Nearly twenty years after the attack in Karachi, Pakistan, which killed 15 people, including 11 French people, the three judges in charge of the investigation and a representative of the national anti-terrorist prosecutor’s office received the civil parties. The meeting lasted almost two hours and this file has been relaunched.
During a meeting behind closed doors, the three magistrates seized of the judicial information informed the forty people present of the acts accomplished both on the strictly terrorist aspect and on that of the security breaches at the time. The last information meeting of the civil parties dates back to 2015, when judge Marc Trevidic had received the families of victims before leaving his post.
Two theses clashed on the authors of the attack of May 8, 2002 which had caused the death of 14 people, including 11 French employees of the Direction des constructions navales (DCN). The military bus carrying the victims was pulverized in front of the Sheraton hotel in Karachi. Twelve other people were seriously injured. These people were going to the naval base where four French submarines sold to Pakistan were assembled.
Several victims, represented by Me Marie Dosé, filed a complaint with civil parties in 2012 in order to clarify the criminal responsibilities in this case. The first magistrate in charge of the investigation, Jean-Louis Bruguière, favored the al-Qaeda track. His successor Marc Trevidic was rather oriented towards the hypothesis of Pakistani reprisals after the cessation of commission payments within the framework of an arms contract. It is perhaps also this path that the investigators will pursue, if they manage to go to Pakistan. This is what the lawyer for a dozen widows and wounded in Karachi, Marie Dosé, told Frederique Genot of the French department.
” The hypothesis favored by the magistrates is very clear, it is the hypothesis of an attack linked to the judgment of the commissions, recalls Marie Dosé. They rule out what has been called the Indian hypothesis and as for the strictly Islamist terrorist hypothesis, they do not favor it, considering that the terrorist organization could have been exploited by everything relating to the financial aspect of the file, so here we go finally they join in this what Marc Trevidic thought, we are really more on a reason related to the stop of the commissions which obviously remains to be proven, for the moment it remains a hypothesis, we do not have the elements which prove it . The condemnation, the instruction of Mr. van Ruymbeke, the condemnation of the defendants last year could make this financial aspect even more significant, but we will have to further dig into this hypothesis which remains privileged. »
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For the victims, in any case, this new mobilization of judges is important, underlines Marie Dosé. ” The victims had been waiting for this meeting for years since it is clear that after the 2015 attacks perpetrated in France, the file devoted to the Karachi attack was put on hold, in any case there was less investment of the part of the magistrates who were only 6 at the time in 2015 to devote themselves to the attacks perpetrated in France and who therefore put this file aside for several years. So the victims had been waiting for a long time to be received, they had gotten used to, they had been used to being received by Mr. Trevidic before his departure and before the attacks perpetrated in 2015 in France, and there finally we were able hear perspectives, the magistrates expressed themselves on what they intended to do, on what they have recently been able to achieve, on perspectives in particular linked to the security aspect of this dossier, not just the terrorist aspect. »