Suspect in unsolved 2012 Alps murder released

A suspect who was questioned over the unsolved murders of three British family members and a French cyclist in the Alps nine years ago has been released without charge.

The person was freed yesterday afternoon, Annecy prosecutor Line Bonnet tweeted.

“The explanations given and the verifications carried out made it possible to rule out their potential participation in the events,” the prosecutor wrote in a press release.

She added that “investigations are continuing to identify the perpetrator(s)”.

Nine years into the investigation, no charges have been filed in the case.

The former suspect, who was arrested on Wednesday morning, was the same motorcyclist who was already interrogated over the killings in 2015, French media reported.

At the time, he was arrested after police circulated a sketch of a biker seen near the crime scene, but investigators found no evidence to implicate him then either.

Saad al-hilli, 50, his wife Ikbal, 47, and her mother Suhaila al-allaf, 74, were shot dead on a road near Annecy in eastern France on September 5 2012.

Their two young daughters survived the horror, but 45-year-old cyclist Sylvain Mollier was also killed.

After his rearrest, the former suspect’s custody was extended by prosecutors late on Wednesday as they worked to “verify the timeline”, Ms Bonnet said.

His defence lawyer, Jean-christophe Basson-larbi, was quoted by French broadcaster BFMTV as saying that the renewed questioning was down to a “judicial error” and that his client was living through a “nightmare”.