A Jewish family of Iraqi origin has filed a €21.5 million lawsuit against the French government in a Paris civil court, accusing France of using the building that housed its embassy in Baghdad for roughly 50 years without paying the property’s Jewish owners.

The building belonged to brothers Ezra and Khadouri Lawi, who immigrated to Canada in the late 1940s while retaining ownership of the Baghdad property.

In 1964, the French ambassador to Iraq signed a rental agreement with the brothers. But in 1974, the French Foreign Ministry stopped paying rent to them and instead began transferring the money directly to Iraqi authorities under local legislation targeting Jews who had left the country.

Attorneys Jean-Pierre Mignard and Imran Garmi, representing the plaintiffs, argue that the case involves Jewish property that was effectively seized with the cooperation of the French Foreign Ministry. They contend that France complied with a unilateral and antisemitic Iraqi measure without challenging it.

The lawyers said the family feels betrayed by a tenant that, in their view, should have stood for the protection of human rights.

Alongside the civil lawsuit, members of the family are pursuing a separate case before an administrative appeals court. An earlier administrative court rejected their request after ruling that it did not have jurisdiction to decide the matter.

The French Foreign Ministry has argued that it entered into rental agreements with Iraqi authorities because the historical owners had been legally dispossessed of the property under Iraqi law.

The family’s attorneys reject that position and warn that it amounts to a denial of justice. Mignard argued that the French Republic is occupying a building that does not belong to it.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)