The family of a Frenchman residing in Israel filed a complaint this Thursday in Paris against Hamas. She accuses the Palestinian movement of having kidnapped their loved one and requests that he be prosecuted for crimes against humanity, announced her lawyer Nathanaël Majster. The complaint was filed with the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat), he said.
On October 7, in the middle of Shabbat, the weekly Jewish rest, hundreds of Hamas fighters infiltrated Israel in vehicles, by air and sea, to kill more than a thousand civilians in the streets, in their homes or in the middle of a rave party, spreading terror under a deluge of rockets.
The father who rushed to save his daughter has disappeared
That day, Marc Perez, a 51-year-old Frenchman born in Israel, “received a call” from his 20-year-old daughter, who was attending the rave where Palestinian fighters burst in, killing 270 people. ‘after the authorities. “Immediately, Marc Perez took his vehicle and went to the scene of the massacre to try to save his daughter,” details the complaint.
While the young girl manages to “flee the scene”, the family no longer has any news of the father. She suspects he was kidnapped by Hamas, having not found his body in Israeli hospitals. “There is no evidence showing that he was injured or killed at this time, everything suggests that he was kidnapped,” explained Mr. Majster. The family, contacted by Israeli investigators, indicated that some of their belongings had been found: their car, their cell phone and a shoe.
Accusations of “genocidal intentions”
The family expects “from French justice (…) that Marc Perez be sought and returned safely to his family”. It demands that Hamas, the al-Qassam Brigades (the military branch of the movement) and any natural person “whom the investigations reveal” be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. The complaint denounces the “mode of operation of the massacres and kidnappings of civilians”, but also “the ideology which underlies these massacres”, accusing Hamas of “genocidal intent”.
“The particularly atrocious nature of the execution of the victims also seems to testify to a desire to attack the very essence of the victims, behind their existence in order to attack through them the essence of a group of people, to what unites them: their Jewishness,” according to the complaint. In Israel, more than 1,200 people were killed, most of them civilians, according to the Israeli army. Around 150 Israelis, foreigners and dual nationals, were taken hostage by Hamas, according to the Israeli government. Israeli reprisals have killed 1,200 people, according to a latest report from the authorities in Gaza.