Investigator Marc Trevidic made the request to help him advance his probe into claims the 11 were killed in May 2002 by Pakistani agents taking revenge after a new French government cancelled illegal commissions on an arms deal. Last month families of victims filed suit in Paris against supporters of former French presidential candidate Edouard Balladur, who was Prime Minister at the time, alleging they benefited from the deal.
In 1995, newly elected president Jacques Chirac cancelled the pay-offs, which he believed had funded his rival's campaign, angering Pakistani officers awaiting their share of the graft, according to a report commissioned by France's state naval construction firm and leaked last June. Their loved ones were exposed and killed as a result of a sordid political funding scandal.