Ex-soldier questioned over French Alps murders ‘commits suicide’
Latest update : 2014-06-04
A former French soldier who was questioned as part of an investigation into the 2012 murder of four people in the French Alps was on Tuesday found dead in a suspected suicide, an official said.
Annecy prosecutor Eric Maillaud said the man – a former Legionnaire and paratrooper – had "left a note of six or seven pages in which he said he was disturbed by the questioning. He felt accused".
"It does not make this the main or sole reason for his action," Maillaud said, adding that the 50-year-old had not been a suspect in the case.
The man, whose name was not made public, was found dead in his home in Ugine, in eastern France, on Tuesday afternoon. He reportedly died from a gunshot wound.
The police investigation in question was the September 5, 2012, murder of three members of the British-Iraqi al-Hilli family who were shot dead in their BMW in a woodland car park close to the village of Chevaline in the hills above Lake Annecy. A French cyclist Sylvain Mollier was also found shot dead at the scene.
Maillaud said the soldier had been questioned for “two hours” last year due to his links to Mollier’s family.
The two al-Hilli daughters, then aged four and seven, survived the attack in which more than 20 bullets were fired. The oldest daughter, Zainab, 7, was shot in the shoulder and beaten around the head, leaving her with a fractured skull. Her 4-year-old sister, Zeena, hid for eight hours under the skirt of her dead mother in the back of the family's car and survived without any injuries.
More than 1,300 people have been questioned in the police investigation into the al-Hilli family murders.
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