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Fast Money & Foreign Objects
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Text by FRANCE 24
Latest update : 2014-07-09
In a sinister twist to the killing of a British-Iraqi family murdered in 2012 in the French Alps, police have discovered that the murdered mother had a secret ex-husband – who died of a heart attack on the same day.
Unbeknown to her family, Iqbal al-Hilli, the wife of Saad al-Hilli, had lived in the United States between February 1999 and December 2000, during which time she was briefly married to an American 13 years older than her.
The oil worker, identified by British media sources as Jim Thompson, died in Natchez, Mississippi on September 5, 2012, the same day as the Alps killing in which Saad, 50, Iqbal, 47, her mother and a French cyclist, Sylvain Mollier, were murdered.
The cause of death of Jim Thompson was officially registered as a heart attack.
"As far as Iqbal is concerned, we have discovered some surprising things and we still do not have the response to certain questions," Lieutenant-Colonel Benoit Vinnemann, the head of the detective unit investigating the murders, told reporters.
Foul play
According to the British Daily Telegraph, Thompson’s daughter Joy Martinloch said there had been speculation in her family of foul play.
The Telegraph quotes her as saying: “If you wanted to kill somebody and get away with it you would do something that people would accept like a heart attack. They would accept he was a bit overweight, that he had stress issues, he was pushing 60. It’s possible.”
The Telegraph adds that it is understood Mrs Al-Hilli, who was 47 when she died, met Thompson when she was working in the United States as a dentist, and that theirs was a marriage of convenience so that she could get a Green Card to stay in the US.
She managed to keep the relationship secret from her family, then living in Sweden. They divorced the following year.
Man arrested, then released
Eric Maillaud, the Annecy prosecutor who has overall charge of the probe, meanwhile revealed that a 35-year-old Iraqi national was detained last month in connection with the investigation but subsequently released.
The potential suspect, who had a substantial criminal record, was brought into custody on the basis of testimony from a fellow inmate of a French jail who claimed that the Iraqi had told him he had been contracted to carry out the killing.
He was released after police established that he was not in France on the day of the murder and no link could be established between him and the al-Hilli family.
Around 20 French police officers are still working full-time on an investigation which appears to have made little headway nearly two years after the extraordinarily violent attack in a woodland car park in the hills above Lake Annecy.
Investigators have repeatedly played down suggestions that the cyclist, Mollier, may have been the target, arguing it is most likely he was shot after arriving at the scene at the wrong time.
Saad's elder brother Zaid al-Hilli was arrested and questioned in connection with the investigation last year before being released without charge. He has dismissed suggestions a family feud could have been the motive for the killing.
The Hillis' young daughters, Zainab and Zeena, survived the attack.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
Date created : 2014-06-04
http://www.france24.com/en/20140604..._ref=partage_aef&aef_campaign_date=2014-07-07
