Alps shooting ended life of abused woman

Alps shooting ended life of abused woman


Suhaila Al-Allaf, who was shot dead last week together with her daughter Ikbal and son-in-law Saad al-Hilli, had suffered years of violence from her son, said the legal documents from Sweden.

Haydar Thaher, 46, had repeatedly "insulted, threatened and beaten his parents over a very long time", said one document.

Police had been called out to their home in the southern suburbs of Stockholm eight times between 2001 and 2007. Mr Thaher still lived at home because of mental health problems, the documents added.

In the transcript of one interview, the parents say they think their son might be schizophrenic.

The overall impression left by the documents is of an irascible individual, who lashes out physically as soon as he feels threatened.
In 2003, a Swedish court had Mr Thaher placed under guardianship and the following year his father, Abdul-Amir Al-Saffar, reported that his son had threatened to kill him.

In 2006, after the police were called out once again, Mr Thaher had been transferred to a psychiatric unit for care. The following year he had been briefly detained after attacking his parents.

He was freed after they declined to press charges.

A source close to the French investigation confirmed Ms Allaf's identity to AFP on Thursday.

Varg Gyllander, a spokesman for Swedish national police, refused to comment on any possible cooperation with the French police into the murder investigation.

Suhaila Allaf, Saad and Iqbal Hilli were all killed in last week's attack, near Annecy, on the edge of the French Alps, as well as a passing cyclist, Frenchman Sylvain Mollier.

Ms Allaf's seven-year-old granddaughter Zainab al-Hilli is in hospital, having suffered serious head injuries; Zainab's four-year-old sister, Zeena, survived unhurt after hiding under the skirts of the dead women for eight hours.

Meanwhile, the British man who first came upon the crime scene, said it resembled an episode of TV show CSI: Miami.

"It was pretty much what you would imagine a set from (TV crime series) 'CSI Miami' would be like,'' Brett Martin told the BBC, in his first television interview since the shooting Wednesday last week.

"There was a lot of blood and heads with bullet holes in them.''

He said one of the family's daughters, seven-year-old Zainab al-Hilli, was "prone on the road, moaning, sort of semi-conscious'' when he stumbled across the scene in a forest area in Annecy.

Mr Martin, a former member of Britain's Royal Air Force (RAF), said he came across the tragic scene after he had set out for a bicycle ride in the French Alps at about 2.30pm local time.

As he climbed a hill near the village of Chevaline, he was confronted with the bloodbath, first spotting a French cyclist who had been shot dead.

"It was the sort of thing you would never in your life expect to come across,'' he said.

"As I approached the scene, the first thing I saw was a bike on its side. I had seen the cyclist ahead of me much earlier so I thought he was just having a rest.

"As I got a little bit closer, a very young child stumbled out onto the road and at first I thought she was actually just playing with her sibling because she sort of looked, from a distance, as if she was falling over, larking about like a child would.

"However, as I approached her it was obvious that she was quite badly injured and there was a lot of blood on her.

"As I got even closer, I then saw the car with its engine revving and its wheels spinning. It seemed at that moment in time like there had been a terrible car accident.''

Eric Maillaud, the French prosecutor in charge of the investigation, said after arriving in Surrey, the area of southeast England where the family lived, that the cause of the killings lay in Britain.

"We are perfectly aware that Annecy is just the chance location of this drama and that it seems that the origin, the causes and the explanation are here,'' he told journalists in the town of Woking in Surrey.

Surrey Police later said in a statement that a meeting had taken place between Mr Maillaud, the French judge leading the investigation, senior members of the French paramilitary police, Surrey Police and the Crown Prosecution Service.

The statement said the meeting had been "extremely productive''.

It said that "progress had been made in relation to a number of issues arising from the challenges and complexities of an enquiry across two judicial processes.

"The meeting built on the already established strong working relationships between all parties involved,'' the statement added.

"The UK and French authorities are extremely pleased with the progress which has been made.''