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Edition 81
www.thecourier.es
Friday, September 7, 2012
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WHY DID THEY HAVE TO DIE?
By DONNA GEE THE mystery of why a seemingly innocent family of British tourists were targeted in a horrific triple assassination in the French Alps deepened last night. The two survivors of the attack, sisters Zaina and Zehab al-Hilli, aged four and seven, are both under maximum police protection after the bodies of their parents, engineer Saad al-Hilli and his wife Iqbal, were found in their BMW, its engine still running. The body of a French cyclist lay nearby. He had also been shot dead. Four-year-old Zaina is believed to have been hiding under the body of her mother for eight hours before police entered the vehicle. Conjecture is growing that the family may have stumbled on criminals brokering a major drugs deal and been silenced as witnesses to the crime. And although Mr AlHilli was described as an intelligent, respectable family man who worked in engineering, investigators are trying to establish if he had links with any suspicious elements
Riddle of drugs and Iraq after ‘savage’ shooting of Brit family
his native Iraq. The Al-Hillis, who lived in Claygate, Surrey, were on a caravanning holiday in the French Alps and were staying at Le Solitaire du Lac camp site in Saint Jorioz. A British cyclist, an ex-RAF officer, discovered the scene near Lake Annecy.
Local prosecutor Eric Maillaud told a press conference yesterday that three of the four fatalities had been shot in the head. "It was clearly an act of extreme savagery and it was obvious that who did this wanted to kill," he said. An automatic pistol was
used, and the killer "targeted" the victims rather than indiscriminately firing into the car. The older daughter, found outside the car with a bullet wound and head fracture, is in hospital in Grenoble where she is in a medically-induced coma pending further surgery.
She was shot once, and had head fractures after suffering ‘’a violent attack," according to M. Maillaud. The family had arrived at the campsite on Sunday and were due to leave at the end of the week. M. Maillaud said the British cyclist was passing along the
road and saw a BMW with the engine still running. The older girl collapsed in front of him, and he helped her into a recovery position, then called firefighters. He broke the driver's window of the car and saw three bodies inside. Little Zaina was concealed beneath her mother and not found until midnight – eight hours after the attack. She spent Wednesday night in hospital, with a nurse by her side all night. Police said
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MEET MAC, OUR NEW MOUTH OF SPORT…
Police guard the scene after the shooting
THE Courier has a new Voice of Sport. John McGregor, football nut, passionate scribbler and Nottingham Forest fan (yes, they still have a few) joins our unmatchable team today with a fresh approach to the action in the UK and in Spain. The son of a New Zealander (did we hear the word rugby?), John ran the London Marathon in 1990 – but it’s football that really turns him on. Read his
thoughts on the current scene, and his reflections on a true legend of the game, on Pages 47 and 48,