From the Liveblog of
Monday, July 28, 2025
French lawyer for Netanyahu alleges that Hezbollah put a bounty on his head
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French authorities opened an investigation after a lawyer for Benjamin Netanyahu said there was a contract on his head due to his work defending the Israeli prime minister, the Paris prosecutor’s office says.
Olivier Pardo told investigators that a former convict, Rudy Terranova, told him on July 16 that he had been approached to carry out a hit on the lawyer, a source close to the case said, confirming a report in the newspaper Le Parisien.
Terranova said he was approached to carry out the job while on a trip to Senegal by members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, a key ally of Israel’s arch-foe Iran.
He said they targeted Pardo because of his work for Netanyahu, who has been the subject of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC) since November 2024, accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes over Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza.
Pardo tells AFP that he was “calm, it’s one of the risks of my job when you defend causes which have sparked debate in France.”
“I am confident that the judiciary will determine whether this is a real or a phantom menace,” says the lawyer, who counts prominent French politicians including the far-right figure Eric Zemmour among his other clients.
According to Le Parisien, Terranova was taken into custody last week in connection with the case. A former gang member, Terranova was convicted in 2004 of violence considered to be motivated by Islamist radicalism.
The Times of Israel Community.