ABSTRACT
Karachi, May 8, 2002. A few minutes past 8 a.m.: a car parked on Club Road, between the two largest hotels in Pakistan’s capital, explodes, leaving 14 victims, 11 of which were French engineers and technicians working for the DCN (Direction des constructions navales), under the direct control of the French Ministry of Defense. The suicide bomber activated the explosive as their bus passed in front of the parked car. With the memory of September 11 still fresh, the investigations targeted the Al-Qaeda network. President Chirac solemnly proclaimed the French government’s intention to fight against terrorism, confirming their cooperation with the Pakistani government: the same government that, in the previous 10 years, had bought arms from French firms for a total of €2.1 billion, 3.5 percent of French exports. Arms deliveries were, however, at the center of several corrupt exchanges, including the payment by French enterprises of large bribes to various Pakistani military and political exponents, among them the brother of general Musharraf, who became Prime Minister after the coup d’etat of 1999. Various military leaders were also sentenced for having received US$7 million in bribes for the construction of Agosta 90B submarines (Le Figaro, June 25, 2009). Five months after the bombing, the DCN manager Philippe Japiot wrote, in a letter to a French judge investigating the case, “it is because of the submarine contracts that our French colleagues died” (Libération, June 25, 2009). Not Al-Qaeda, but the interruption in the payment of bribes to military and political leaders was, in this interpretation, behind the terrorist attack (Libération, July 10, 2009). According to the lawyer for the relatives of seven victims of the attack, “It is all linked to Jacques Chirac’s refusal, in 1996, to pay the commissions linked to the selling of the submarines.” The attack aimed to convince the French partners to continue to pay the expected bribes. 1
