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Whatever happened to the Jim Thompson-same day of death-poison dart-FBI-Eric Maillaud story? Was this something cooked up by the media?
If this was a bizarre feud between French mountain men, it certainly escalated out of control into an international mystery. Pitchforks and shovels? Non, les republicans des montagnes have darts poisones! Why run someone down in a phone booth when more sophisticated methods are available? Passez-moi les truffles, but don’t steal them, and all that.
Mr Juicy
Off Topic – but are you perhaps a fan of Fruit Fxxxer 2000?
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/06/04/fruit-saga-part-1
http://www.lse.ac.uk/humanRights/documents/2011/KlugDeportation.pdf
The new rules regarding deportation came into effect in July 2012. The document says that they do not take into account the citizenship of the children of a deportee. I do not know what that means.
Could Saad and Iqbal have feared that their daughters were about to be deported along with their mother? Parents will go to extreme measures to avoid being separated from their children.
A critical point in considering the deportation of one member of a family unit, is whether the spouse can reasonably be expected to relocate. Since Saad had visited Iraq, and had business ties there, and a home, it is possible that authorities might consider him reasonably able to relocate, thus preserving the family unit. If he had passports from other countries where there would be less likelihood of such a prospect, he may have considered relocating there.
This is presuming there was any threat at all of deportation of any of the family members, I.e. Iqbal.
I wish the spell check would stop changing “Saad” to “Salad”, as one day it might slip past me. No disrespect intended.
M., it occurred to me that Iqbal had few ties to the community where she lived. This would not work in her favor in a deportation hearing, if such a thing happened. They are looking for strong ties socially, in volunteer organizations, community groups, school committees, and so on. Iqbal seemed to be almost invisible, not venturing far from the confines of the family home. Not a good thing if you’ve been found out to be a bigamist, or stayed on after an expired student or tourist visa, or what have you, and found yourself facing deportation. Bigamy could mean a prison sentence and declaration of the marriage as void, which could affect the status of the children. Do you think someone reported Iqbal to the authorities, and that this started the cascade of troubles for the al-Hillis?
Mr Juicy
“great skill in tracking him (SAH) to that remote spot”
Not necessarily. Someone suggested that he should go there as a starting point for a walk.
Early reports were that the receptionist at the campsite made that suggestion (she apparently was the campsite site owners daughter).
Given that the original suggestion for the robbery-gone-wrong killing in Lathuile was from someone who worked at the campsite owned by the victims and who somehow ‘gained the impression’ that the owners kept a lot of cash at home, maybe someone working at SAH’s campsite was ‘friendly’ with the receptionist or simply overheard the advice given.
This scenario could have a motive of robbery. SAH and his MiL had an imminent appointment at a Swiss Bank with the stated intent of depositing funds for the benefit of his daughters.
There would be ample time to pre-position a robber. The discussion about where to go for a walk happened at approximately noon.
As to why SAH parked his car where he did; sloth. He parked it next to the Information sign he wanted to look at, just as I would have done.
It is of course easy to track phones and cars can be fitted with gps trackers – so tracking really is a moot point
If someone with intimate knowledge of Iqbal’s past ratted her out, few would know if she was about to be deported:
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/27/hidden-world-of-uk-deportation-asylum-seamless-transitions
“The court was in secret session: under the special rules of SIAC, not even the defendant nor their legal team are allowed into the room to know the evidence against them.”
It happens swiftly, and without mercy. another article reveals more:
“A Home Office spokesman said: “The visitor visa route cannot be used to repeatedly live in the UK for extended periods. Mrs Wade’s visitor visa was cancelled for this reason.
“Those wishing to come to the UK to settle with their British partner should make an application through the spousal visa route. These applications should be made from outside the UK.”
From: http://www.torquayheraldexpress.co.uk/Brixham-dad-8217-s-fears-wife-faces-deportation/story-25754544-detail/story.html#ixzz3bfCFwdNn
Quick trip to France with multiple passports, anyone?
Removal from the UK, distinct from deportation, can mean an extended period of time before a person can reapply for a visa.
http://www.inbrief.co.uk/immigration-law/removal-from-the-uk.htm
Conviction on a charge of bigamy can result in a sentence longer than one year, and conviction for a crime of this length can be grounds for deportation.
Postpartum depression and the more severe postpartum psychosis are considered mental illnesses. These illnesse can have an impact on deportation proceedings.
Did the girls inherit their share of Saad’s estate, including his inheritance from his father? Who is managing their money now? Has the aunt officially adopted them yet?
Would ordinary robbers use the level of violence seen at Chevaline? No doubt they could easily get antique weapons at the “off-sales outlet” in that place.
James
Back to your “full on” escape post upthread.
SAH was injured as he started his escape attempt – he was shot in the back as he got into his car.
You wrote “This injury (to me) means he was not the “initial target”. He was not shot first….and he was not shot at “point blank” range.”
My take on this is that his escape attempt was opportunistic, the focus of the killer was temporarily, at least, on SM who got shot first.
Here is the kicker; the killer may not have had the intent of shooting or killing either or both parties. Rather his training may have taken over. Lets say the motive was robbery, so he points the gun. . .
Unfortunately, encroyable hazard, both SM and SAH actually expect to be shot one day and it seems to have arrived. So it’s fight or flight for them.
I believe that SM blinked first and thus got shot first, giving SAH a chance to escape. It could have been the other way round. If both parties had been passive and compliant less people may have been killed that day. Bad things, but less dead, at least that is my view.
For the killer, training kicked in. No matter how close SAH came to making it, training won out. Ordo ab chao.
That is not to say that we cannot infer anything from all of this. If SM had been confronted by a gunman shouting in English or Arabic he may have behaved differently on the assumption that the primary target was not him.
I infer that the shouting was in french. Neither the ex-flic nor the ex-legionnaire look like multilingual types to me.
http://www.federationifir.com/english/En.file/23.1.2012%20Sweden,%20Norway,%20Holland%20and%20Denmark%20to%20deport%20Iraqi%20refugees%20to%20Baghdad%20this%20week.html
The attitude toward Iraqis in Europe was hostile in 2012.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/11/serco-is-failing-but-is-maintained-afloat-thanks-to-australias-refugee-policy
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G4S
These are the two companies that guarded the joint deportations in the article above. Did I mention that large, multinational corporations are profiting from the refugee deportation business around the globe? Maybe this is why the Lilyhammer TV series makes a mockery of it all, with Frankie the gangster buying in, to add to his growing criminal empire.
@GIP
Yes, I agree.
You said
“My take on this is that his escape attempt was opportunistic, the focus of the killer was temporarily, at least, on SM who got shot first”.
I wasn’t there, so Mollier could have attacked an oncoming threat that wasn’t directed at himself….and in doing so, became a target.
Anything is possible.
But the shooting of Mollier a second time (at point blank range) is curious. The man is down (and seriously injured), why shoot again (five times) ?
P.S. I love this open debate. Non of us know what went on…and non of us have agendas. Keeping open minds and questioning each other “scenes” is the best way forward.
I haven’t a clue what went on OR who was the target (or if there was a target), but the more we question things from different perspectives, the better chance we have of finding the truth.
@Juicy
You said
(4) For all these reasons, the “lone nutter” thesis remains the front runner (in a very poor field).
Sentiments echoed.
Especially the “in a poor field” remark.
@James: It is possible that some sort of meeting was supposed to happen at Chevaline between parties who were not Mollier or the al-Hillis, but how do we account for Sylvain’s father-in-law’s helpful suggestion for a route to take that day, combined with the helpful suggestion from the campground worker to the al-Hillis to take that unlikely route for a stroll with young children? And wasn’t our helpful witness to the little white car speeding away also a campground worker named Sylvie, who did not notice a little white car matching her description parked at the “mairie Chevaline” property on her road (Google Streets image now removed), at the corner where she would have turned every day on her way to work? What is with all the campground connections and murders? Is this the Little Town of Camping Horrors, where you can check in any time you want, but you can never leave?
Any further word on the son-in-law of the murdered female campground owner who had some sort of military background, and was the son of another mayor who fell off a cliff to his death?
This place has a high rate of unexplained deaths, murders, and unusual accidents.
This reminds me of a British movie where townsfolk were being bumped off by a committee, for offences like not trimming their hedges to the exact right length.
Maybe the whole thing started over who was going to win “Village of the Year”. Oops, that’s the plot for ”Hot Fuzz”.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/french-alps-murders-former-commando-5305057
What to make of this? Another “poisson”?
http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/blog.html?b=news.nationalpost.com//news/france-admits-soldiers-have-deserted-to-isis-including-ex-elite-special-forces-and-french-foreign-legionnaires
It’s not surprising that ex-Legionnaires work for private security firms, but deserting to ISIS?
If only we knew the truth about Menagaldo, like did he take a house-buying trip to England?
@ M
Tom Parry describes Iqbal “She feared driving, she didn’t go shopping, she didn’t take the kids to nursery because she was so terrified someone might speak to her”
Sounds like a woman on the run to me. I have argued before that her relocation to the US and her sham marriage there smacked of desperation. From this quote that you have given, it sounds as if she was still trying to hide from somebody. By the same token, her marrying Saad bigamously under her maiden name could be an attempt to cover her tracks (rather than sloppiness, forgetfulness or whatever).
Can you just forget that you are still legally married?
I do not buy the lone nutter theory.
This was a Set-Up-Meet
it may not have been planned as a mass execution
but that was always on the cards.
Did W.B.M. get checked out for powder on him?
Peter, don’t you think Mr Parry has a book to sell? I have seen how journos misbehave!
Mrs All’Hilli probably had her shady side, but who doesn’t. She drove her little car. Do we know for sure that Slyvain MolliEX was properly divorced before he got involved with the pharmacy heiress? He had no money, and many kids to pay for.
People don’t get killed with several bullets in the head just because they have there little secrets. Like Mister James, I am clueless.
But the most likely theory is that they all fell under the bullets of a crazy FRENCH maniac. There’s a history of them nutters sparing children. And its too bad that Zainab and Zena could never return to there former life.
Sylvain Mollier was divorced, his ex remarried in 2005
According to Tom Parry Iqbal returned to UAE six days after the non marriage in England to sign relevant papers.
Inside the car, from the British Coroners report, 4 bullets to Iqbal neck and chest, 3 shots to Suhaila chest and head, SAH – said to be one outside the car
Of the four to his head and torso presumably three in the car, difficult to know as he had been outside the car.
Iqbal apparently had both a British Passport and an Iraqi one, to keep the two legally she had to have applied for a new Iraqi one after 2006, presumably she would have had to give it to the British authorities when obtaining that one.
I am no longer surprised that the prosecutor has appeared to be floundering when faced with all the intrigue on the family background.
As for Jim Thompson, in the September he died, someone had already questioned whether he’d been killed, this apparently was long before the FBI went to see the family in February 2013
@M
have you purchased the new book, is it a good read?
USA Secretary of State John Kerry was flown to a hospital in Geneva on Sunday after A CYCLING “ACCIDENT” in the Haute-Savoie region of FRANCE.
http://www.france24.com/en/20150531-john-kerry-hospitalised-geneva-cycling-accident-france
He wants to be careful, only about twenty miles to the site of The Slaughter of the Horses.
I see he was flown out of Haute-Savoie FRANCE & into Switzerland for hospitalization.
Michael Norton, you’re contributions to this site are invaluable. If that American politician got hurt in FRANCE while ridind a bike, it tells you something. Its not a safe country.
” I am no longer surprised that the prosecutor has appeared to be floundering when faced with all the intrigue on the family background. ”
Mister M. Intrigue is a big word. We all know they were a happy family. Look at the birthday pictures, look at the photo on Ikbal’s smartphone minutes before they were murdered. Do they look like people on the the run? No, innocent victims, and orphaned children later missing their parents and their local friends.
Their protecting the FRENCH!
I’m having a smile – John Kerry is in a Geneva hospital having come off his bike in Haute-Savoie !
Maybe he went to see Le Martinet.
Maybe he was going to have a secret bicycle ride-meet with William Brett Martin in Lathuile?
During his travels in Europe, he usually takes his own bike had even repaired in a shop near Lausanne in March at a meeting of international negotiations on the nuclear program of Iran. On Sunday, Secretary of State wished to discover a part of the bike path regularly used by the riders of the Tour de France, regulars Col de la Colombiere when the route crosses the department.He was having meetings with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif.
http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://www.ledauphine.com/&prev=search
So, talking about nuclear stuff and cycling in the Haute-Savoie,
hardly surprizing he had an “accident”
As Mr Juicy said at the top of this page:
This case is so full of red herrings; call it Billingsgate at sunset! But we are all emotionally attached to one or other of the more enticing scenarios. This hinders objective analysis.
Intrigué – Harraps – puzzled, curious, intrigued
I think I would be too, well we are aren’t we ?
Why did Saad go ahead with a bigamous marriage if he knew a few months would have changed the status ?
Maybe it was arranged marriage and he genuinely didn’t know, but found out later – is there another marriage somewhere under different names ?
I am amazed at the difference between the Iqbal in America with JT and the look of the woman in the last photo and those flashed up on screen holding a child.
So, you conclude it isn’t a photo from Saad’s camera (18 photos), nor Suhailas phone, but Iqbals ?
If this photo was on Iqbals phone or Suhailas was it sent to someone immediately ?
Now John Kerry breaks a leg whilst discussing nuclear matters here France
Region Rhône-Alpes
Department Haute-Savoie
Arrondissement Arrondissement of Bonneville
Canton Canton of Scionzier
see http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/john-kerry-airlifted-hospital-after-5796094
Nothing much to write home about though.