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| Al-Hilli murders: Second man held in custody in Alps probe | Al-Hilli murders: Second man held in custody in Alps probe |
| (about 1 hour later) | |
| French police investigating the killing of a British family in the Alps in 2012 have said a second man is in custody. | French police investigating the killing of a British family in the Alps in 2012 have said a second man is in custody. |
| Firearms were found during a search at a property in Talloires, about 10km from the murder scene. | |
| But prosecutors said they could not "demonstrate a direct link between the killing and these two men". | But prosecutors said they could not "demonstrate a direct link between the killing and these two men". |
| Saad al-Hilli, 50, an Iraqi-born British citizen, was found dead in his BMW car; his wife Iqbal, her mother and a French cyclist were also killed. | Saad al-Hilli, 50, an Iraqi-born British citizen, was found dead in his BMW car; his wife Iqbal, her mother and a French cyclist were also killed. |
| Mr al-Hilli and his family lived in Claygate, Surrey, and were on holiday at the time of the attack, along with Mrs al-Hilli's mother, Suhaila al-Allaf, who lived in Sweden. | |
| Mr and Mrs al-Hilli's two young daughters, aged seven and four at the time, survived the attack, which took place in a car park near Lake Annecy. | |
| The older daughter, Zainab, was shot and beaten. Her sister, Zeena, was found traumatised but physically unscathed after hiding under bodies in the car. | |
| The body of the cyclist, Sylvain Mollier, was found nearby. | |
| A 48-year-old man, from the Haute-Savoie region of France, was arrested on Tuesday. | |
| Annecy prosecutor Eric Maillaud said his arrest did not mean the case was solved. | |
| The man is an ex-policeman, described as having a strong resemblance to an identikit image of a motorcyclist seen near the murder scene. | |
| "We are talking about one person who resembles the description of another man who was near the scene at the time," Mr Maillaud said. | |
| "We do not know what he was doing there. As I speak to you, that person is still in detention but we have nothing that would link him to the crimes so far." | |
| Mr Maillaud said the second man in custody was a friend of the ex-policeman. | |
| He said police "discovered a great number of munitions, explosives and detonators" during their search. | |
| One firearm uncovered was the same type of gun used in the shooting, but it was not the actual gun. | |
| "It is not the same arm and it is not the same calibre, which is absolutely essential to note," Mr Maillaud said. |