Police probing the murder of a British-Iraqi family in the French Alps last year are trying to establish why the brother of one of the victims made a number of calls to Romania, the prosecutor in charge of the investigation said Monday.
Annecy Prosecutor Eric Maillaud said Romanian authorities had been asked to help establish who Zaid al-Hilli, the brother of Saad al-Hilli, had been calling but they had not been able to identify the numbers.
“There were calls made from the phone of Saad al-Hilli’s brother to Romania,” Maillaud told AFP. “A formal request for assistance was made to Romania several months ago but so far it has not produced anything.”
Maillaud stressed that the Romania link was not being treated as a major new lead.
“It is simply that we can leave no stone unturned,” he said. “This is part of the masses of data we are gathering month after month.”
Maillaud’s team believe that Saad al-Hilli was embroiled in a dispute with his brother over a family inheritance which could have provided a motive for a murder which had many of the hallmarks of a professional assassination.
Zaid al-Hilli denies any feud. British police have spoken to him as part of their investigation but have given no indication that they consider him a suspect.
Maillaud said that, because of that, Zaid al-Hilli had not been asked to explain the calls from his phone to Romania.
“Those are the type of questions that cannot be asked of a witness in Britain,” the prosecutor said. “He would have to be considered a suspect.”
Saad al-Hilli, his wife Iqbal and her mother Suhaila al-Allaf were shot dead in the family estate car at a beauty spot near Lake Annecy on September 5.
Their two young daughters survived the shooting, in which a French cyclist was also slain. Police believe the cyclist, Sylvain Moller, was not a target for the killer or killers and was shot because he was “in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Romania link emerges in French Alps shooting probe
