PARIS: Judges leading an inquiry into the 2002 killing of 11 French engineers in Pakistan had asked the defence minister to open up classified government files, a source said on Saturday.

Judges Marc Trevidic and Yves Jannier want ‘all documents’ pertaining to the Karachi attack — linked to a contract with French state firm DCN and murky commissions — to be made available, French weekly Le Point said on its website.

The inquiry has focussed on allegations of a link to a corrupt 1994 submarine deal with Islamabad, amid suspicions the attack could have been ordered as punishment after Paris stopped paying commissions to Pakistani intermediaries.

The 11 engineers, along with three Pakistani victims, were employed on the submarine deal when a car packed with explosives rammed into their minibus on May 8, 2002.

The lawyer for the victim’s families, Olivier Morice, believes the attack is directly linked to ‘a halt to commission payments’ from France to Islamabad.

Magali Drouet, daughter of one victim, says the magistrates specifically believe the attack was ordered by an influential Pakistani minister.

According to Le Point, the investigating magistrates want Defence Minister Herve Morin to order the release of sealed documents revealing the recipients of the payments, plus intelligence files on the attack.

Two alleged members of an Al Qaeda-linked group were convicted in Pakistan in 2003 over the Karachi attack, but both were acquitted in May this year after a court ruled there was insufficient evidence against them.

Details of the commission payments for the sub deal emerged in 2008 as part of an investigation into French arms sales.

Legal at the time — although they have since been banned — the commissions were set up when Edouard Balladur was prime minister. They stopped after his rival Jacques Chirac was elected president in 1995.

Investigators suspect Mr Chirac blocked the payments because kickbacks were being siphoned off to fund a war chest for his rival, Mr Balladur, who ran unsuccessfully against him in the 1995 race.

Mr Balladur’s campaign manager was the young Nicolas Sarkozy. Now president, Mr Sarkozy last month dismissed any suggestion of links to commission payments as ‘grotesque’.

The Paris prosecutor’s office has also said there were ‘no objective elements’ linking the attack to the submarine deal.

Classified documents can only be disclosed if the defence minister acts following guidance from a special French government commission designed to protect the national interest.

Mr Morin told French radio last month that he was unaware of the contents of any such documents, adding that he was ‘only committed to declassifying what the commission recommends to be declassified’. — AFP