Fyra ihjälskjutna i brittisk bil vid fransk sjö (2012-09-05)

Plot to kill hypnotist linked to murder of Brit family in Alps as ammo found
EXCLUSIVE: Hit squad officers have matched bullets found at the home of a man arrested over the failed attempt to kill a hypnosis expert to the weapon that killed the al-Hillis in the Alps
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Now it has emerged that ammunition which would fit the Luger P06 pistol used in the Alps murders was found at the home of a man arrested over the failed attempt to kill corporate coach and hypnosis expert Marie-Hélène Dini, 55, near Paris.

According to police, Ms Dini just missed being shot by a hit squad hired by a professional rival, who allegedly paid more than £60,000 to have her killed.
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Officers arrested two men armed with a military-issue pistol and silencer who were waiting in a car outside Ms Dini’s home in July last year, following a call from a suspicious neighbour.

At the time, the men falsely identified themselves as part of the General Directorate of External Security, the French equivalent of MI6.

They claimed to be on an official mission to kill Ms Dini because she was implicated in something involving Mossad, the Israeli secret service.
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Several men have been charged over the attempted murder of Ms Dini, including one identified as Daniel B, thought to be head of the hit squad.

He is a retired police officer who had worked in the police intelligence service.

Daniel B identified the client in the contract as Jean-Luc AB, a business coach who had a grudge against Ms Dini over her bid to create a professional association of corporate therapists.
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The former inspector reportedly claimed to be part of a “tiny group of freemasons who had turned their hands to carrying out hit contracts”.

Mollier, a nuclear industry worker, was quickly ruled out as the target and was deemed to have been eliminated as a witness, but no potential motive was uncovered for the professional-style murder of the British-Iraqi family. If the Paris gang were involved, it would be more likely that Mollier, who worked for a subsidiary of the Areva nuclear power group, was the primary target, investigators say.

Zainab, who was shot in the shoulder and pistol-whipped, told police the gunman killed the cyclist with up to seven shots before turning on the family.

In their search of the home of Daniel B, police recovered 7.65mm Parabellum casings from the Luger P06, a pistol used by the Swiss and other armies in the first half of the 20th century, according to French media reports. The calibre, less powerful than the 9mm more common with automatic pistols, is widely used in weapons for target shooting and close protection.

Police and prosecutors have given no details of the ammunition or whether it specifically matches the Luger Parabellum type but investigators have confirmed that the dismantling of the so-called Freemasons’ gang has put them on the trail of unsolved crimes.

The alleged criminals-for-hire were members of a now dissolved freemasons’ lodge at Puteaux, a western inner suburb of Paris. Its members have confessed to a series of contracts over the past three years, mainly to harass and intimidate victims but also to murder.

One of its alleged members, Sébastien L, a freemason and head of a private security firm, surprised police by telling them he had taken part in another unsolved case, the murder of Laurent Pasquali, a 43-year-old racing driver. His remains were found buried in a wood in the Haute-Loire region in September 2019, nearly a year after he disappeared from his home. The plan to beat up Pasquali had gone awry and he had been killed instead, Sébastien L is said to have told police.

An officer told Le Parisien newspaper: “For money, strong-arm men hijacked a masonic lodge to commit dirty deeds in the form of deadly mutual assistance.”

Nine people are in custody over the contract on Dini, the psychotherapist. They include Jean-Luc Avella Bagur, a rival who has admitted to police paying €70,000 to Frédéric V, a fellow Puteaux freemason, to organise the attack on her. He has admitted his actions, saying that he had lost his wits under the influence of Frédéric V, who has a background in the police and private security, according to Le Parisien yesterday.

To carry out the hit, Daniel B, a former inspector with the police intelligence service who runs a security firm, is alleged to have recruited two corporals serving as guards at a training camp of the DGSE, the French equivalent to MI6. The pair were arrested outside Dini’s home last July and initially told police they were on a government mission to kill her. The DGSE denied involvement.

Joseph Cohen-Sabban, a lawyer for Dini, said: “This mind-boggling affair mixes up all possible abuses among institutions that are supposed to be irreproachable . . . It’s a terrifying affair involving soldiers who forgot the word scruple and the sense of duty, opportunists out for the smallest banknote, spooks who inhabit the murky waters of private security and a corrupt businessman who used the masonry to settle his professional accounts.”

None of the operations of the gang is known to date from before 2017. But the al-Hilli investigators have always believed that the weapon would lead them to the killer.