France Sued Over a Baghdad Mansion Worth Millions: Heirs Say Decades of Use Don’t Erase the Rent

A house on the Tigris, and an uprooted family

In the mid‑1930s, brothers Ezra and Khedouri Lawee—prosperous Baghdadi Jews—built a colonnaded mansion on Abu Nuwas Street, along the Tigris. After anti‑Jewish violence and a sweeping campaign of dispossession, the family fled Iraq around 1951, part of a mass exodus that saw well over 100,000 Iraqi Jews leave and, crucially, lose control over their assets under Iraqi laws that stripped citizenship and froze Jewish property. The heirs say the house remained theirs in law, even as the state treated Jewish assets as sequestered. By the 1960s, France had set up its embassy inside the Lawee house. Reporting and official correspondence trace a paper trail: a 1964 lease signed with the family, a 1969 demand by Saddam Hussein’s regime to redirect rent to the Iraqi state, discreet top‑up payments to the family that ceased in 1974, and a 1978 lease concluded with Iraqi authorities. The embassy has occupied the villa since the mid‑1960s.

The lawsuit: back rent and damages

Descendants of the Lawee brothers, now in Canada, have sued the French government, seeking back rent and damages for decades of use. Figures cited by the family and the press cluster around $33 million—roughly $22 million in alleged back rent plus $11 million in damages—or, in another filing, more than €21 million including moral harm. The case is not about evicting an embassy; it is about whether France must compensate the original owners while it stays. The action is before the Paris administrative courts. A written question in the French Senate notes that the heirs filed in May 2024, arguing “unjust enrichment” by the state and asking for mediation—after decades in which the matter reportedly stalled between ministries and diplomatic sensitivities.

What Paris says

According to correspondence summarized in French and Israeli media, the Foreign Ministry acknowledged the 1964 lease in a March 2022 letter by then‑minister Jean‑Yves Le Drian, and said it would try to clarify the case. But in 2024, the ministry’s secretary‑general rejected paying compensation, invoking a constitutional principle that bars the state from making “libéralités” (gifts) from public funds in a matter where it believes France did not directly cause the original harm. The government has also suggested the dispute belongs in Iraqi jurisdiction, given the host state’s role. The heirs counter that Iraq’s courts are unlikely to rule against a close diplomatic partner and in favor of a Jewish family dispossessed under Ba’ath‑era decrees.

Why the clock hasn’t run out

1) The “continuing use” problem. Even if the initial dispossession was Iraqi, the ongoing occupation of the house by France—and the post‑1964 lease history—creates a stream of benefits to the state, the heirs argue. In French administrative law, claims framed as unjust enrichment do not turn on historical blame so much as on present enrichment without lawful basis. Each year of use potentially renews the claim’s immediacy.

2) Precedents for late settlement. France has, in other contexts, settled historic obligations many decades after the fact when a legal or moral case persisted. In 2014, Paris concluded a $60 million agreement with the United States to compensate certain Holocaust victims deported from France, with payments flowing 70 years after the crimes—proof that time alone does not foreclose compensation when a state recognizes an outstanding duty.

3) The regional context. The Lawee case sits within a much larger, unresolved ledger of Jewish property seized across the Arab world. International and academic sources document how Baghdad’s 1950 denaturalization and 1951 property‑freezing measures emptied the community and impounded assets on a vast scale. That backdrop strengthens the heirs’ narrative that a “no one’s property” fiction—created by discriminatory laws—cannot justify a friendly state’s long‑term benefit without compensating the original owners.

What we know about the villa—and why it’s worth millions

The house—known in the family as Beit Lawee—was a showpiece of prewar Baghdad prosperity: neoclassical colonnades, fountains, a pool and date palms, on prime riverfront next to central Baghdad institutions. Given its location and diplomatic use, its market value today would be in the many millions. More concretely, the heirs’ monetary claims establish the scale at issue: tens of millions of dollars or euros in rent and damages they say accrued over decades of state use.

France’s likely defenses

Expect three lines of argument from Paris:

– Sovereign‑to‑sovereign complexities. France will point to Iraqi sovereignty over property registries and to the 1978 lease with Iraqi authorities. The ministry has already argued that the proper venue is in Iraq. The counter: a 1964 lease with the Lawee family shows that, at least initially, France recognized their ownership—and that any later choice to pay Baghdad cannot nullify private rights.

– Public‑funds doctrine. The Foreign Ministry’s 2024 letter invoked the constitutional bar on “libéralités,” implying no legal basis exists to compensate the heirs. The reply is straightforward: if the court finds unjust enrichment (or another head of public liability), any payment is not a gift—it’s compliance with a legal obligation.

– Prescription (time-bar). The state may contend that claims are out of time. The heirs will answer that the benefit to France is continuous, that earlier leases reset the clock, and that negotiations and formal mediation requests should weigh against a strict time‑bar.

What happens next

The administrative court in Paris will first decide whether it has jurisdiction and, if so, whether France’s continued use creates a compensable enrichment at the expense of the Lawee heirs. Because this is a sensitive diplomatic site, remedies would almost certainly be financial—calculated as back rent at historical and current market rates, potentially with interest and moral damages. A negotiated settlement remains plausible, especially if the court signals exposure. France has used that path before when moral and diplomatic considerations made monetary redress the wiser course.

Why this case matters beyond Baghdad

For families dispossessed across the Middle East and North Africa, the Lawee suit tests a simple premise: even if the original spoliation was committed by another state, a Western government that knowingly benefits from that dispossession over decades may owe something more than silence. The legal question is France’s to answer; the ethical one—whether time alone should cancel a debt—is for the public to judge.

If the court leans toward the heirs, the ruling will not resolve the wider tragedy of Iraq’s vanished Jewish community. But it would draw a line through the present: today’s use still counts, and today’s law can still recognize yesterday’s owners.