French Alps murders: Is there an Iraq connection?

Two of the three people killed in a BMW in the French Alps may have been born in Iraq. French investigators explain how they missed a four-year-old girl who survived the shooting.

|
(AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani)
Journalists wait at a police road block near where people were fatally shot near Chevaline, French Alps, Thursday Sept. 6, 2012. A 4-year-old British girl hid for eight hours beneath the bodies of slain family members in the back of their car before she was discovered by French investigators.

French investigators struggled Thursday to explain how a 4-year-old girl could go undetected for eight hours in a car with three bodies in the French Alps.

They also acknowledged that they still don't know why a family of vacationers with British and Swiss passports were slain in a BMW on a remote mountain road near the French village of Chevaline. A French cyclist, possibly riding by at the time, was also killed.

The attacker or attackers violently beat and shot the girl's sister, who is about 7 years old, French prosecutor Eric Maillaud told reporters in nearby Annecy. The girl was found near the car and hospitalized. She will be operated on but her life is out of danger, he said.

French authorities were not releasing the identities of the victims, but said the car was registered to a man with a British passport, who was born in Baghdad in 1962. A Swedish passport and Iraqi passport were also found at the scene, Maillaud said.

Four people were found dead on the remote road: one adult man in the driver's seat of the British-registered BMW; two women in the back seat, one older than the other; and a French male cyclist, Sylvian Mollier, who appeared to have nothing to do with the family.

The bodies were found Wednesday by a British former air force officer who was cycling by, the prosecutor said.

A number of rescuers — firefighters, medical workers, police — apparently eyed the crime scene after it was reported about 4 p.m. on Wednesday. Local officials then waited for special investigators to arrive, police said.

The Guardian reports that in explaining the failure to discover the four-year old earlier, Lieutenant Colonel Benoit Vinnemann said: "We had instructions not to enter the car and not to move the bodies. Firemen, technicians and doctors all looked into the car through the holes in the windows but none of them saw the girl. She didn't budge. She stayed under the legs of her mother … She was so close to her mother they appeared as one mass."

The 4-year-old girl was only found after midnight, but was doing fine physically, Maillaud said. She described hearing cries and asked investigators where her family was. She was taken into police care and will be questioned later, he said.

The prosecutor said they were looking at all possible motives and are protecting the girls in case the killers are still on the loose and want to "get rid of" witnesses to the killings.

Three of the four victims were shot in the head, and the fourth victim remains in the car pending further investigation, Maillaud said.

He said the bodies will be autopsied Friday.

"We strictly don't know why these people were killed," Maillaud said.

RECOMMENDED: How well do you know Europe? Take the quiz

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to French Alps murders: Is there an Iraq connection?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2012/0906/French-Alps-murders-Is-there-an-Iraq-connection
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe