The murder of Shevalin. What was Iqbal al-Hili’s seemingly inscrutable mother hiding?

Two British women of Iraqi origin died in the backseat of a car among the victims of the quadruple murder in Chevalin, Haute-Savoie. A mother named Iqbal al-Hilli, and her mother-in-law named Suhaila al-Allaf. They were driven by Saad al-Hilli, the doting son and husband, riddled with bullets in the front seat. Outside the car is the body of a local cyclist. Only the couple’s two little girls survived. Who is the author of this murder? For almost eleven years, investigators have tried to answer this question and solve this criminal case, which is perhaps one of the most frustrating in recent decades, as the tracks are opened without any results. Documentary film Sans Issue, Murder of ChevalineBroadcast in 6 episodes on Canal +, covers all the threads of this large-scale investigation, which mobilized more than 100 police officers, was the subject of lawsuits in Iraq, the United Kingdom and the United States, and yet has never been clarified. Especially since here every victim keeps his secret. Like Iqbal al-Hilli, the mother who died in the attack. An arranged marriage in the US, a change of identity, a suspicious death on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean… What if he was the key to the puzzle?

The silence of the dead

Few people stop at the Martine car park, a small alcove in the town of Combe d’Ire, high above Lake Annecy. This Haute-Savoie road, often deserted, winds its way through mountains that rise to the sky. To find some familiar faces, you have to go back to the town of Shevalin, where thousands of tourists visit every summer. Few of them venture into the hostile and steep forest tracks of the Bauges massif, where only wild animals and rare experienced riders rub shoulders between the trees. Calm and quiet, Combe d’Ire (synonymous with rage) terrifies all who venture there, locals and foreigners alike. Thus, on September 5, 2012, when twenty-one explosions broke the silence of the mountains and the smell of blood spread over the city, Shevalin trembled.

It was 3:30 pm that day when Philip discovered the unspeakable. This resident of Chevallin had planned to drive up the hill with two friends when the cyclist with the accent. british he stammers that several bodies are lying higher up in the Martinette parking lot. Philip stops in disbelief before climbing to his death. The first body on the scene is that of a man lying on the ground next to his bike and BMW with the engine running. Behind the windows of the car, three people from the same family, two women and one man, are covered with bullets. A 7-year-old granddaughter dies outside. An image that Philip, the key witness of the case, will never forget. We quickly cordoned off the area, called the Annecy prosecutor and the police force. And after a few hours of witnessing the horror, the 4-year-old girl’s face cracks harmlessly at night. Hiding under the skirts of his dead mother since the beginning of the murder, the child is cared for, wrapped in the arms of a policewoman. Here, in this small blood-soaked abyss, he almost smiles.

Foreigners and French

To understand this quadruple murder, you must first identify each corpse. On the one hand, Sylvain Mollier, a well-known cycling enthusiast in the city, 45 years old, went for a ride that day in Combe d’Ire. From another, the al-Hilli family, tourists of Iraqi origin living in the United Kingdom, who were holidaying at Shewalin Camp; Saad al Hilli, the father, a 50-year-old engineer, was found behind the wheel of the car. . His wife, 47-year-old Iqbal, along with her mother-in-law, 74-year-old Suhaila al-Allaf, were shot at close range in the back of the car. Finally, the couple’s two little girls, Zeinab (age 7) and Zina (age 4), the only survivors of the murder. During the digging, investigators found no connection between the biker and the British family. Can some be hostages of others? Are you guilty of just being there, in the wrong place, at the wrong time?

For a long time, we were on the trail of Saad’s brother Zaid, who was suspected of being after a family inheritance of between three and five million euros in property and buildings. The man will be questioned several times in England before being released thanks to a specific alibi: he was not in France on the day of the murder. However, suspicions still remain as to whether he could have contracted remotely to eliminate his younger brother and his family. Another profitable route, this time by a cyclist, a former partner of Sylvain Moliere’s wife, a woman named Claire Schutz. The big loser of the love triangle has surely left for his friend, would he want to take revenge on him in the middle of the forest by killing all the witnesses at the scene? The trail is shaky for a crime of passion. There is also the version of an isolated or deranged killer who is on the road to kill without a clear motive. But what about Saad’s judicious mother and wife, Iqbal al-Hill?

Wedding in USA

We delve briefly into the troubling past of this trained dentist who became a stay-at-home mom after the birth of her two children. On July 11, 2014, two years after Shevalin’s murder, Daily Mail: revealed a big secret picked up during the magazine’s training investigation in the summer of 2022 Society. Before marrying Saad Al-Hili, Iqbal was married to a man in the US, also a dentist, who was 13 years her senior. “For two years, from February 1999 to early 2001, this devout Muslim lived in the United States under the identity of Mrs. Kelly Thompson, a cigar-smoking, ex-cop and oil worker Jim’s wife from the South. the country,” the British media write. Then the first question arises. why was Iqbal living under a false identity in the USA? First of all, why this man, a man named James? Real name James Dudley Thompson, was found dead in Natchez, Mississippi on September 5, 2012, the same day as the murder. A man found lifeless behind the wheel of her white Chevrolet pickup also died of a “heart attack,” though his body was never autopsied.

Is it an unfortunate coincidence, or does the death of the former spouses at the same time hide something much more important? The police will conduct a search, finding nothing sufficiently consistent. As for Iqbal, this is all we know. Born in Iraq, this apprentice dentist went to Dubai in the 1990s to practice his profession before meeting a businessman, one Sabah al-Sheikhli, who offered to join him in Atlanta. live with him. It was there that she met her future husband, James T. According to reports, arranged marriage Society, so that the woman can get American citizenship. The couple lived in Louisiana for several years before splitting in the early 2000s. No one really knows the reasons behind their split, nor Iqbal’s sudden escape from the US after that. The sources state that the latter could not practice his profession on the spot due to the lack of equivalent diplomas. It was then a black hole for two years, until her 2003 romance with Saad in Dubai via a dating site and the birth of their two children, Zainab and Zeena.

Extortion net

Did the father of the family, also of Iraqi origin, know about his wife’s past on the other side of the Atlantic? As for al-Hil’s in-laws, it will be a cold shower. Actually, it’s through Daily Mail: that they will learn about Iqbal’s former life, discovering photos of her in a bathing suit by a jacuzzi, a figure that is the polar opposite of the modest and discreet mother they knew at the time. Why did he change his life like this? So what did he have to hide? For Judith Weatherly Thompson, James’ sister, her brother died not of a heart attack but of poisoning. Suspicions that will be confirmed when a man shows up at her home in 2018, six years after the murders, to tell her the secret. “He sedated very wealthy people to extract information about their bank accounts and pass it on to those who gave him work,” his pages said. Society. And continues. “Judith is now convinced that her ex-sister was killed because she no longer wanted to work in this extortion ring, and that her brother was fired for the same reasons.”

Without solid evidence, the trail today remains stuck in the status of fiction rather than fact. Who was Iqbal al-Hili whose real name was al-Safar? Was she a devoted mother or a former con artist? For now, a documentary Without result, the assassination of Shevalin This once again does not answer these questions. 2012 year. On September 5, did Saad’s wife foretell tragedy on the way to Combe d’Ire by hiding her 4-year-old granddaughter under her pants? Several photographs exhumed for the investigation reveal the family’s last moments, taken moments before the tragedy. In one of them, Saad, Iqbal and their two little daughters smile in front of their grandmother’s lens. Without doubting for a moment that the worst will happen.