Britain: France Requests Arrest of Shooting Victims’ Relative
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Version 0 of 1. Nine months after the shooting deaths in a French alpine forest of three members of a British-Iraqi family and a passing French cyclist, the police in Surrey, outside London, arrested a 54-year-old relative of the slain family members on Monday and held him for questioning in the killings at the behest of French investigators. The killings made headlines in Britain and France in September 2012. The man who was arrested, Zaid al-Hilli, the brother and son of two of the victims of the killings near the French-Swiss border, has repeatedly denied published reports in Britain that he was involved in a multimillion inheritance dispute with Saad al-Hilli, his younger brother, who died in the killings along with his mother and his wife. Two of the younger Mr. Hilli’s children, both young girls, survived the shooting, one of them with a fractured skull and a bullet wound to her shoulder. The Surrey police said that in arresting the older Mr. Hilli they had acted at the request of the French police, who had questions about Mr. Hilli’s whereabouts at the time of the killing and the origins of the disputed inheritance. The French police have said that their inquiries have centered on a family dispute over money originally transferred to British and Swiss banks — and properties in Britain bought with the funds — during the years when Saddam Hussein ruled in Iraq. |