The case shakes the Moroccan kingdom.
Jane Benzaquen, a 70-year-old Israeli with Belgian nationality, claims to be the illegitimate daughter of Hassan II, the late king of Morocco. She took to the Times to tell her story.
“Being an unwanted child haunts you all your life. I was full of anger, the past was a Pandora’s box and I didn’t want to open it”, claims this former receptionist in the British newspaper. According to him, his mother had had an affair with the Moroccan sovereign when she was 17 and worked in a store in Casablanca. “ My grandmother told me that the official palace car came to pick up my mother and before she got inside, they would drop off crates of meat, fruit, and vegetables at her house because the Benzaquen family was quite poor,” she recalled in a YouTube video.
Jane Benzaquen grew up in Belgium but is not believed to be the daughter of Raoul Jossart, the Belgian citizen listed as her father on his official birth certificate. DNA tests would have proven it several times. The septuagenarian enlisted Marc Uyttendaele, the lawyer who helped Princess Delphine to be legally recognized as the daughter of King Albert of Belgium, to clear the case. Mohammed VI, the current king of Morocco, has already refused to submit to the DNA test demanded by the complainant and accuses her of extortion.
