Lake Annecy Murders: the Swiss connection and the State protects the children
LAKE Annecy Murders: The deaths of Saad al-Hilli, 50, Ikbal al-Hilli, 47, her mother Suhaila al-Allaf, 74, and Sylvain Mollier, 45, have moved well down the news cycle.
The Daily Star has news:
Iqbal’s sister, Fadwa al-Saffar, wants to become the legal guardian for the dead couple’s children, Zeena, four, and Zainab, seven.
It came as the family slammed the care provided by Surrey County Council. They claim they have been refused access to the girls since they went into care. Fadwa has now lodged a legal bid in the Family Court to take responsibility for them…
Their great-uncle Ahmed al-Saffar said: “Social services are depriving the girls of their culture, religion, language and family environment.”
The State is caring for the murdered couple’s children.
In December 2012, Ahmed al-Saffar told the Sunday Times Magazine:
“They were crying, asking ‘why are our meetings so short? We want to be with you forever’. We were devastated by it.”
The girls are with a white British foster family. Court orders obtained by Surrey county council protect the girls from publicity and ban publication of any details that might disclose their whereabouts.
The local Surrey paper, reporting in Januray 2013:
A link between the murder of the Al-Hilli family from Claygate and three people in Switzerland has been ruled out by authorities. It was reported last week that the Swiss shooting had “strong similarities” to the murders of three members of the Al-Hilli family in September 2012…
Prosecutors now believe the Swiss gunman was nowhere near Annecy when the Al-Hilli’s were murdered. Prosecutors said: “In light of the facts and the killer’s explanations, there does not seem to be any link between the two cases. Exchanges have taken place, but there is now no reason to go further.”
Le Parisien noted:
A single weapon, an automatic pistol of German design but manufactured in an armory in Switzerland, was used.
The Independent called it “an obsolete 80 years old luger pistol”. It also stated as fact:
The little girl [Zaina] failed to get back into her parents car, possibly because she had been wounded in the shoulder from the killer’s initial volley. She only survived because the gunman ran out of bullets.
The BBC reported on January 3:
A gunman has opened fire in a village in Switzerland, killing three people and wounding two others, police say.
The attack happened on Wednesday at around 21:00 (20:00 GMT) in the village of Daillon in Valais canton, 100km (60 miles) east of Geneva. Police shot and wounded the suspect after he threatened to turn a gun on them. He has been arrested. Investigations revealed the man was a known drug addict and former mental health patient, authorities say.
The unnamed suspect in the Daillon attack is a 33-year-old unemployed ward of court, police said at a news conference on Thursday.
What abut the other theory?
According to the French newspaper Le Monde, the German secret service had sent the French police “elements on links between Saad al-Hilli’s family and the fortune of Saddam Hussein”. The Hillis have Iraqi roots…
Swiss authorities have seized a bank account in Geneva opened by Kadhim, who died last year, containing €1m (£840,000), but have established no link between this sum and Iraq…
Kadhim, a former factory owner, is reported to have been closely allied to Saddam’s Ba’ath party, but fell foul of it during the 1970s and left Iraq for Britain.
One theory investigators will examine is that Kadhim may not have fallen out with Saddam and was in fact being used to get money out of Iraq on behalf of the dictator.
Saddam withdrew £620m from the Iraqi central bank in 2003 and is said to have hidden it in bank accounts around the world. German intelligence, along with other agencies, have been tracking the flow of cash from Iraq to the West, including Switzerland.
Geneva is only an hour’s drive from Annecy, where the Hilli family were on holiday.
In other new, the Mail says that the crimescene is a great holiday spot:
Skiing is believing: Gastronomy and goat-antelopes in France’s Lake Annecy
This one will run for years…
Posted: 17th, February 2013 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
