PARIS, Dec 12: Lawyers for the families of 11 French victims killed on May 8, 2002, in a terrorist attack in front of the Hotel Sheraton, Karachi, have said that the company which employed them — Direction des Constructions Navales (DCN) — and therefore the French government, had as much responsibility for the attack taking place as did the state of Pakistan.

A total of 14 French and Pakistani nationals were killed in that car bomb attack.

The French technicians and engineers were on the bus transporting them to the Karachi naval shipyard, where they were working on the construction of an Agosta 90B submarine.

The statements were made on Thursday as part of a lawsuit being introduced against DCN before a court at Saint-Lo, the Tribunal des Affaires de la Securite Sociale.

According to documents produced on Friday during a special news report on French public television, the two attorneys representing the families of the victims of the DCN employees — Jean-Paul Teissonniere and Sylvie Topaloff — noted that “their true employer, the French Defence Ministry, was perfectly aware of the risks of an attack and did nothing to undertake basic precautionary measures, or change the schedule of the bus that took them to work.”

Attorney Topaloff produced a document indicating that a few days before the Hotel Sheraton attack, an explosive charge had been found by the side of a bus used by the French Embassy in Islamabad to transport its employees. The French government document, revealing the existence of the explosive charge, had never previously been made public until today.

The attorneys also produced another document relating to a meeting which took place on April 26, 2002 between French DCN officials in Pakistan and the consul-general of France, which highlighted a number of risks that French employees in Pakistan had to take seriously, including “a previous attack, the trial of the accused assassin of Daniel Pearl, and tribal wars.”