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British Police Evacuate Area Around Murder Victims’ Home British Police Evacuate Area Around Murder Victims’ Home
(about 4 hours later)
LONDON — In a further twist to a story of murder and mystery that has seized headlines for days in France and Britain, the British police said on Monday that they had evacuated an area around the home of a British-Iraqi family targeted in last week’s killing in the French Alps. CLAYGATE, England — In a further twist to a story of murder and mystery that has seized headlines for days in France and Britain, the British police summoned an army bomb squad on Monday to search a workshed at the home of a British-Iraqi family targeted in last week’s killing in the French Alps.
Officers called a British Army bomb disposal unit which spent about two hours at the house before the police said no hazardous objects had been found and residents who had been ordered to leave their homes were told they could return. Three members of the family were shot to death in their BMW sedan, while a fourth victim — a French cyclist — also died in the bloody episode near the lakeside town of Annecy. Almost a week later, the motive for the attack on Sept. 5 remained unclear. Two children traveling in the same car survived, one of them after being beaten and another who hid undetected under a body for eight hours after the shooting. The family had been on vacation, staying in a nearby holiday trailer park. Houses within 300 feet of the home of the victims, the al-Hilli family, in an affluent village within the London commuter belt, were evacuated during the bomb squad search. The bomb alert ended after four hours with a police all-clear.
The French and British police have focused on the crime scene in France and the family home of the victims — Saad al-Hilli, 50, his wife, Iqbal, a dentist, and her mother — in the affluent village of Claygate south of London in the Surrey countryside. A spokesman for the Surrey county police said the bomb unit had been requested after “a potentially explosive substance was found” in a workshed at the rear of the home. But a police statement issued after the search said nothing hazardous had been found.
Zainab al-Hilli, a 7-year-old daughter, was wounded but has regained consciousness, while her 4-year-old sister, Zeena, hid behind her mother’s body. The French police say they want to question the elder sister about what happened once she is no longer under sedation. The bomb alarm came on the fourth day of a police search of the mock-Tudor Claygate home in search of clues to the killings in France, in which three members of the al-Hilli family were shot to death. A fourth victim — a French cyclist who appeared to have encountered the killings while in progress — died in the bloody episode near the lakeside town of Annecy.
According to French accounts, the bodies and survivors were discovered by a British tourist and Royal Air Force veteran who administered first-aid to the seven-year-old before calling for help. The family had been on a camping vacation in the area, a popular alpine forest tourist destination.
The French authorities have been criticized over the delay before the 4-year-old was discovered. Officials have responded by saying that local officers were awaiting the arrival of forensic experts from Paris and did not wish to risk contaminating the crime scene. French and British police officers have focused on the crime scene in France, in a remote area frequented by hikers and cyclists, and at the Claygate home of the victims — Saad al-Hilli, 50, his wife Iqbal, a dentist, and her 74-year-old mother.
A French cyclist, identified in British press reports as Sylvain Mollier, 45, was also killed. His body was found near the British family’s car at a secluded parking area in what investigators have depicted as part of the same shooting spree, possibly when he arrived there coincidentally. But the circumstances of his death, like those of the other three victims, remain unclear. All three were found dead in the family’s red BMW hatchback in a forest clearing, with gunshot wounds in their heads. Two daughters, Zainab, 7, and Zeena, 4, survived, Zainab with serious injuries from blows to her head and a shoulder gunshot wound, and Zeena, uninjured, after she had hid for eight hours under the skirt of her dead mother in the BMW’s back seat.
French media reports on Monday said investigators believed that a single weapon had been used in all the shootings. It was described as a relatively old-fashioned automatic pistol firing 7.65-millimeter ammunition. Photographs of the family home have dominated front pages in Britain. During Monday’s search, journalists staking out the home were moved back about 200 yards, but police later relaxed the cordon. Nine television satellite trucks were parked in the roadway near the home, and flowered wreaths were laid under the curtained windows, beside police vans parked in the driveway.
British police officials said earlier on Monday that “due to concerns around items found at the address, officers have extended the cordon surrounding the property. Neighbors in the immediate area are being temporarily evacuated.” The French police said on Monday that forensic tests had shown that all 25 spent cartridge cases found at the site had come from a single automatic pistol firing 7.65-mm rounds, a weapon that they described as “relatively old-fashioned.” At the weekend, they said that each of the victims had been shot twice in the head at close range, in a manner that ballistics experts said was consistent with a professional assassin.
A later statement by Surrey police said the apparently suspicious items were found “when the search of the property was extended from the main building to outbuildings in the garden.” The French cyclist killed in the shootings, Sylvain Mollier, who lives in the area, died from seven bullet wounds, including two shots to the head.
“A bomb disposal unit was called to the scene to carry out an assessment as a precautionary measure,” the statement said, but “residents who were evacuated earlier as a precaution are now being allowed to return to their homes.” But a cordon would remain around the house and garden while police continued to search for clues about the motive for the killings. Police hopes for a breakthrough are thought to rest in part on Zainab al-Hilli, the older daughter, found lying in the forest clearing by another bicyclist. Officials at the French hospital where she was taken have said that she suffered a fractured skull from blows to her head and a gunshot wound in her shoulder.
Photographs of the family’s mock-Tudor home have dominated front pages in Britain. According to newspaper accounts, Mr. Hilli, who arrived in Britain from Iraq in 1970 and had a British upbringing, was a consultant specializing in the aerospace and satellite industries. His brother, Zaid, has denied reports that he was in a financial dispute with Mr. Hilli, news reports said. On Monday, police in Annecy said she had regained consciousness after days in a medically induced coma, but that it would be some time before she was well enough to be questioned. Zeena, the younger daughter, has been returned to Britain by relatives. But the French police have said that she appears to have no recollection of the attack, beyond her mother telling her to hide when it began.
Investigators said they found 25 spent rounds at the scene of the killings and recovered two cellphones from the BMW sedan in which the family was traveling, according to news reports, which said that each victim had been shot twice in the head. The nature of the shootings has fueled speculation that a professional hit team carried out the attack. The motive remained unclear, with French and British police officers saying that the investigation is proving “very complex,” involving inquiries in Britain, France and in Iraq. The police have said that their lines of inquiry have included a family property dispute that involved the Claygate house and another property in Spain, and possible ramifications from the al-Hilli family’s past connections with political upheavals in Iraq.
British press reports have suggested that MI5, the domestic security service, ordered Mr. Hilli to be placed under surveillance in 2003 when the prime minister at the time, Tony Blair, strongly supported the American invasion of Iraq. But there has been no independent corroboration of those reports. Neighbors in Claygate have been quoted in British newspapers as saying that Mr. al-Hilli was placed under observation by Britain’s intelligence agencies during the invasion of Iraq by British and American forces in 2003, and that agents parked in a nearby driveway to watch Mr. al-Hilli’s movements. But there has been no independent corroboration of those reports.
French prosecutors have said the Hilli family had visited the Alpine region previously and had stayed at the same camping site, known as Le Solitaire du Lac. The family is said to have migrated to Britain when Mr. al-Hilli’s father, a member of the Baathist party that then ruled Iraq, fled the country in the 1970s as Saddam Hussein gained control of the party on his way to becoming Iraq’s ruler. In the 1980s and 1990s Britain became a haven for fugitive Baathists, some of whom worked closely with British intelligence, and became targets for a series of assassination plots, some successful, that were organized by Saddam’s secret police.
One of those who was attacked and survived was Ayad al-Allawi, who became the first Iraqi prime minister following the 2003 invasion.
Saad al-Hilli was an engineering consultant with Surrey Satellite technologies, a company based in Guildford, near Claygate, that specializes in designing and building small earth-orbiting satellites, including contracts with the American space agency NASA and Britain’s defense ministry. But Surrey Satellite has said that Mr. al-Hilli was not involved in any secret work.
A police dragnet around the killing scene, close to the French borders with Switzerland and Italy, has focused on a search for a green sport-utility vehicle and a motorcycle said by witnesses to have been seen leaving the alpine forest at about the time that the killings occurred. So far, that search has produced no breakthroughs, and French police have said that the killer or killers may have fled across the border soon after the attack.
The French authorities have been publicly criticized over the amount of time that Zeena, the younger daughter, remained undiscovered after the first police detachments arrived on the scene. Officials have responded by saying that local officers were awaiting the arrival of forensic experts from Paris and did not wish to risk contaminating the crime scene.
French prosecutors have said the al-Hilli family had visited the Alpine region on previous occasions and had stayed at the same camping site, known as Le Solitaire du Lac.

Sandy Macaskill reported from Claygate, England, and John F. Burns from London. Alan Cowell contributed reporting from London.