Paris court says Iraq should hear heirs' $22M suit over French embassy home

A Paris court on Monday rejected a $22 million lawsuit by descendants of Ezra and Khedouri Lawee, who say France has not paid them rent for more than 50 years for the house in Baghdad that has housed the French Embassy. The court concluded it was "not competent to hear the claims presented" and suggested the dispute be resolved in Iraq.

The family says the Lawee brothers built the home by the Tigris River in the 1930s and leased it to France in 1964, expecting the government tenant would protect their rights. The case has drawn attention to the fate of about 130,000 Iraqi Jews who fled or were forced from Iraq from 1941 to 1951, a wave of departures the report says resulted in billions of dollars in losses.

In its written decision the Paris court sidestepped whether France violated its own laws by benefiting from a seizure tied to discriminatory Iraqi policies, noting technical issues such as the original lease not specifying that claims be resolved in France. The French Foreign Ministry, which did not send a representative to court and declined to comment, had argued that the damages claimed were "directly caused by decisions adopted by the Iraqi authorities." The family’s lawyers, Jean-Pierre Mignard and Imrane Ghermi, argued in court that France violated its laws, human rights commitments and pledges to right past wrongs, likening the claim to restitution cases over property seized under discriminatory laws.

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