World
The Jewish grandmother who believes she is a daughter of an Arab king
Jane Benzaquen has launched a legal case to establish that the late King Hassan II of Morocco was her father
August 27, 2023 12:02
Jane Benzaquen has launched a legal case to establish that the late King Hassan II of Morocco was her father
August 27, 2023 12:02A 70-year-old Jewish woman in Belgium is taking legal action to try to establish her claim that she is a daughter of the late King Hassan II of Morocco, according to the Sunday Times.
Jane Benzaquen, a former hotel receptionist who holds both Israeli and Belgian citizenship, believes the then prince had a romance in the early 1950s with her mother Freha, a shop assistant, when she was 17.
Jane was taken to Belgium at the age of 10 months and raised in a foster family, the newspaper said.
Her mother was forced to leave Morocco and worked as an actress under the name of Anita Benzaquen in Belgium.
Hassan ascended the throne in 1961 and reigned until his death in 1999.
Three years after her mother’s death in 1996 at the age of 65, Benzaquen saw an image of the king on television and said to one of her three children: “That is my father.”
Her lawyer now wants one of the Moroccan royal family to take a DNA test to establish her paternity.
Genetic tests have already confirmed that she does not have a West European father and her ancestry lies in North Africa and the Middle East.
But Stanislas Eskenazi, the lawyer representing Morocco in the case, told the Sunday Times that the royal family have immunity from prosecution and would not respond to the paternity claim. “If you start doing that, you will spend your whole time in hospital doing tests,” he was quoted as saying.
Benzaquen, who is now a grandmother, told the newspaper that she was “doing it for my children and grandchildren. They have a right to know where they’re from.”
King Hassan was a noted supporter of interfaith dialogue - he met several Israeli leaders and hosted a delegation from the Board of Deputies to Morocco in 1997.