On 23 February 1985, a bomb detonated inside a British-owned Marks & Spencer department store on the Boulevard Haussmann in Paris, France, killing one person and wounding 15.
[5] The 15 May Organization reportedly also claimed responsibility at the time,[6][7] and the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) was blamed by the media,[8] but they denied involvement saying that it has never carried out attacks on French territory.
[9] In May 1986, police arrested and charged suspects Phillipe Frigerio and Tunisian Habib Maamar in Nancy, the latter of which was reported at the time to be linked to the pro-Iranian Hezbollah group.
[10][11][12] During court procedures, Maamar reportedly had no political motives but 'accepted' the job of the bomb attack offered by the 15 May Organization, a communist and Palestinian nationalist organisation, lured by profit.
Sieff previously survived an assassination attempt by Ilich Ramírez Sánchez ("Carlos the Jackal") from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in 1973, a group from which the 15 May Organization roots from.