Not Forgetting the al-Hillis 22278

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The mainstream media for the most part has moved on. But there are a few more gleanings to be had, of perhaps the most interesting comes from the Daily Mirror, which labels al-Hilli an extremist on the grounds that he was against the war in Iraq, disapproved of the behaviour of Israel and had doubts over 9/11 – which makes a great deal of the population “extremist”. But the Mirror has the only mainstream mention I can find of the possibility that Mossad carried out the killings. Given Mr al-Hilli’s profession, the fact he is a Shia, the fact he had visited Iran, and the fact that Israel heas been assassinating scientists connected to Iran’s nuclear programme, this has to be a possibility. There are of course other possibilities, but to ignore that one is ludicrous.

Which leads me to the argument of Daily Mail crime reporter, Stephen Wright, that the French police should concentrate on the idea that this was a killing by a random Alpine madman or racist bigot. Perfectly possible, of course, and the anti-Muslim killings in Marseille might be as much a precedent as Mossad killings of scientists. But why the lone madman idea should be the preferred investigation, Mr Wright does not explain. What I did find interesting from a man who has visited many crime scenes are his repeated insinuations that the French authorities are not really trying very hard to find who the killers were, for example:

the crime scene would have been sealed off for a minimum of seven to ten days, to allow detailed forensic searches for DNA, fibres, tyre marks and shoe prints to take place.
Nearby bushes and vegetation would have been searched for any discarded food and cigarette butts left by the killer, not to mention the murder weapon.
But from what I saw at the end of last week, no such searches had taken place and potentially vital evidence could have been missed. House to house inquiries in the local area had yet to be completed and police had not made specific public appeals for information about the crime. No reward had been put up for information about the shootings.
Behind the scenes, what other short cuts have been taken? Have police seized data identifying all mobile phones being used in the vicinity of the murders that day?

The idea that the French authorities – who are quite as capable as any other of solving cases – are not really trying very hard is an interesting one.

Which leads me to this part of a remarkable article from the Daily Telegraph, which if true points us back towards a hit squad and discounts the ides that there was only one gun:

Claims that only one gun was used to kill everybody is likely to be disproved by full ballistics test results which are out in October.
While the 25 spent bullet cartridges found at the scene are all of the same kind, they could in fact have come from a number of weapons of the same make.
This throws up the possibility of a well-equipped, highly-trained gang circling the car and then opening fire.
Both children were left alive by the killers, who had clinically pumped bullets into everybody else, including five into Mr Mollier.
Zainab was found staggering around outside the car by Brett Martin, a British former RAF serviceman who cycled by moments after the attack, but he saw nobody except the schoolgirl.
Her sister, Zeena, was found unscathed and hiding in the car eight hours later.
Both sisters are now back in Britain, and are believed to have been reunited at a secret location near London.

There are of course a number of hit squad options, both governmental and private, which might well involve iraqi or Iranian interests – on both of which the mainstream media have been very happy to speculate while almost unanimously ignoring Israel.

But what interests me is why the Daily Telegraph choose, in the face of all the evidence, to minimise the horrific nature of the attack by stating that “Both children were left alive by the killers”? Zainab was not left alive by design, she was shot in the chest and her skull was stove in, which presumably was a pretty serious attempt to kill a seven year-old child. The other girl might very well have succeeded in hiding from the killers under her mother’s skirts, as she hid from the first rescuers, and then for eight hours from the police.

The Telegraph article claims to be informed by sources close to the investigation. So they believe it was a group of people, and feel motivated to absolve those people from child-killing. Now what could the Daily Telegraph be thinking?

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22,278 thoughts on “Not Forgetting the al-Hillis”

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  • Q

    Golf courses, again.

    What kind of vehicle did our intrepid Johnny-on-the-spot drive? Was he going to a meeting? Was this a case of mistaken identity, if anything happened, that is.

  • James

    MAN LAUGHS IN STREET.
    Over to the scene with Malcolm Lambert, live !

    WOMAN LOOKS CAT IN THE EYE.
    And our reporter Malcolm Lambert brings us the latest on the cat !

    PEOPLE WATCH IN HORROR AS ICECREAM MELTS IN HEATWAVE.
    Pictures by Malcolm Lambert.

    CHEESE TASTES NICE. NEW REPORT LEAKED.
    And it’s over to Malcolm Lambert to give us the latest on this breaking news.

  • felix

    @Tim, Pink et al

    The Surrey Police kindly told me to inquiry with the coroner where any inquest might take place. I will do so, but am not expecting anything.

    I just noticed this Radio 5 live talk by the ex-Police Detective (reaching the dizzy height of Detective Constable with the SURREY police) Mark Williams-Thomas. His speciality is apparently child abuse.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtLgnAaM9Ws#!

    I mention this because M W-T says at around 1.00 ” …What is key now is really as quickly as possible to try and build a picture of their timeline from the time they arrived in France to them being in an idyllic isolated country lane as they head up to the mountain which you wouldn’t really just happen upon – the chances are you are either going there specifically or there’s a possibility you could be going on a just exploring tour but I think you would have turned back prior to ending up where they did”

    (he visited the crime scene – I am not sure why…) so he could speak about it after dinner??
    {http://www.thespeakersagency.com/speakerprofile/13/Mark%20Williams-Thomas%20MA/}
    {http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/mark-williams-thomas-ma-pg-dip/3/884/2b5}
    {http://blog.old-and-bold.info/?p=12127}

    But the timeline is important and it seems the French police aren’t interested either. The ferry would also have disembarked with CCTV, which of course the UK Surrey police would have known about from their enquiries from the Ferry company and CCTV footage in Dover or wherever….. and pigs might fly, incidentally.

    I don’t think the Al-Hillis were up the mountain – but that’s just my opinion.

    An interesting aside not a million miles from M.W-T: Surrey Police have just come in for some Savile-related stick:
    {http://blog.old-and-bold.info/?p=15519#comment-11767}
    Outrageous: Savile victim Deborah Cogger has reacted with disbelief that a blundering detective is involved in a new Savile inquiry
    “Angela Sullivan was a key member of the Surrey Police team that failed to bring the TV presenter to justice five years ago, despite receiving ‘serious and credible’ allegations.“

    Oops.

  • Pink

    No link but found this comment on CM it says the builder saw the
    Green 4×4 and Motorbike heading towards the crimescene beforehand.
    …

    Watcher
    12 Sep, 2012 – 10:41 am
    Interesting few paragraphs on the Standard website

    “On Sunday, police took the four witnesses back to the forest to work out the positions they had found the body in, and to establish a chronology of events. Intriguingly, one of the last people to see the family alive said they had arrived at the isolated car park at least an hour before they were killed.

    Laurent Fillion-Robin, a 38-year-old builder, also claimed there was no sign of any vehicle following the family. He was working on a house near Chevaline when he saw the maroon BMW drive past between 2.30pm and 3pm.

    He told police he had seen a green 4×4 and a motorbike heading in the direction of the crime scene beforehand. Fillion-Robin’s testament points towards an agreed rendezvous between Al-Hilli and his eventual killers — a possibility which may be backed up by the records of two mobile phones found in the BMW.”

    If this is true, they were in that car park in the middle of nowhere for more than leaking the lizard.

    Considering this part, the speculation of the article author that this could have been an interrupted drug deal had me wondering if he had actually read the words he had wrote….

  • NR

    @ James 13 Jan, 2013 – 11:56 pm
    re: Malcolm Lambert: ” I think (but do not know) that this is a case of sloppy reporting.”

    From Felix’s quotes on Icke:
    ““Mr Lambert said they had driven back from a cave and waterfall past the murder scene at around the time the shootings would have taken place.”

    “‘We arrived back at about 3.30pm French time and sirens were going on constantly for about two hours,’ he revealed. ‘The police helicopter was up and we knew something serious had happened.”

    I don’t take it meaning the Lamberts drove down past Martinet during or after the shootings, but he’s saying “around the time” meaning I guess, shortly before. He implies he didn’t realize anything happened until they were back at the campground “about 3:30pm” and heard sirens.

    It is sloppy reporting. Why isn’t he asked if he saw the BMW at Martinet or coming toward it, or if he saw SM, BM, PD or 4x4s or motorbikes?

    Sloppy reporting aside, Mr. Lambert is a bit of a self-promoter and might well move his time to imply they’d just missed the murders when they’d really come down earlier.

    For those who are good at working the times and distances, if the Lamberts were back at the campground at around 3:30pm, approx. what time would they have passed Martinet.

  • straw44berry

    I disagree about the waterfall mentioned so far, you wouldnt go via Chevaline or Martinet.

    However:-

    CASCADE DU CREUX DE L’ENFER

    http://www.annecy-bredannaz.com/page17.html

    Access: Horses (Doussard) –
    Departure: parking at the end of the forest road.
    Elevation: 100 m. (To the waterfall)
    Torrent Nant Borien.
    Directions:
    Doussard Horses and 3 km. In the small village of Horses take the road right before the church (direction Marceau). After 200 m turn left and take the road that goes towards the mountain of coal which passes above the torrent of Ire. The forest road ends in stalemate a Km away. The trail starts there ( waterfall panel ). He climbs to a junction a few laces left and waterfall. If we continue on the right after the junction with the road to the waterfall, the path leads to the river (the Nant Borien ), the crosses, continues to source “Good Water “- marked 930 m on IGN Top 25 Lake Annecy-230 m elevation from the parking lot, a half-hour. This path climbs up Mount Coal going around the mountain before reaching the trail just Montgellaz and the valley of Bornette torrent (view IGN), for experienced hikers.
    This small village is picturesque and Horses reserves, especially from the church, a magnificent view of the lake and the plain Doussard.

  • NR

    @ felix 14 Jan, 2013 – 5:13 am

    We discussed this before re M-W-T:

    http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/jimmy-savile-investigator-mark-williams-thomas-1509838

    “I travelled to the Alps because I wanted to get a sense of the crime myself and to try and piece together what happened that horrific day.”

    “I attended the scene in the days after the murders – just after the lane was re-opened where the shootings took place.”

    “In my one-to-one conversation with Annecy chief prosecutor Eric Maillaud, he confessed investigators had no clear motive for the massacre, nor any suspects for the killings.”

    “On September 5, Saad Al-Hilli, 50, his wife Iqbal, 47, her mother, Suhaila Al-Allaf, 74, and Saad’s four-year-old daughter Zeena were all shot dead at a remote location on the edge of a small village of Chevaline in the French Alps.”

    An odd mistake for him to make, but you’d think The Mirror would correct it. Possibly M-W-T wrote the whole piece himself as a promotion and just submitted it.

  • bluebird

    Pink

    I wonder about why it took 4 months to consider a biker who was seen leaving the crime scene, as being a suspect. Actually this is no news because this had been reported in September. Perhaps this is just news for Maillaud and for the DM.

    Had nobody (any witness) mentioned the bike going uphill? When they did notice the car, why not the bike that is louder? Could it be that the bike was already waiting uphill for hours or days and the killer was an unknown passenger in SAH’s car or else going uphill with a bike?

  • katie

    “A mystery motorcyclist seen around the Alpine beauty spot where four people were blasted to death is now the prime suspect for the murders, it emerged today.
    The breakthrough in the baffling case came thanks to Brett Martin, a British cyclist who discovered the bodies close to Lake Annecy, in eastern France.
    The 53-year-old ex RAF serviceman has told French police that he passed a motorbike driving away from the isolated lay-by where the slaughter took place on September 5th last year.”

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2261692/French-Alps-shooting-latest-Mystery-biker-named-prime-suspect-seen-near-Alpine-layby.html#ixzz2HxHZV5ih

  • bluebird

    http://www.kaspersky.com/about/news/virus/2013/Kaspersky_Lab_Identifies_Operation_Red_October_an_Advanced_Cyber_Espionage_Campaign_Targeting_Diplomatic_and_Government_Institutions_Worldwide

    Another possibility, particularly because the focus is on Central Asia and Russia. This is going on since 2007 and would not unlikely involve Aaron Swartz, McAfee and Gareth Williams as they were specialists in that part of software developement. Who was the Iraqi “man in the middle”? For espionage you need targets, select the targets and investigate the collected information. You need Iraqi experts living somewhere else than in Iraq.

  • felix

    @NR

    Thanks
    Thread so bit now for searching it on a single page!

    Fishy customer, Mr MWT. One-to-one with Maillaud!! “I’m an ex Detective Constable” “Oh welcome. Let’s talk”

  • Q

    I can’t speak for the Alps, but in other mountainous regions where there are waterfalls, not all of the waterfalls are named. Some places only name the larger ones. Meanwhile, there are many smaller, unnamed ones, some of which only spring up during spring runoff. Others slow to a trickle but remain year-round. There are too many to name.

  • Pink

    @Straw44berry
    14 Jan, 2013 – 9:25 am

    Well found Strawberry looks far more likely than mine , I was going on the fact that it was waterfall and cave’s and that was all I could find.

    @Bluebird
    14 Jan, 2013 – 11:49 am
    Exactly how they can say it’s only just emerged is beyond me.

    Did you notice that old comment I posted 14 Jan, 2013 – 6:54 am saying that the builder had seen the 4×4 and motorbike going that way before the BMW I had not noticed that before I had always assumed they had used a different road.

    As for the Daily Mirror what can I say .

  • Pink

    @Felix 14 Jan, 2013 – 3:52 pm 1253 GMT:
    The first time I have heard that he wanted to visit caves how odd is that when we are talking about it.

    The cyclist who died had told his wife he was going out cycling and planned to take a new route, he says. “He perhaps wanted to visit caves. I don’t know any more that that.”

  • James

    Cheers Felix. Thanks for the link.

    “He would be working for several months for one company and then possibly move on when the work dried up,” Stedman said

    That’s an interesting comment for a start.

    In the case of SSTL he had been there (if I recall correctly) since November 2010. I assume he would have wanted to sign a year to year contract for security….and this would also work for SSTL in that they could chip him down on the hourly rate.
    So Nov 2010 to Oct 2011. And Nov 2011 to Oct 2012.
    In my book I would say he was a “long term” contractor.

    And there lies another thing.
    as a contractor he would not get holiday pay. He’s “self Employed”.
    If his contract was indeed ending (as Stedman seems to think) then he need for a holiday would be that lst thing on his mind.

    Unless his mind was on other things !

  • Pink

    Check out Oui’s post with links at MZT 1-14-2013 at 11:23:27

    This one is helpful

    Tour Trélod up the old main road decommissioned and closed to all traffic at the Combe d’Ire neck Chérel: quiet guaranteed!

    http://www.vttour.fr/topos/col-de-cherel,1076.html

    Thankyou Oui for the link if you are reading here and here’s a couple more.

    http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/murder-in-the-alps-manx-couple-caught-up-in-police-investigation-1-4900897

    Mr Lambert said they had driven back from a cave and waterfall past the murder scene at around the time the shootings would have taken place.

    http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jcT4DPQCHwtE3K16tB0Uj5hnEr7g?docId=CNG.230ef1109cfdd13762e5b185cc6bb6e8.3e1

    1253 GMT: The cyclist who died had told his wife he was going out cycling and planned to take a new route, he says. “He perhaps wanted to visit caves. I don’t know any more that that.”

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