Terrorist attack in Israel: victim’s widow asks French justice to investigate Hamas funding

The wife of a French man killed in Israel following a Hamas attack on October 7 asked the court on Monday to extend its investigation to the financing of the Palestinian Islamist movement, his lawyer told us on Tuesday.

The wife of Marc Perez, a Frenchman born in Israel who died aged 51, is asking the courts to extend his investigation, opened on Thursday, into, among other things, murders linked to a terrorist enterprise, into money laundering committed in connection with the terrorist enterprise. The widow wants French justice to work to “identify the sources of funding” for Hamas, “the channels used and the role that possible French and European financial intermediaries may have played,” according to her complaint sent to the National Prosecutor’s Office on Monday. terrorism (Pnat).

“It is necessary to know whether they are private donors or the state,” insisted Me Nathanael Meister, arguing that “financial flows from Russia fueled” the groups that “participated in the October 7 attacks.” “We also want to know whether the financing is dependent on French financial intermediaries, in particular the banking systems, and whether there are any barriers in place,” he continued.

“Fundraising Operations”

Based on two Wall Street Journal articles dated October 10 and 13, the complaint seeks to warn of “fundraising operations” using “cryptocurrencies for the benefit of these criminal organizations since 2019.” She also questions the role of the Russian platform, “allowing the transfer of amounts paid in cash anywhere in the world.”

In parallel with the Israeli investigations, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) on Thursday, October 12, opened a preliminary investigation into the French victims. The so-called “mirror” investigation has been opened into murders in connection with a terrorist enterprise, kidnappings and abductions of people, including minors under the age of 15, as part of an organized gang and in connection with a terrorist enterprise.

On Monday, the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France announced the death of French-Israeli woman Céline Ben David Nagar, bringing the death toll of French citizens to 20 to date.

More than 1,400 people have died in Israel since the Hamas attack. Most of them were civilians killed in the day of the attack, the deadliest since the creation of the State of Israel. Israeli retaliatory strikes have killed at least 2,750 people, mostly Palestinian civilians, including hundreds of children, local authorities said.