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| Europe |
| Algerian deputy murdered in Paris |
| 2003-01-30 |
| Abdelmalek Benbara, an Algerian parliamentarian who was found dead in his car in Paris, was almost certainly murdered, police said Thursday. Benbara, a member of the National Liberation Front (FLN) party, disappeared three weeks ago and was found Wednesday with his feet bound together in the boot of his vehicle near the Arc de Triomphe in the centre of the capital. The results of an autopsy were expected during the day. Benbara, whose seat in the Algerian parliament was as a representative of members of the country's large expatriate community in France, has a home in the central French town of Saint-Chamond as well as a Paris apartment. The deputy "appears to have died on the day of his disappearance", January 9, according to a police source. Benbara's disappearance was reported to police by his wife and by a friend who raised the alarm after Benbara failed to meet him in Paris as planned the following day. The Algerian consul general in Paris was also informed. The investigation has so far not focused on the hypothesis of a political killing, sources said. Algerian parliamentarian + dead in car trunk = not political? Police are understood to have questioned both Benbara's wife and the friend he was due to meet. In the course of their investigations, police discovered that Benbara also had a child, now aged around 10, by another woman - a local councillor in Paris's Nanterre suburb who was killed last March along with seven other local officials when crazed gunman Richard Durn burst into a council meeting. OK, I'd check on the wife and any other girlfriends, and their boyfriends too. Durn later died in an apparent suicide after falling from an open window in a police interrogation room. This sounds like a bad movie plot. |
| Posted by:Steve |