French police investigating a quadruple murder on a remote Alpine road two months ago have widened their probe to gun users and mentally disturbed people in the region after failing to find a motive for the killing, the BBC reported on Saturday.
Officers plan to investigate hundreds of people over the unexplained shooting of three members of a British family and a French cyclist near the village of Chevaline, close to the Swiss and Italian borders.
Investigators were looking for someone “who puts no value on human life, so someone who has doubtless killed before,” French prosecutor Eric Maillaud told the BBC, but cast doubt on the theory that the murderer was a professional assassin.
Saad al-Hilli, an Iraqi-born British engineer, was found shot dead with his wife and mother-in-law in their car on a remote mountain road near the village of Chevaline, with the body of a cyclist, Sylvain Mollier, discovered nearby.
They were killed in what appeared to be execution-style murders, with at least two hits to the head from a semi-automatic pistol.
“We are looking at all mentally unbalanced people, very violent or known to be capable of violence, using weapons,” Maillaud said, in comments translated by an interpreter.
“Also, without wanting to link the two, everyone connected with the world of guns, hunters, collectors and members of shooting clubs, some of whom could have psychiatric problems,” he said.
People over the border in Switzerland and Italy as well as in France would be investigated, he said.
Hilli’s two daughters survived the attack, despite the gunman trying to kill the eldest, seven-year-old Zainab, by beating her around the head after running out of bullets.
Four-year-old Zeena was found safe hiding beneath the legs and skirt of her dead mother in the backseat of the car.
The brutality and unexplained nature of the killings led to prominent coverage of the case in British media.
Investigators have said previously they were looking at various theories, including robbery, a family feud, a possible link to Hilli’s work in the aerospace industry or his Iraqi origins.
Maillaud said investigators remained undecided whether the Hillis were murdered as part of a contract killing, but were “99 percent sure” that the cyclist was not the shooter’s target.
“We are further than day one, but still have no motive,” he said.
“The one thing, however, that the investigators say is that if it was a contract killing it was carried out very badly. We have the impression that it was carried out extremely quickly and not in a very professional manner,” he said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not