Le Monde, November 19, 2010
Families of victims of the attack in Karachi will complain against Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin to "endangering the lives of others" and "manslaughter," said their lawyer Friday, November 19, Olivier Morice .
Families of victims of the attack that had killed eleven French, had already insisted Thursday that the head of state to be heard by the court as a witness in this case.
"Mr Sarkozy owes us this hearing. Let him say what he has to say, he who has dubbed the 'fable' this money trail [in 2009]," said the daughter of a victim, Sandrine Leclerc at a press conference.
The investigation into this attack, attack in Karachi, May 8, 2002 against the Directorate of Naval Construction (DCN), has long been focused on the responsibility of Al Qaeda.
But for over a year, she shifted to the hypothesis of Pakistani retaliation after stopping the payments of commissions promised by France under the contract on the sale of Agosta submarines to Pakistan signed in 1994 to about 850 million euros.
CAMPAIGN BALLADUR
commissions, until their legal prohibition by the OECD in 2000 were in this type contracts paid to intermediaries facilitating their signature. It could happen that rétrocommission, illegal, or taken on board to the benefit of officials from countries that won the contract.
The French commissions have been distributed in Pakistan by the current head of state Asif Ali Zardari, then Minister in a government headed by his wife Benazir Bhutto (killed in an attack late 2007). The Pakistani rétrocommissions
allegedly used to finance the presidential campaign in 1994 the then French Prime Minister Edouard Balladur, including Nicolas Sarkozy was the spokesman and minister of budget, according testimonies and reports on file.
Upon his election to the French presidency in 1995, Jacques Chirac has decided to stop paying commissions, draining any cash flow, via rétrocommissions in favor of his rival, who has always denied any illicit financing his campaign.
If the suspicions are not new, the case took a new turn after the confirmation of the existence of rétrocommissions by former Defense Minister Charles Millon (May 1995-June 1997), revealed by a source close file.
The former minister said Monday the judge Renaud van Ruymbeke that audits conducted in 1995 by the secret services after the election of Mr. Chirac had established the existence of rétrocommissions makers to the French border sales contracts of submarines and frigates to Pakistan Saudi Arabia. "We had a convinced ," he told the judge.
Since then, the opposition and victims' families call for justice as a witness hears Sarkozy, Jacques Chirac and his secretary general of the Elysee Palace at the time, Dominique de Villepin.
" At the top of the state, there are fears the advance of this issue because it involves Nicolas Sarkozy and his family , "said Olivier Morice Me. The Minister of Justice Michel Mercier for his part said that justice was his" work "in this case.
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