The Nanterre prosecutor's office has decided to open an investigation to determine the circumstances of his mysterious death at the age of 69, initially attributed to a heart attack.
"Let no one forget that Daniel Siad died innocent", emphasized his lawyer Ménya Arab-Tigrine on Wednesday. "He had great faith in the judicial system and could not understand why he was not being called to testify, despite his repeated requests. Yes, he died of a heart attack, and it is very likely that this unbearable wait contributed to his death."
All the lawyer's efforts to posthumously clear her client's honor, however, fell on deaf ears in the face of evidence: Daniel Siad, of Franco-Algerian origin and Swedish nationality, was mentioned up to 2,000 times in Epstein's archives and had received at least five rape allegations. Among them, that of the former Swedish model Ebba Karlsson.
According to the former Swedish model, Daniel Siad used the same methods and had frequent contacts with Jean-Luc Brunel, founder of several modeling agencies and a 'recruiter' of young people and minors for Jeffrey Epstein on both sides of the Atlantic. Brunel was convicted of rape in 2020 and died by hanging in the Parisian La Santé prison in 2022, three years after Epstein's death in prison and under similar circumstances.
Siad's death now adds even more mystery to the Epstein saga. Born in Algeria, he emigrated to Sweden in the 1980s. He defined himself as "a Berber Jew" with strong ties to France. His contacts with Epstein date back to 2009 and extend until 2019, two days before the millionaire financier and pedophile's arrest.
THE CONVERSATIONS WITH EPSTEIN
Despite his elusive nature, Siad made statements to the RTL radio station a few months ago in which he admitted to having met Epstein through a mutual friend and marketing director at Victoria's Secret. "My relationship with him was strictly professional," he said. "I never had any issues with the models I introduced to him. I am not a fugitive, I am looking forward to being questioned".
In fact, Daniel Siad had been well known to French investigators since 2013 when a model testified against him: "He wanted me to be completely at his disposal. He saw me as a sexual possession. He always told me that I was his slave." In a message to Siad in 2012, Epstein himself asked for help in locating his man in Barcelona, concerned that a girl was not responding to his messages.
Barcelona was then one of Siad's recruitment centers, as Ibiza later became, where he apparently ran a nightclub. The modus operandi was always the same: Siad would send photos of girls who could "fit" into the business ("She is 26 years old but looks 18, very interesting"), and the financier would show interest or not.
In another message exchanged with Epstein, he even claimed to have "several models camping out" in his 35-square-meter apartment, including "a British friend of Jamaican origin who is also very sweet." Epstein apparently was willing to advance the models' careers and pay their rent and plane tickets in the meantime.
The profile they were looking for was women aged 21 to 25, "elegant, ambitious, and capable of socializing in high-level environments." The recruiter received a commission in return. According to several testimonies, Daniel Siad referred to Epstein as the boss, although once convicted of pedophilia, he went as far as to call him a "scoundrel" and consider himself a victim of the sexual network.
"I never dated a model, and I have never raped anyone in my life; I am a family man," Siad declared in another rare interview with the BFMTV channel. Weeks before his death, his lawyer Ménya Arab-Tigrine had expressed his willingness to appear before the court and prove his innocence: "He wants to be heard as soon as possible. The right to defend oneself is a constitutional principle that should never be forgotten."