It is one of the most puzzling murder cases of recent times and one that appears no nearer being solved, nearly two years after British engineer Saad al-Hilli, his wife and mother-in-law were gunned down in the French Alps, reports The Telegraph.
Only last week the case took another new twist, when it emerged that Mr al-Hilli’s wife Iqbal had a 'secret’ first husband in the United States who died on the same day she was murdered with her family.
That in turn prompted new speculation that the deaths may have been linked.
It has now emerged that French prosecutors are set to make a fresh request to exhume the body of Mrs al-Hilli’s first husband, amid claims he may have been poisoned.
James Thompson died on the same day that she was shot with her 50-year-old husband and her mother Suhaila, 74, at Lake Annecy, in September 2012, along with a passing French cyclist.
Mr Thompson, whose body was found slumped at the steering wheel of his pickup truck in Natchez, Mississippi, was initially thought to have suffered a fatal heart attack. But prosecutors investigating the murder of the al-Hill family now appear to believe that tests are needed to establish whether Mr Thompson may in fact have been poisoned or killed by other means.
Their first request to have his body exhumed for further tests, submitted within months of the murder, was refused by the US authorities.
Eric Maillaud, the French prosecutor leading the al-Hilli investigation, said: “A request for exhumation and an autopsy was refused because there wasn’t a good enough reason in the eyes of the US authorities.
“Given the facts which are now circulating, investigators are looking to make a new demand to the FBI that will perhaps lead to an exhumation and autopsy; but what we will discover two years after the death we will have to see.”
Read more of this report from The Telegraph.