Updated on
Summary
Victims' families demanded that French President Nicolas Sarkozy be called for questioning about a 2002 bomb attack in Pakistan that killed 11 French engineers. A new line of inquiry into the bombing has brought up possible links to a murky affair of commissions paid for a Pakistani submarine order when Sarkozy was budget minister. Presidential immunity means Sarkozy can refuse to be questioned while in office, and he has already publicly dismissed any link between the attack and political corruption. But other politicians of the mid-1990s might have to testify in an affair that has already been seized on by media, making life uncomfortable for a president grappling with some of the lowest ratings of any recent French leader, with 18 months left until a presidential election. The suicide attack in Karachi killed 11 French engineers and technicians who were working on Agosta submarines that France sold to Pakistan under a contract signed in the mid-1990s. Sarkozy was budget minister when the contract was signed and a complex system set up to pay the commissions via Luxembourg.
