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Another report bolsters kickbacks angle

Paris: The French daily Liberation on Thursday published a four-page report further strengthening the hypothesis that 11 French engineers killed in a bomb blast in Karachi in 2002 died not at the hands of Islamist terrorists as initially alleged, but in an attack ordered by Pakistan’s military top brass in retaliation for non-payment of kickbacks in a 1994 contract for the sale of Agosta 90B submarines by France to Pakistan.

A percentage of the commissions promised to senior Pakistani naval officers was to be repatriated to France as “retro-commissions” or reverse kickbacks to finance the 1995 presidential bid of the then Prime Minister, Eduard Balladur. Mr. Chirac won the election and had the commissions, and, as a consequence, his rival’s retro-commissions, immediately blocked. Investigators last week said this may have angered Pakistani officials who felt the French state had failed to keep its promises.

Charles Millon, who served as French Defence Minister from 1995 to 1997, confirmed in an interview that the payment of commissions in the submarine deal was unilaterally cancelled by France on the orders of Mr. Chirac. “After I was appointed Defence Minister, Mr. Chirac asked me to review the different defence sales contracts under way and to stop the payment of commissions that could lead to retro-commissions,” Mr. Millon explained to Paris Match magazine.

Liberation’s report is also particularly damaging to France’s former top anti-terrorism judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere who was in charge of the dossier at the time of the blasts and who systematically ignored or set aside proof including memos, minutes of meetings and other intelligence that pointed to links between the fatal blast and the non-payment of commissions by France. The judge has since taken up a political position and is part of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s right wing UMP Party to which Mr. Balladur also belongs.

Liberation says the French were warned about such links by the head of security at the U.S. embassy in Islamabad, Randall Bennet, but his warnings too were ignored. Even more surprising is the fact that the 2004 conviction of Admiral Mansur ul Huq for corruption in the Agosta submarine contract by a Pakistani court features nowhere in the documents constituted by the French anti-terrorism cell investigating the case. Minutes of meetings held at the French Prime Minister’s office on the financial aspects of the deal are also startlingly absent from the criminal investigation, Liberation reveals.

This gives further credence to allegations that it was senior members of the Pakistani military establishment and not Islamist extremists who were responsible for the attack targeting the French engineers. It also points to a deliberate cover up on the French side to protect Mr. Balladur and his then Minister for the Budget (1994), Mr. Sarkozy who is now the President.

On 19 June, when questioned about these allegations, Mr. Sarkozy reacted sharply, describing as “grotesque, ridiculous and a myth” a scenario involving senior Pakistani officials in the attack and retro-commissions for his former boss, Mr. Balladur.

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