French Alps killings: Investigation showcases European police cooperation (+video)
The French Alps killings case has drawn in law-enforcement agencies from at least three countries. Such cooperation has become increasingly sophisticated.
London
The investigation of the murder of four people in the French Alps has triggered a frenzy of media coverage jumping from one theory to another. But at another level, the cross-border nature of the case – it has already drawn in enforcement agencies from at least three countries – has demonstrated the increasing sophistication of European cooperation in law-enforcement matters at a time when other elements of European integration are in crisis.
A French judge and prosecutor were due to arrive in Britain Thursday. A small team of French investigators is already there, helping to find out what led to the shootings a week ago of an Iraqi-born British engineer Saad al-Hilli, his British wife, her Swedish-Iraqi mother, and a local French cyclist.
“This aspect of the [European] project is racing forward and is probably one of the largest areas of cooperation in European decisionmaking when it comes to legal matters,” says Dermot Walsh of the University of Limerick, Ireland, an expert in European criminal law and procedure. “Cooperation in law enforcement is moving very fast.”
Professor Walsh stresses that, contrary to the way the investigation was being portrayed in some reports, the French investigators in the UK were not conducting searches of the Hilli home. Rather, they were simply accompanying British police who were carrying out the searches.
