Too close for comfort

A parcel bomb killed a legal secretary and injured five other people on Thursday in a central Paris building housing a law firm partly owned by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

A secretary in the Gouet-Jenselme law practice died and lawyer Olivier Brane was rushed to hospital with serious injuries, officials said.

..."We don't know the reasons for the attack. We only know Mr. Brane's practice is on the fourth floor and that the door opposite is that of the Shoah Foundation," Christian Charriere-Bournazel, the future head of the Paris bar association, told reporters.

The foundation is dedicated to the remembrance of the Holocaust. French Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld, who visited the scene, told reporters he did not think the foundation had been the target. "There has never been a threat," he said.

Could be an aggrieved defendant, or a disgruntled client. But such crimes are usually carried out by the persons themselves. The Sarkozy factor and the presence of a Holocaust Foundation seem to point in the direction of a different motive.