Claims of Saddam fortune link to Alps murders
Hussain gave the money to the family of British engineer Saad Al-Hilli, 50, of Surrey, who was murdered with his wife in the Alps, the Daily Mail said.
The Iraqi leader is said to have deposited the sum in a Swiss bank account in the name of Al-Hilli’s father.
The claim, apparently originating with German intelligence, adds a sensational twist to the baffling massacre, in which Al-Hilli was killed along with his wife Iqbal, 47, his mother- in-law, and a French cyclist.
The attack left Al-Hilli’s seven-year-old daughter badly injured and her four- year-old sister traumatised.
Al-Hilli’s father Kadhim was once close to Saddam’s Ba’ath Party, fell foul of the ex-Iraqi president in the 1970s, and fled Iraq for Britain. The site of the Sep 5 massacre, an isolated lay- by near Lake Annecy in eastern France, is only an hour’s drive from Geneva, where the money was deposited.
Swiss prosecutor Dario Zanni believes the family may have been returning from there when it was ambushed. It has also raised the possibility that Al-Hilli had managed to gain access to the account, thought to have remained in his father’s name, and that this fact was known to his killer.
The story was reported in French newspaper Le Monde, which said Al-Hilli made a desperate bid to drive his family to safety under a hail of bullets.
