February 25, 2003	Tuesday	Zul Hijjah 23, 1423

PARIS, Feb 24: Families of the 11 French victims of the May 8, 2002, terrorist attack in Karachi said they have decided to file suit against the Direction des Constructions Navales (DCN), the Cherbourg-based governmental agency for whom the victims worked.

The 11 Frenchmen were killed as a suicide attacker crashed his explosives-laden car into their bus after they had been picked up at the hotel in Karachi.

In the words of a spokesman for the group, Gisele Leclerc, whose husband Jean-Yves Leclerc was an engineer working on the Agusta-90B submarine being built in collaboration with the Pakistani Navy, “nothing was done to provide them with any security, they were all put together in one bus, which employed daily the same route to take them to work. Now that I think of it in retrospect, what they (the DCN) did is effectively a criminal matter.”

Mrs Leclerc also said that her group — which had sent two representatives to the trial in Karachi of the two suspected Muslim extremists accused of being behind the attack — was “increasingly desperate” over the way the trial of the two men has been repeatedly postponed.

Also taking part in the lawsuit will be several other victims of the attack who survived, but who have been caused permanent damage. One of these, who would be identified only by his Christian name Christophe, and who has never been able to completely regain the use of his legs, and must walk with crutches, noted that the terrorist attack had “ruined me physically, psychologically and professionally. Ever since it all happened, every day I ask myself the same question: why me?”.