While French and British detectives keep investigating the horrific killings in the French Alps, informal sources raise suspicion – how come two highly qualified engineers happened to be at the same place, at the same time and both got killed?

50-year-old Saad al-Hilli and his wife, Iqbal, were killed last Wednesday, September 5, along with another woman whose identity is still unconfirmed.

Cyclist Sylvain Mollier, 45, whom authorities believe was in the wrong place at the wrong time, was also killed. However, unofficial sources claim that the ‘passing’ cyclist was actually a nuclear metallurgist who worked for a French nuclear company called Cezus (a subsidiary of Areva).

It emerges that also Saad al-Hilli was a mechanical design engineer. He came to Britain in the 1970s, reportedly after his engineering business was looked upon “unfavourably” by Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party. In Britain, the engineer started his own small business, Shtech Ltd, in 2001, working on projects including several for the aircraft manufacturer Airbus.

Therefore, informal sources wonder how come two highly skilled engineers managed to be at the same remote place, at the same time, yet still managed to end up dead as a result of what looks to be a military style assassination?

One possible version of the murder assumes involvement of some intelligence service, which did not like the past and present activities of the two engineers.

It should be added that the couple’s four-year-old daughter survived by hiding under her mother’s skirt.

“The witness statement of the four-year-old girl, she just talked about a fury, a terror. She explained that from the beginning of the murder she was already between her mother and that other woman and she rushed under her mother’s legs, her mother’s skirt,” police say.

Detectives also point out it is a miracle that the dead couple’s other daughter, 7, who was shot in the shoulder and beaten, had survived.

She was likely removed from the car by the British cyclist (very likely an MI6 agent, sources say) who was probably on a simultaneous but seperate operation to follow the French cyclist. There is a suspicion that several agencies may have been tracking the two engineers. The British agent was probably only intending and prepared for an observation and thus, it no doubt came as a huge shock once he arrived a realised what had happened. Having checked all the victims and having realised that the girl was injured, he likely removed her from the car and put her in the recovery position having checked everyone else in the car was dead.