ANNECY, France (AFP)
Relatives of the two young girls who survived the killing of a British family in the Alps have arrived in France and were due to meet the youngest girl Zeena, prosecutors said on Saturday.
“Members of the family arrived in France last night, a man and a woman, accompanied by a British social worker,” prosecutor Eric Maillaud told AFP.
He said he did not know which of the couple was directly related to the children and it was not clear when exactly they would be able to see four-year-old Zeena.
“I don’t know when they will be able to see the little girl. We have to be sure it can be done without problems,” he said.
He said meetings would be “systematically” carried out in the presence of French investigators.
Zeena has been in the care of French authorities since the brutal attack on Wednesday, which saw Saad al-Hilli, a 50-year-old Briton born in Iraq, his wife Ikbal and his 74-year-old mother-in-law gunned down in a forest car park in an Alpine tourist area.
Their seven-year-old daughter Zainab was left for dead and remains in a medically induced coma after being shot and badly beaten in the attack.
Zeena survived the attack and hid undetected for eight hours under her dead mother’s skirts.
A local man, 45-year-old Sylvain Mollier, was also killed after apparently stumbling on the attack on the family’s car.
Police investigating the murders have been unable to obtain much useful information from Zeena, who they have described as “traumatised”.
Maillaud said the little girl no longer had any role to play in the probe. “For her it’s over,” he said.
He said the elder sister Zainab was still in an artificial coma as of late Friday. “Her injuries are extremely serious.”
Autopsies were concluded overnight Saturday, he said, but the results were not yet being released.