As indicated by Le Parisien, the Annecy prosecutor’s office requested the relinquishment of the local judge, with a view to his transmission to the new judicial center devoted to “serial and unsolved crimes”.
Annecy prosecutor Lise Bonnet-Mathis is awaiting a return for “early August” from the Nanterre investigating judge, regarding this request.
On September 5, 2012, a 50-year-old Briton of Iraqi origin, Saad al-Hilli, his 47-year-old wife and his 74-year-old mother-in-law were found dead in their car, with several bullets in the head, on a country road near Chevaline, not far from Lake Annecy.
One of the al-Hilli couple’s daughters was seriously injured while the second, curled up under her mother’s legs, miraculously escaped unscathed. A cyclist from the region, Sylvain Mollier, 45, a probable collateral victim, was also shot dead.
A legal enigma, the Chevaline affair has already given rise to thousands of hours of investigation and hearings, tons of documents peeled and four arrests, without revealing its mystery.
The Keeper of the Seals Eric Dupond-Moretti announced in January the launch on March 1 in Nanterre of a judicial center dedicated “to serial and unsolved crimes” in order to “allow these files to remain judicially alive”. France then had 173 unsolved crimes for which justice is seized and 68 serial crime proceedings, according to him.
Eligible cases are those of particular complexity. The crimes must be serial and/or their perpetrators not yet identified eighteen months after the events.
In May, a hundred files were already being analyzed, seven entrusted to an examining magistrate.
