"My client is relieved," assures his lawyer Jean-Christophe Basson-Larbi.
Started Wednesday morning at 8:05 am, the custody of the motorcyclist questioned in connection with the Chevaline affair in 2012 was lifted this Thursday afternoon, specifies the advice of the fifty-year-old.
The witness was released without "any charge", confirmed in the wake of the Annecy prosecutor's office.
Previously, the Annecy prosecutor had explained that this police custody was aimed "at carrying out timetable checks" and "searches" of this person.
Faced with a few journalists who were waiting for him in front of the Chambéry gendarmerie on Wednesday evening, his lawyer Jean-Christophe Basson-Larbi simply indicated that it is a witness exonerated in 2015. According to the council, his guard on sight is "not justified" because the latter has "always been keen to participate in the manifestation of the truth".
A decimated family
On September 5, 2012, a 50-year-old Briton of Iraqi origin, Saad al-Hilli, Iqbal, his wife of 47 years and Suhaila, his 74-year-old mother-in-law were found dead, with several bullets in the head, in their car on a country road near Chevaline, not far from Lake Annecy.
One of the daughters of the al-Hilli couple was seriously injured while the second, curled up under her mother's legs, miraculously escaped the killing unscathed.
A cyclist from the region, Sylvain Mollier, 45, a probable collateral victim, was also shot dead.
The witness well in the area at the time of the facts
According to corroborating sources, the man heard since Wednesday morning at 8:05 am had already been heard by investigators in 2015 after being identified thanks to the demarcation of his cell phone.
Surprisingly, this man had not appeared earlier despite the significant media coverage of research concerning a biker present in Chevaline on the day of the killings.
During his first hearing in front of the gendarmes, this entrepreneur from the Lyon region had however easily confirmed having been in the Chevaline sector on September 5, 2012. According to his account, which had not been questioned at the time, he had come there to come and practice his passion: paragliding.
After this hearing in March 2015, he had not been prosecuted.
This case has already given rise to thousands of hours of investigation and hearings, tons of documents peeled and four arrests, without having been elucidated to date.
