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The failure so far of the French police to find any obvious leads
in the case of the mysterious murder of the Al-Hilli
family in the Haute Savoie region is, unsurprisingly,
creating tensions between the two countries. Britain
naturally wishes to see the case solved as soon as
possible, and also wants that point driven home, which
helps to explain the presence last Friday in Annecy of
the British ambassador to Paris, Sir Peter Ricketts.
At the same time, the French clearly feel irritated both by the
pressure coming from the other side of the Channel and
from the army of reporters camped out in Annecy, whose
presence, some feel, is a distraction, adding only to a
swirl of speculative rumours about who may have been
responsible for the killings of Saad al-Hilli, his wife,
a Swedish passenger of theirs and a passing cyclist.
Unfortunately, there is no reason to believe a breakthrough may be
imminent. One of the few clues, that a dark
four-wheel-drive vehicle was spotted near the crime
scene, does not help much in a part of France where the
possession of such vehicles is almost routine. As for
the two survivors of the tragedy, four-year-old Zeena
has said only that she heard screaming and shouting,
while her older sister has only just come out of an
induced coma.
What's important at this frustrating juncture, when the French
prosecutor in Annecy has begun to complain about British
rumour-mongering, is for both sides to remain
level-headed and for the police in both countries to
continue co-operating as closely as possible.
The last thing anyone needs is a repeat of the unhelpful
recriminations that followed the disappearance of
Madeleine McCann, when British and Portuguese police
traded insults through their respective countries'
newspapers, as a result of which the case assumed the
contours of an international dispute. That did not help
the McCann family, and a repetition of those events
certainly won't help this family. The interests of two
small orphaned girls must remain paramount as the police
in both countries struggle to make sense of the tragedy
surrounding the deaths of their parents |
