A seven-year-old survivor of a massacre in the French Alps remained under sedation Monday, unable to speak to investigators trying to unravel the mystery surrounding the attack.
Zainab al-Hilli is recovering from a fractured skull and a bullet wound in the shoulder which she incurred in the September 5 shooting in which her Iraq-born parents, Saad and Ikbal, her 74-year-old grandmother and Frenchman Sylvain Mollier were killed.
“When the doctors give us authorisation we will be able to interview her in hospital but for the moment they are not allowing it,” Annecy prosecutor Eric Maillaud told AFP.
“She was in an induced coma which she was brought out of on Sunday but she remains under sedation. It is a normal process.”
With apparently little headway being made in the hunt for the killer or killers, Zainab’s potential testimony has taken on enormous importance for detectives probing the quadruple murder.
Her four-year-old sister Zeena survived the attack unscathed after hiding in the back of the family car in which her parents and grandmother were killed but has not been able to provide any significant information about what happened in a forest car park near the village of Chevaline.
Zainab owes her life to the quick reactions of a British RAF veteran who cycled into the car park minutes after the shooting.
He discovered the girl outside the maroon BMW in which her parents and grandmother were shot and placed her in the recovery position before phoning emergency services who arranged for her to be flown by helicopter to the University Hospital in nearby Grenoble.
Why Zainab was outside the car is one of the unexplained aspects of an attack which had some hallmarks of a professional killing, most notably the fact that all the dead victims were shot twice in the head.
The little girl was beaten repeatedly and “savagely” on the head, prosecutors revealed last week.
That has led to speculation that she may have been tortured in a bid to force one of her relatives to hand over something or provide some information.
Another theory is that the attackers may have run out of bullets and attempted to kill her by beating her with the butt of a pistol or other weapon.
Investigators have declined to comment on either theory and insist they are still examining all possible explanations, including those of a robbery or car-jacking gone wrong or a lone psychopath acting alone.
Maillaud has confirmed that 25 spent cartridges were found at the scene and the large number has been interpreted as a sign that there was probably more than one shooter.
There has been no official confirmation of unsourced reports in British media that analysis of bullets retrieved from the corpses had led investigators to believe that there were two killers.
