.6349&lng=6.2052&initZoom=11&isHeatMap=1
That said, if the killer(s) had a phone switched on as they headed back towards Chevaline, they should have connected to the local tower at some point having not been connected previously (out of signal range). The phone records could be scoured for such info.
Map of local mobile phone towers:
http://opensignalmaps.com/index.php?lat=45.7419&lng=6.2239&initZoom=12&isHeatMap=0
“I’m not the only one to think it odd that the initial police didn’t check the bodies for sign of life”
If they though the car had a boot full of nuclear material, might that explain why they checked for signs of life with a helicopter, and waited 8 hours for a special team to arrive?
Why check for signs of life with a helicopter when you can just walk up to the car?
@phil
I hear you. Good coppers have to think like a crim would.
“So either the family wanted to pass through the forest maybe to escape to Switzerland or Italy and make it difficult for followers. Or some kind of extraction.”
If it’s true that they waited for an hour, they could have just have driven to Switzerland in that hour, which is a safer place, the motorway or deep in the woods?
“He may have been going for drive, but only got as far as reverse before being shot – remember park reverse neutral drive, it’s gone into the bank hard enough to dig in a bit, but not hard enough to crash?”
It was a British car, much more likely to be stick-shift (or ‘manual gearbox’ as we call it) than automatic.
Jon, Sat-navs now can be mobile phone network assisted (faster position locking, remote tracking etc) and can download sat location data over the net rather than slowly from the sats) and many can record your journey onto a flash memory card if asked to do so.
It was a British car, much more likely to be stick-shift (or ‘manual gearbox’ as we call it) than automatic.
OE04WJZ BMW 3.0 – must be an auto.
Vermillion.
There is a clear path marked on Google Maps starting at that point and heading up the mountain. That’s why there is a small car park there presumably.
“Two sets of buildings at the top of the slope – reachable by the mountain path from the murder location (but not for cars)”
Listed just as chalets on the French maps: http://www.geoportail.gouv.fr/accueil?c=6.238104875676329,45.732052757104576&z=0.000032305502520928274&l=GEOGRAPHICALGRIDSYSTEMS.MAPS.3D$GEOPORTAIL:OGC:WMTS@aggregate(1)&permalink=yes
The aerial photography is better than Google, mind you.
Macky said:
I’m not the only one to think it odd that the initial police didn’t check the bodies for sign of life;
Unless they would believe ex-RAF man implicitly without hesitation. Like he was their boss.
——————————–
The car photo -you can see the rear passenger seat clearly if the woman who was sitting here had her seat belt on when shot she wouldnt slump forward far because of the belt. And there would be a lot of blood if she was shot in the head on the seat especially after staying there for 8 hours??
Here are my CiF replies to JaneSmith101’s Guardian comment, posted by CM above – like her comment, not only removed, but (very unusually) deleted without trace. The thread has now been prematurely closed:
1: All that information is firmly in the public domain, so I really don’t understand why responsible media outlets should have a problem with it.
But if this is not just some of the rampant paranoia circulating on this (as on many other less current ‘stories’), it may explain why my questions to the Mail, ending ‘Google Cezus+Zirconium and Iran+Zirconium’, didn’t survive moderation.
I thought they just thought my questions were too boring and unemotional.
…But I do still find it very difficult to believe ‘security services’ of whatever kind would be stupid enough to try to contain elements of a story that are already circulating. You can’t delete the Net in the same way you can delete a Guardian comment.
We’ll see what happens to this one as a test…
(It may not be a very good test, because moderators sometimes err quite a long way on the side of caution, even when they really don’t need to.)
[Comment Deleted]
2: PS: if the paranoia about ‘censorship’ of elements of the story already in the public domain (and I mean for a long time, like the significant results of the suggested Google searches) has any foundation, then that WOULD be a big story, well worthy of comment at this site.
[Comment Deleted]
[2a [in response to another poster:] That sort of stuff could go on for ever. I mean, to risk confusing Hollywood and Reality:
The RAF cyclist was the perp.
Al Hilli was a double agent.
Or far better and more scary (but equally improbable): The whole thing is a setup to raise the stakes over the Iranian nuclear programme in order to provide a casus belli to, er, take out Iran, or Ahmedinejad or who/whatever.
But this sort of speculation probably is quite inappropriate at this stage, the transformation of ‘News’ into a kind of macabre infotainment.
Goodnight again(really, this time).]
[Comment Undeleted]
2b: Strangely, there may be rather more to the paranoia around this case than I at first suspected – at least on the part of the UK media.
Am I not allowed to write here:
Google CEZUS+Zirconium and Iran+Zirconium?
I mean, CEZUS is the biggest local employer apparently, the world leader in Zirconium-related products and research, and Mr Hilli was according to press reports ‘a Shia socialist’ and skilled engineer in whom the security services had earlier shown some interest, his wife who he apparently met in Dubai in 2002 was Iranian.
I mean, I declare here that I have absolutely no ‘inside’ knowledge – it’s just a question which I was surprised the mainstream media were slow to cover (like other rather obvious questions I tried to raise at the extensive Mail webpages devoted to the Big Story).
As I earlier suggested, it would have been highly counterproductive for a family member in conflict with his brother over a family legacy of less than a million to employ a (presumably) expensive and messy ‘professional’ hit squad when he wouldn’t avoid police attention after the event (though the extended family and other ‘connections’ need not of course be mutually exclusive).
I’ve never thought spies were really much more than fancy Plods, though, so perhaps they really would be mad enough to attempt to control the global Net. I think it’s what technical ballistics people call ‘shooting yourself in the foot’.
Then again, if I were really paranoid, I’d start thinking about scenarios in which this counterproductive attempt to suppress obvious questions already well into the public domain was itself part of ‘the real story’ – a sophisticated part of, say, a ‘false flag’ operation to ratchet up the case against Ahmedinejad (for example).
But for those outside the investigation itself, the biggest story here may well be ‘the story of the story’ and its attempted management or manipulation.
For me right now, that’s just an interesting QUESTION – perhaps the most interesting question about this ‘story’. Just a question, like the various – to me rather obvious – questions that don’t seem to have yet caught much of the attention of the mainstream media.
I think it’s hopeless – and counterproductive – for those outside the investigation to find ANSWERS at this point.
But I think it’s right for the MSM to ask some of the basic questions they appear to have been avoiding (for whatever reason – yes, WHY?) – and if the MSM won’t ask them, then it’s important for others to ask them, and also to ask why the MSM isn’t asking them.
[Comment Deleted]
Other related comments were recently still undeleted at the site, including a link to this article on the Arak reactor programme:
http://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/Arak_Update_25_August2009.pdf
This may all just be rather incompetent Guardian moderation, but it gives the strong impression that someone doesn’t (yet at least)like any mention of Zirconium or CEZUS’ refined Zircaloy in the MSM.
As I responded to the Guardian moderator’s brief note that the thread was about to close prematurely: Wonder why?
Matt,
Wonder if the chalets were occupied then and who by at the time?
I do not think that the Israeli deep state terrorist agencies would balk at killing young children – though none were killed in this incident as you seem to misunderstand, though were left as good as dead, with shot or bashed in skulls – I’d hazard they’d relish it –and then that Arab ‘agencies’ would wade in? Nice one Milton, our newest Dead Sea Troll.
Don’t know if anyone’s mentioned it, but it’s remarkable that the French police have had no difficulties coming to Britain to question (suspect? “person of interest”?) people about this murder, such as Mr. al Hilli’s brother. The British police, in turn, find no problem in going to France to interview people there.
So why can’t the Swedish police visit Mr. Assange in London to ask him questions relating to their enquiries?
@Dave Brooker – no, it’s manual, not automatic. Type it into MoneySupermarket for a quote, and it tells you it’s:
BMW 530 2004-2010 Diesel 3.0L Manual 5 doors D SE Estate
When sitting in the back seat there is almost always more legroom on the passenger side than the driver side. Male driver + steering wheel.
The little girl is on the floor therefore she is on the floor passenger side. More room.
Her mother shot dead is slumped forward over the child, obscuring her.
I would expect blood to be seeping from the mothers head onto her clothes with child below. Not for the squeamish but the child is now well protected and out of sight. With her dead mothers body slumped forward.
If it’s a manual, why did it not just stall?
Unless dead bloke’s foot was to the floor…
Explaining the haste RAF man placed on turning it off?
Is that blood and brain matter on the shelf behind the rear seat? Or just my overactive imagination? Bright red.
Does someone know whether this is consistent with any particular agency such as Mossad?
For instance, some people have suggested that the family were in the wrong place at the wrong time when the French cyclist was the target. Is it really consistent to wipe out a family because they saw too much? If the cyclist was killed first and they saw that, how much could they really compromise things by witnessing it? Wouldn’t the assassin be protected by their agency in any case?
[These original questions that I was surprised last week not to see addressed by the UK’s top media sleuths are still up on the Guardian site. As the thread has been censored, then closed, I’d be interested to know how relevent they might be:]
1: Why was Zainab, ‘the apple of her father’s eye’ treated so differently to the others visible in the car? Tortured and left for dead (not ‘spared’ as the UK press en masse told us, quite the reverse) outside the locked car, while the others visible to the killer(s) were ‘professionally executed’? In Hollywood, of course, the most likely gruesome answer is that brutalizing her might be the best way to get something (talk or something else) from the father before executing him and the witnesses.
2: Why has nobody asked how a team of 20 or so ‘military style personnel’ from ‘the British embassy’ managed to get to the scene so quickly after the attack – in a robbery or criminal ‘hit’ this would be a very improbable development?
3: Why did British reports, unlike the French, made a known family feud over an inheritance of less than a million pounds in total, so central, when a brother who would hardly avoid police attention would have little chance of profiting in any way from such a counterproductive ‘resolution’ of the family disagreement?
4: Why would Mossad, who suffered severe diplomatic consequences from the assasination of a senior Hamas leader in Dubai, ‘simply’ because some of their team used fake British passports, risk the consequences of such a grotesque outrage against UK, French and Swedish citizens on French soil?
Yeah it’s a 3-litre diesel, taxed till end of May 2013.
The vehicle details for OE04 WJZ are:
Date of Liability 01 05 2013
Date of First Registration 12 08 2004
Year of Manufacture 2004
Cylinder Capacity (cc) 2993cc
CO2 Emissions 192g/Km
Fuel Type HEAVY OIL
Export Marker N
Vehicle Status Licence Not Due
Vehicle Colour RED
Vehicle Type Approval M1
Vehicle Excise Duty rate for vehicle
6 Months Rate £137.50
12 Months Rate £250.00
Mossad have been roaming the world topping anyone they want for years, they don’t worry if innocents happen to get in the way:
“At 3:35 p.m. on January 22, 1979, as Salameh and four bodyguards drove down the street in a Chevrolet station wagon,[30] the explosives in the Volkswagen were detonated from the apartment with a radio device, killing everyone in the vehicle. After five unsuccessful attempts,[31] the Mossad had assassinated Salameh. However, the blast also killed four innocent bystanders, including a British student and a German nun, and injured 18 other people in the vicinity. Immediately following the operation the three Mossad officers fled without trace, as well as up to 14 other agents believed to have been involved in the operation.”
I’m not sure that’s a reasonable comparison Dave. The example you give is incompetence, and is it really reasonable to compare the workings of this agency 30+ years ago to how it goes about its business today? It may have been incompetence to end up having witnesses to an assassination, but it seems like a level of malice beyond your example to kill a family to keep things safe. I still have my original confusion: would they really care that much if there was a family of witnesses?
How could a lone assassin kill three adult people with two bullets each to the head without anyone being able to get out of the car and run away? He would surely have had to walk around the car or stretch over to the rear seat/opposite side of the car and that would have taken a bit of time.
So I sure don’t buy it was a lone assassin.
I also suspect the ‘former RAF officer’ of being someone of interest.
It is far too soon to push a theory of ‘family arguments over inheritance’. So why is that theory being shouted so loudly from the hilltops. Obfuscation if you ask me.
I didn’t know the background of the other cyclist before I read your stuff. Your theory sounds more interesting.
I think Israelis, criminals or Iraqis might not baulk at beating a child to get info. So might many others.
Interesting …
They’ve been murdering (innocent) Iranian scientists for years, and that bloke in the hotel in Dubai, and the IDF have been killing children in Palestine for ever.
It’s clear the family were the targets, along with French cyclist.
Anders7777 mentions this above, and I found it very strange that a fellow could be overtaken by another bicycle “a few minutes” before arriving on the scene, yet there was a sufficient gap between the British and French cyclists’ arrival times to allow all the carnage to go unwitnessed and unheard, not to mention the killers clearing off.
One bicycle overtakes another – but even a fit young man overtaking a much older man would not make a large difference in their arrival time. The difference in their speed will still be fairly marginal. Say the Frenchman is doing 15mph (excessive, given it was uphill on a mountain bike). Say RAF-man is doing 10mph, and say the “few minutes” is as much as 6 minutes.
6 minutes at RAF man’s speed means the spot, at 10MPH, would be one mile away . The Frenchman would have covered the mile – at 15MPH – in four minutes. It means there would be only two minutes for the killers to do the Frenchman in and disappear, with RAF-man under one-third of a mile away hearing nothing.
Suggesting the Frenchman is travelling 50% faster than RAF-man, and “few” means six, is a very generous. We’re probably talking about well under a minute and a couple of hundred yards.
*
From the look of the DM picture it appears the rear of the car is partially buried in the bank. How long can an engine run with the exhaust choked up like that? Certainly not a full minute. More like a few seconds.
YouTube is full of clips of IDF mistreating Palestinian children. And they’re not Mossad. Any suggestion that Mossad wouldn’t beat or shoot an Arab child is naive, in my book.