French police extend custody of man held in Alps murder probe
AFP
February 21, 2014, 12:35 am
Grenoble (France) (AFP) - French police on Thursday extended the custody of a man arrested in a probe into the killing of a British-Iraqi family, though they have admitted he seems to have no link to the case.
A source close to the probe said the detention of the ex-policeman had been extended by 48 hours as investigators pursue suspicions he was involved in arms trafficking.
A second man arrested in connection with the case also remained in detention.
The 48-year-old ex-policeman was detained on Tuesday in what at first appeared to be the first breakthrough in the mysterious 2012 quadruple murder in the French Alps.
But prosecutors said Wednesday that it was "highly unlikely" he would be charged in the case and would probably instead face charges of arms trafficking.
A large cache of weapons was found Tuesday in the home of the man, who investigators said bore a strong resemblance to an identikit image released in November of a mysterious motorcyclist seen near the scene of the crime.
The weapons found in his home were not the same model as the gun used in the crime and his DNA did not match samples taken at the scene.
Saad al-Hilli, a 50-year-old Iraqi-born British tourist, was gunned down along with his 47-year-old wife Iqbal and her 74-year-old mother in a woodland car park close to the village of Chevaline in the hills above Lake Annecy.
The couple's two daughters, aged seven and four at the time, survived the attack, but a 45-year-old French cyclist, Sylvain Mollier, was killed after apparently stumbling upon the scene.
French and British police have so far failed to make any tangible progress in the case despite a massive effort involving officers on both sides of the English Channel.
