Former Judge in charge of the DCN case, Jean-Louis Brugulere, persists in believing that al Qaida is indeed responsible for the killing of 11 French technicians outside the Sheraton Hotel in Karachi in 2002. "My conviction is strong on this point: it was an operation planned by organisations affiliated to al Qaida. It was in fact terrorists belonging to a second sphere of Osama Bin Laden's network", L'Express (Paris) quoted him as saying on Friday.
Brugulere said, he (Osama Bin Laden) did, in fact, claim responsibility for this act. The former judge, who also visited Islamabad and Karachi in March 2006 with investigators, said these organisations share the same aims as al Qaida, and follow the same strategy of opposition to technical and military co-operation between France and Pakistan.
Furthermore, destabilising the then President Musharraf, reputed as being close to the West, could also have been an objective. Clarifying a query, he explained that first, one has to understand the situation at the time of the events.
"We were in 2002, less than a year after the September 11 attacks in the US. Radical elements wanted to prove that they were still capable of carrying out a global holy war, capable of striking the enemy anywhere." He said following the Karachi attack, he worked with the DST. Every month, we received sometimes contradictory information. But some name matched up, all of which were linked to radical elements, he added.
He said the key is in Pakistan, and not in Paris in a link which is not established between an attack targeting the French and the commissions on the Agosta contract. The lawyers of the affected families which I met myself upon returning from Pakistan, is giving them false hopes, he concluded.
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