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Girl Hid Under Dead Mother`s Skirt after Family Slain in French Alps
A FOUR-YEAR-OLD girl clung to her mother's legs for eight hours after her family were targeted in a massacre in the French Alps.
Engineer Saad Al-Hilli was ambushed with his family on Wednesday during a family caravanning trip.
The 50-year-old, his dentist wife Ikbal and her mother were assassinated with single shots to the forehead. The couple's seven-year-old daughter Zainab was shot, pistolwhipped and left for dead.
Her little sister, Zeena, four, was unharmed and hid under her murdered mother's skirt for hours before police finally discovered her.
A French cyclist, father-of-three Sylvain Mollier, who is believed to have witnessed the bloodbath, was also shot dead.
With both children under armed guard in hospital last night, pictures of the extraordinary scene in the forest near Lake Annecy emerged showing the bullet-riddled BMW estate car. Spent cartridges littered the area around it.
And as police launched an international manhunt for the assassin, it emerged that: British intelligence officers were sent to the scene within hours as they urgently re-examined their files on Baghdad-born Mr Al-Hilli; ? Neighbours said he was grappling with a 'problem' and went on holiday despite Zainab missing the start of the school term; A friend of Mr Al-Hilli spoke of a rumbling inheritance dispute within the family; Police said clinical shots to the centre of the foreheads bore the hallmarks of a professional assassination.
Mr Al-Hilli, who was put under Special Branch surveillance during the second Gulf War, lived with his 47-year-old wife and daughters in a (EURO)1.2million home in Claygate, Surrey, England. He earned up to (EURO)35 an hour as a freelance engineer and his CV reveals he worked on projects including designing a 'plasma generator' for a company called Surrey NanoSystems Ltd.
Before that, he helped design a satellite for Surrey Satellite Technology, based in Guildford, and ten years ago he worked for another company engineering parts for the 'aircraft, military and medical industries'. It is understood that Mr Al-Hilli has been known to both MI5 and MI6 for around 20 years.
In 2003, during the US and British invasion of Iraq, officers working with the intelligence services mounted a surveillance operation on his home for several weeks, a neighbour who hosted them told the Mail. The internet is awash with speculation - impossible to verify - that Mr Al-Hilli may have been working in some capacity in the spy world. He arrived in Britain in the late-Seventies and was educated to degree level.
Intelligence officers from the British Embassy in Paris are said to have been at the scene of the murder hours after it happened at 4pm on Wednesday. They were tipped off by contacts in the French Interior Ministry as soon as the identity of the car's owner was confirmed.
According to the French TV station Demain, locals described embassy staff as being 'military type' and numbering around 20.
Last night British prime minister David Cameron described the deaths as 'terrible', adding: 'I have spoken to the British ambassador in France and consular staff are working very hard so that we do everything we can ... and to find out what happened in this very tragic case.' Julian Stedman, Mr Al-Hilli's accountant, said: 'They were shot through the head so that sounds like a professional killing, which is really very worrying. A casual killer would not do that. The reason for that - I haven't a clue.' Another neighbour, Jack Saltman, fuelled the mystery by saying: 'I know one little thing which I am not prepared to speak about at the moment. He told me about a problem he had. I have told the police what I know.' A family friend, Zaid Alabdi, 48, said there was a row that centred around money and properties in the UK, Spain and France following the death of Mr Al-Hilli's father a year ago.
'They're a lovely family who worked hard and had no enemies. This may well not be relevant but it is the only problem I can think of in their lives,' he added.
French police last night faced growing incredulity that little Zeena was left in the car with the corpses of her family for an incredible eight hours, until midnight on Wednesday, but justified it by saying they did not want to disturb the crime scene. When police eventually prised open the rear door of the BMW estate, four-year-old Zeena Al-Hilli was 'frozen stiff with terror' and cowering under her dead mother's skirt.
Her first words as she was led away from the car were: 'Where is Mummy? I want my mummy!' But after that instinctive outburst, it was difficult to coax any more words from a child who by this time 'could not tell the difference between the good guys and bad guys'.
Public prosecutor Eric Maillaud said she was 'terrorised, immobile, in the midst of the bodies'. He said: 'We discovered the little girl that nobody had seen, because she hadn't moved, completely in shock and completely frozen.' 'She had stayed beside her mother's body for almost eight hours, and had not moved during all this time.
'She spoke a little in English, saying she had heard noises and shouting. She was taken away and put under protection.' He said the girl's older sister - beaten three times over the head - 'seems to be pulling through', though she has a fractured skull.
He described the murders as an 'act of gross savagery'. A British cyclist who had been in the RAF stumbled upon the scene after originally being overtaken by Mr Mollier a few minutes earlier.
The first thing the cyclist saw was the bloodied figure of Zainab stumbling about in the road next to the BMW, which still had the engine running.
Police said the motive for the attack remained a mystery but revealed there were signs of a vehicle braking at the scene.
As little Zeena cowered in terror, French police were actually standing yards away but had simply assumed everyone in the car was dead.
It was only when they interviewed fellow holidaymakers at the campsite where the family were staying that police realised they should have been looking for two girls after all.
They then found that Zeena had pitifully clung to her mother's body all evening.
Her father and grandmother were also dead in the car while her elder sister Zainab had already been airlifted to hospital to save her life.
Lieutenant-Colonel Benoit Vinnemann justified the police's extraordinary failure to find Zeena sooner, saying that they had not wanted to disrupt the crime scene.
Lt-Col Vinnemann said of petrified Zeena: 'She is now being cared for in hospital. Physically, she is doing very well.' Officers are now desperately hoping Zeena and Zainab will be able to tell them what happened.
Yesterday tourists at the campsite where the family were staying spoke of their shock at what happened.
One Dutchwoman, Sandy Rombout, 39, said the Al-Hillis had arrived at the site on the shores of Lake Annecy at around 4pm on Monday in their BMW, which had a mountain bike on a roof rack.
'They seemed like a normal nice family she said. 'The kids were playing outside the caravan and the dad came out and was showing the younger one how to ride her bike.
'They were very friendly and said hello to people.' The barbarity of the killings would be shocking in some of the world's most lawless countries, such as Afghanistan and Iraq. But for it to happen near the tranquil shores of Lake Annecy makes the crime infinitely more difficult to comprehend. And, crucially, much more difficult to solve. What better location for a professional hit than in a remote area, with few if any witnesses likely to see the atrocity, with quick road access to airports in three countries - France, Italy and Switzerland, and even further afield.
As French police launched an extensive manhunt to find the killer or killers, investigators were officially keeping an open mind about the motive for the crime and who might have been behind it.
The ruthless efficiency with which the murders were carried out suggested strongly that Mr Al-Hilli and his family were specific targets.
Pictures of the murder scene show how the BMW was hit with automatic fire before the victims were finished off at point-blank range.
Had Mr Al-Hilli and his family been targeted in the UK, police would probably have had access to CCTV footage and data from number-plate recognition cameras, in their hunt for the killer's escape vehicle.
But in Chevaline there has never been any need for security cameras, another possible clue that the killer may have carefully researched the best place, in terms of escaping detection, to commit the crimes.
A quick look at a local map shows he could have been out of France within minutes of the murders on Wednesday, possibly boarding a plane from Geneva within two hours.
Or perhaps he elected to drive several hours across Europe.
Several witnesses reported seeing a car speeding away from the scene near Albertville, in France's Haute-Savoie region, close to the Italian and Swiss borders, around the time of the attack.
No arrests were made in the immediate aftermath of the attack, nor did police report the discovery of any weapon. But 15 spent, automatic pistol cartridges were found.
If Mr Al-Hilli's family were deliberately targeted, police will want to establish how the killer knew where they were. The Iraqi-born British businessman's commercial activities and political affiliations in his homeland will also be key lines of inquiry. Already there has been speculation that the attack may have been a case of mistaken identity linked to drugs.
Another theory is that shots could have been fired during a bungled armed robbery, with the dead cyclist being a witness to the crime. Reports suggest the same gang may have carried out previous attacks.
Another possibility is that the crimes were racially motivated, or that the gunman is mentally ill. The French prosecutor Eric Maillaud described the carnage as being like something seen in a film. In most crime movies, the killer is finally brought to justice. If this was a professional hit, it will be a serious challenge for the French police to live up to that script.
Mr Al-Hilli had been known to MI5
'Where is Mummy? I want my mummy'
'They seemed like a normal, nice family'
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