September 10, 2012 -- Updated 0027 GMT (0827 HKT)
Girl found alive among bodies in France
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- NEW: The wounded 7-year-old survivor came out of a coma on Sunday, prosecutors say
- Investigators are tight-lipped about a possible perpetrator in the killing
- Authorities have not ruled out robbery as a motive, a prosecutor says
- Autopsies show each victim was shot twice in the head, the prosecutor says
That's what the French
media has dubbed last week's daylight execution-style slaying of a
British-Iraqi family and a French cyclist at a rural mountain rest stop
on the outskirts of the Alpine village popular with outdoor enthusiasts.
Each of them -- the man;
his wife; a woman believed to be his mother-in-law, and the cyclist --
was found with two gunshot wounds to the head.
The couple's 7-year-old
daughter was badly beaten and shot. Their 4-year-old daughter hid for
hours behind her dead mother's legs.
Police seek clues in French shooting
Alps murder mystery
What led to fatal shooting in France?
The attack was, in the words of one French prosecutor, an "unheard-of savagery."
Four days after the
Wednesday incident outside Chevaline, French and British authorities
continued to piece together the puzzle Sunday.
Was it a robbery gone
bad? A family feud over inheritance? A case of mistaken identity? Or,
maybe, one of being at the wrong place at the wrong time?
Theories have abounded
since investigators found the bodies of British national Saad al-Hilli,
his wife Ikbal, and a 74-year-old woman believed to be the
mother-in-law.
The fourth victim was Sylvain Mollier, a Frenchman who was cycling in the area.
About 25 shots were fired, police said.
Authorities have been
tight-lipped about possible perpetrators and motives, even as the
investigation stretched Sunday from France to Britain and they asked
Italian and Swiss officials for help.
The answers may rest in part with the survivors of the shooting: the couple's two daughters.
The 4-year-old,
identified in media reports as Zeena, has not given investigators any
information about who carried out the attack.
She is physically
unharmed and will be returned to Britain, French prosecutors said
Sunday. She has been under the care of French doctors, watched over by
police and British consular officials.
Her elder sister, who
has been named in media reports as Zainab, is also being protected by
police in case of a further threat to her safety. She suffered head
wounds and a gunshot wound to the shoulder, but came out of a medically
induced coma on Sunday, the French prosecutor's office said Sunday.
Speaking to reporters
Saturday, French prosecutor Eric Maillaud did not offer ideas as to why
or who might have carried out the brutal attack.
Investigators have
widened to several square kilometers the search area around the shooting
scene in the mountainous Haute-Savoie region.
One clue may lie in a report by a cyclist who said he saw a green 4x4 vehicle and a motorbike near the site of the killings.
That cyclist, identified
as a former member of the Royal Air Force in media reports, discovered
the bodies at the rest stop. The engine of al-Hillis' car was still
running, according to authorities.
The al-Hilli family arrived in France in late August for a camping holiday, Maillaud said.
Al-Hilli was an Iraqi-born engineer who lived south of London with his wife and two daughters.
He was born in 1962 and
was a naturalized British citizen. He worked at Surrey Satellite
Technology, a high-tech company owned by EADS -- the aerospace
corporation that builds satellites.
Neighbor Jack Saltman,
in al-Hilli's well-heeled Surrey County community of Claygate, said
al-Hilli came from Iraq "many years" ago.
The identity of a third
person killed in the car is not yet clear, though there has been
speculation that she is the mother-in-law.
She had a Swedish passport, but her relationship to the others has not been confirmed, Maillaud said.
Sweden has granted a number of Iraqis fleeing violence and persecution residence.
"There is still some
technical evidence that they need to work on before they can fully
confirm her identity," Swedish Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Linn
Duvhammar said.
Over the weekend,
authorities searched the al-Hilli home. Police plan to question family
members, including his brother, Maillaud said.
The prosecutor downplayed reports of a conflict between the brothers over an inheritance.
The unnamed brother went
to police voluntarily after he learned of the deaths, Maillaud said. He
returned the next day on his own accord to tell police there had been
no conflict with al-Hilli over money.
Investigators have not
ruled out the possibility that the al-Hillis were killed in robbery at
the rest stop, and that the cyclist may have been killed after stumbling
upon the robbery.
The bodies will be
released to their families for burial as soon as judicial authorities
conclude they are no longer necessary for the inquiry, the prosecutor
said.
CNN's Laura Smith-Spark reported from
London; Chelsea J. Carter from Atlanta. Dan Rivers and Per Nyberg
contributed to this report.
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