Just one of the many shady and inhuman deals our 10% President has been involved in.
Lawyer says 11 French killed in Pakistan over submarine money
CHERBOURG, France, June 18, 2009 (AFP) - A probe into the 2002 killing of 11 French engineers in Pakistan is focusing on France's failure to pay a commission for the sale of submarines to Pakistan, a lawyer for the victims' families said Thursday.
The lawyer, Olivier Morice, said former president Jacques Chirac and former prime minister Edouard Balladur had been mentioned in the decision to halt the payments.
Morice spoke after two French anti-terrorist investigating magistrates had met with families of the engineers killed in the attack on May 8, 2002 in the Pakistani city of Karachi. A car packed with explosives was driven into a minibus carrying the Frenchmen, all engineers working for a French state firm, DCN, that was building submarines for Pakistan. The 11 engineers and three Pakistanis were killed.
Investigators had been looking into an Al-Qaeda link to the attack.
But Morice told AFP: "The Al-Qaeda track has been totally abandoned. The motive for the attack appears linked to the non-payment of commissions."
Morice said the payments were stopped when Chirac became president in 1995 because he wanted to stop part of the money financing the campaign of Balladur, who was his political rival on the French right at the time.
Magali Drouet, a daughter of one of the men killed, quoted one of the anti-terrorist judges, Marc Trevidic, as telling the families that this theory was "cruelly logical".
She added that according to this scenario, the attack was carried out because the special payments were not made by France to Asif Ali Zardari, who is now Pakistan's president but was a minister at the time.
High-ranking politicians would likely be called in to testify, said Morice.
Details of the payments emerged in 2008 as part of an investigation into French arms sales.
Police seized documents from the French firm, now known as DCNS, which discussed the companies used to pay fees in connection with arms sales.
One unsigned document spoke of Pakistan intelligence services using Islamist militants.
It claimed that "the Karachi attack was carried out with complicity within the (Pakistani) army and the office supporting Islamist guerrillas" within Pakistani intelligence.
The document, which has been added to the case file, said those who employed the Islamist group had financial aims.
"It involved obtaining the payment of unpaid commissions" linked to the sale of French submarines to Pakistan in 1994, it said.
A French investigator, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that "new elements" had been found in the inquiry, but declined to give details.
Balladur, head of the French government before Chirac became president, said Thursday that he knew of nothing improper in the submarine deals.
"There were indeed agreements made with the Pakistani government," he told French television. "To my knowledge, all of it was perfectly regular. I have nothing else to add."
Two alleged members of Al-Qaeda-linked group Harkatul Mujahideen al-Aalmi were found guilty by an anti-terrorism court in Pakistan in 2003 over the Karachi attack.
But the high court in the southern province of Sindh last month acquitted the pair, saying in an order that "the prosecution has failed to prove the case against the appellants beyond any reasonable doubt."
UPDATE 1-French probe alleged Pakistani role in bombing PARIS, June 19 (Reuters) - French magistrates investigating an attack in Pakistan blamed on Islamist militants that killed 11 French nationals in 2002 are looking into allegations it was linked to corrupt deals, lawyers for the victims' families said. A coach carrying French naval engineers and technicians was bombed as it left a hotel in Karachi in May 2002. The attack killed 14 people in total. Pakistani authorities at first blamed Islamist militants and two men were sentenced to death for taking part in the attacks, but their convictions were overturned on appeal in 2003. French magistrates Marc Trevidic and Yves Jannier told the victims' families they were now investigating allegations the attack was orchestrated by unnamed Pakistani officials angry with France over the non-payment of bribes tied to a defence deal. "The investigating magistrates told us that they believed this scenario was extremely credible," one of the relatives' lawyers, Olivier Morice, told reporters. According to these allegations, some kickbacks ended up in the campaign funds of then Prime Minister Edouard Balladur, a rival of Jacques Chirac in the 1995 presidential election, a judicial source familiar with the matter told Reuters. President Nicolas Sarkozy was Balladur's campaign manager in the ballot and was also budget minister when the lucrative sales contract for the French Agosta submarines was signed. He rejected on Friday the magistrates' suspicions. "Listen, this is ridiculous," Sarkozy told reporters at a news conference after an EU summit in Brussels. "This is grotesque ... We have to respect the grief of the families. Who would ever believe such a tale?" he added. Balladur also denied any knowledge of wrongdoing. Asked about the allegation by French state television, Balladur said: "As far as I am aware, everything was completely above board. I have nothing more to say. If anyone has any proof, let them speak up." Lawyer Morice said the investigating magistrates had obtained a top secret internal memo in October 2008 from the state-owned shipbuilder which contained the allegations. The memo, copies of which were shown on French media on Friday, says French and Pakistani officials connived to take bribes as part of the sale of the submarines to Pakistan. It says France stopped paying the bribes after the 1995 election, won by Chirac, and that Pakistani officials kept asking for them for several years.
The allegation is that they eventually lost patience and organised in retaliation the attack on the bus full of French engineers, who were working on the Agosta submarine project. Trevidic and Jannier cannot speak publicly about their investigation because the rules of their position forbid it.
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