Jacques Vergès

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Jacques Vergès
Siam (now Thailand)
Died15 August 2013(2013-08-15) (aged 88)
Paris, France
NationalityFrench and Algerian
EducationUniversity of Paris law degree
OccupationLawyer
Known forLawyer who represented well-known war criminals[1]
SpouseDjamila Bouhired
ChildrenJacques-Loys Vergès (1951), Meriem Vergès (1967), Liess Vergès (1969)
Parent(s)Raymond Vergès, Pham Thi Khang
RelativesPaul Vergès (brother)

Jacques Vergès (French pronunciation: [ʒak vɛʁʒɛs]; 5 March 1925 – 15 August 2013) was a Siamese-born French lawyer and anti-colonial activist. Vergès began as a fighter in the French Resistance during World War II, under Charles de Gaulle's Free French forces. After becoming a lawyer, he became well known for his defense of FLN militants during the Algerian War of Independence. He was later involved in a number of controversial and high-profile legal cases, with a series of defendants charged with terrorism, serial murder, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. This includes Nazi officer Klaus Barbie "the Butcher of Lyon" in 1987,[1] terrorist Carlos the Jackal in 1994, and former Khmer Rouge head of state Khieu Samphan in 2008.[2] He also defended infamous Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy in 1998 as well as members of the Baader-Meinhof gang. As a result of taking on such clients, he garnered criticism from members of the public, including intellectuals Bernard-Henri Lévy and Alain Finkielkraut, political-activist Gerry Gable as well as Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld.[3][4]

Vergès attracted widespread public attention in the 1950s for his use of trials as a forum for expressing views against

War on Terror.[note 1] The media sensationalized his activities with the sobriquet "the Devil's advocate",[note 2] and Vergès himself contributed to his "notorious" public persona by such acts as titling his autobiography The Brilliant Bastard[note 3] and giving provocative replies in interviews, such as "I'd even defend Bush! But only if he agrees to plead guilty."[5][6]

Biography

Born on 5 March 1925 in

Free French Forces under Charles de Gaulle, and to participate in the anti-Nazi resistance.[9] He went on to fight in Italy, France, and Germany.[10]

After the end of

Conférence du barreau de Paris
.

Political activities

Arriving in Paris, Jacques Vergès joined the French Communist Party (PCF) in 1945. On 25 May 1946, Alexis de Villeneuve, who ran for the legislative elections under the Popular Republican Movement (MRP) against his father, Raymond Vergès, was assassinated in front of the cathedral of Saint-Denis in Réunion. The firearm used belonged to Raymond Vergès.[14]

Algerian independence movement

Further information: Suitcase carriers

After returning to France, Vergès became a lawyer and quickly gained fame for his willingness to take controversial cases. During the struggle in Algiers he defended many accused of terrorism by the French government. He was a supporter of the Algerian armed independence struggle against France, comparing it to French armed resistance to the Nazi German occupation in the 1940s. Vergès became a nationally known figure following his defence of the anti-French Algerian guerrilla Djamila Bouhired on terrorism charges: she was convicted of blowing up a café and killing eleven people inside it.[12] This is where he pioneered the rupture strategy, in which he accused the prosecution of the same offenses as the defendants.[15] She was sentenced to death but pardoned and freed following public pressure brought on by Vergès' efforts. After some years she married Vergès, who had by then converted to Islam.[16] In an effort to limit Vergès' success at defending Algerian clients, he was sentenced to two months in jail in 1960 and temporarily lost his licence to officially practice law for anti-state activities.[17] After Algeria gained its independence in 1962, Vergès obtained Algerian citizenship, going by the name of Mansour.[18] During the Algerian War he had become acquainted with Ahmed Ben Bella of the FLN and the first President of Algeria, Swiss Nazi and financier for the FLN, François Genoud, as well as Ahmed Huber, a Swiss Muslim-convert and Nazi who covered the war as a journalist.[19]

Israel and the Palestinians

In 1965, Vergès arrived in

prisoner exchange
.)

Missing years

Jacques Vergès at théâtre de la Madeleine, in Paris, 2008.

From 24 February 1970 to 1978, Vergès disappeared from public view without explanation. He refused to comment about those years, remarking in an interview with Der Spiegel that "It's highly amusing that no one, in our modern police state, can figure out where I was for almost ten years."[22] Vergès was last seen at an anti-colonial rally in Paris. He left his wife, Djamila, and cut off all his ties with his friends and family. Many people wondered if he had been killed, kidnapped, become a spy, or had gone into hiding.[23] His whereabouts during these years have remained a mystery. Many of his close associates of the time assume that he was in Cambodia with the Khmer Rouge, a rumour Pol Pot (Brother #1), Nuon Chea (Brother #2) and Ieng Sary (Brother #3)[24] have denied. There are claims that Vergès was spotted in Paris by Mohamed Boudia, a contact from Algerian War and an old Communist associate, Jiří Pelikán. He is also alleged to have been in Switzerland at the house of François Genoud according to Ahmed Huber. He was also thought to be in several Arab countries in the company of Ali Hassan Salameh and Palestinian militant groups according to the Lebanese attorney Karim Pakradouni, and exiled Algerian politician Bachir Boumaza.[25]

High-profile defendants

After Vergès's return to public life he resumed his legal practice, taking on a variety of legal cases ranging from; Muslim children who wanted to wear headscarves in school, transfusion-transmitted HIV/AIDS patients contaminated by unscreened blood, prostitutes suing their pimps for back pay to defending high profile war criminals and dictators.[4]

The first file that Jacques Vergès handled as a lawyer concerns Sonacotra. He engages in a "defence of rupture" (also called "strategy of rupture"), rather than what he calls the "defense of connivance", which was classically pleaded: the accused becomes the accuser, considers that the judge does not have jurisdiction or that the court does not have the legitimacy, and takes the opinion to witness.[26]

Notable clients[4][2]

  • Front de Libération National (Algeria)
  • Baader-Meinhof gang

Klaus Barbie

The thrust of Vergès's defence in the case was that Barbie was being singled out for prosecution while the French state conveniently ignored other cases that qualified as crimes against humanity.[1] Vergès adopted a tu quoque defense, asking the judges "is a crime against humanity to be defined as only one of Nazis against the Jews or if it applies to more serious crimes...the crimes of imperialists against people struggling for their independence?", going on to say there was nothing his client did against the Resistance that was not done by "certain French officers in Algeria" whom Vergès noted could not be prosecuted because of de Gaulle's amnesty of 1962.[27] As such, Vergès argued that the republic had no right to convict Barbie of anything given that French officers like the war hero General Jacques Massu had also engaged in torture and extrajudicial executions during the fight against the FLN.[27] Vergès argued in impassioned speeches before the court that the main conflict motivating history was the struggle between the "Global North" vs. the "Global South", and that American policy in the Vietnam war and French policy during the Algerian war were the "true face" of the West.[28] Vergès maintained to convict Barbie was a base act of hypocrisy for a French court as his actions were those of a typical Westerner, and therefore he could not be punished for doing merely other Westerners had done.[28]

Caricature of Vergès and Klaus Barbie during the trial, by Calvi

Besides his tu quoque defense of arguing that French actions in the Algerian War were no different from Barbie's, Vergès spent much time attempting to prove the Resistance hero Jean Moulin had been betrayed by either the Communists, the Gaullists, or both, which led him to argue Barbie was less culpable than those who had betrayed Moulin.[29] Vergès claimed Moulin's colleagues were "playing a double game" and all those in the Resistance "whether they were anti-Gaullists or anti-Communists forgot their duty to the Resistance because of partisan political passions".[30] At one point, Vergès claimed that Moulin had actually wanted to be tortured to death and tipped off Barbie himself.[31] Under French law, defense lawyers are entitled to use competing theories in defense of their clients, unlike the prosecution who must stick to only one line of argument. Barbie was not on trial for the torture and murder of Moulin as the statute of limitations in the Moulin case had expired, but instead on trial for crimes against humanity for his role in deporting Jews from Lyons in 1942-44, for which there was no statute of limitations.[31] Barbie was on trial for his role in the arrest and deportation of 44 Jewish children from the Izieu orphanage on 6 April 1944.[32] Of the 44 children, 42 were killed at Auschwitz.[32]

Vergès seems to have brought in the Moulin case as part of his defense of Barbie as a strategy of historical obfuscation and confusion, as he argued that the truth about who betrayed Moulin to Barbie can never truly be answered.

Marcel Ophüls pressed the "despicable" Vergès during an interview about his defense of Barbie, whom Denby wrote "...persists in pretending that Barbie is a victim of some sort".[33] Vergès was paid to defend Barbie by Swiss Nazi financier François Genoud, who Vergès had met during the Algerian War due to their mutual support for the FLN
.

In 1999 Vergès sued

lese majesty crime; the court thus deemed it contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights, thus leading to Verschave's acquittal.[35]

Khieu Samphan

Vergès on the first day of opening statements for the Samphan trial in 2011

In April 2008, former Khmer Rouge head of state Khieu Samphan, and old associate of Vergès, made his first appearance at Cambodia's genocide tribunal. Vergès represented Samphan, using the defence that, while Samphan has never denied that many people in Cambodia were killed, as head of state he was not directly responsible.[36]

Saddam Hussein

After the US-led coalition forces invaded Iraq in March 2003 and deposed Saddam Hussein, many former leaders in the Baathist regime were arrested. In late 2003, Vergès offered to defend Hussein after he was approached by Sadam's nephew who was putting a legal team together.[3] However, the Hussein family opted not to use Vergès.[37]

In May 2008, Tariq Aziz assembled a team that included Vergès as well as a French-Lebanese and four Italian lawyers.[38]

Personal life

Jacques Vergès was married twice. He had a son with his first wife with Karine. He would go on to marry his client Djamila Bouhired, having two children with her.[4]

According to The Economist, "history was his first love, and he still sometimes dreamed of deciphering Etruscan or Linear A, unfolding the secrets of mysterious civilizations."[39]

In 2002, he called former Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević “extremely likeable".[citation needed] In January 2008, he personally supported Tomislav Nikolić, nationalist leader of the Serbian Radical Party.[40]

Death

cemetery of Montparnasse

Jacques Vergès died on 15 August 2013 of a heart attack in Paris at the age of 88.[7][41] His funeral was attended by Roland Dumas and Dieudonné M'bala M'bala. Vergès is buried in the Montparnasse Cemetery.[42]

In popular culture

Bibliography

Books written by Vergès (English language)

Note: Few works by Vergès have been translated into English.

  • Mervyn Jones, Ordeal : The Trial of Djamila Bouhired, Condemned to Death, Algiers, July 15th, 1957, London, Union of Democratic Control Publications, c. 1958, 1979. "With the complete text of the speech for the defence, by Jacques Vergès."

Books written by Vergès (French language)

Books and theses about Jacques Vergès (English language)

Books and theses about Jacques Vergès (French language)

  • Emmanuelle Bosc, Jacques Vergès: la plaidoirie de l'indéfendable par la dénonciation de l'inavouable, sn, 1992
  • Robert Charvin, Jacques Vergès : un aristocrate de refus, Paris: Editions L'Harmattan, 2013
  • François Dessy, Jacques Vergès, l’ultime plaidoyer : conversations entre confrères avec maître François Dessy, Editions de l'Aube, 2014
  • Véronique Martin, Jacques Vergès envers et contre tous, Paris: Editions de Verneuil, 1999
  • Bernard Violet and Robert Jégaden, Vergès: le maître de l'ombre, Paris: Seuil, 2000

Filmography

See also

Notes

  1. ISBN 2710327317
    .
  2. Giovanni Di Stefano
    .
  3. ^ The French epithet has sometimes been translated as "luminous bastard".

References

  1. ^ a b c "1987: Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie gets life". BBC News. 3 July 1987. Retrieved 12 April 2008.
  2. ^
    ISSN 0013-0613
    . Retrieved 12 December 2022.
  3. ^ a b "The Devil's Advocate". www.cbsnews.com. 22 April 2004. Retrieved 12 December 2022.
  4. ^ a b c d e Giry, Stéphanie (14 August 2009). "Against the Law". Pulitzer Center.
  5. ^ Event occurs at 01:58:42 – Director:Barbet Schroeder, Interviewee:Jacques Vergès (12 April 2008). Avocat de la terreur, L' (Documentary) (DVD). Canal+ [fr]. Retrieved 12 April 2008."I can't stand a man being humiliated, even an enemy. For a lone man to be insulted by a lynch mob. I was asked: 'Would you defend Hitler?' I said 'I'd even defend Bush! But only if he agrees to plead guilty.'"
  6. ^ Turan, Kenneth (12 October 2007). "Giving monsters a strong defense". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 13 August 2008.
  7. ^ a b McFadden, Robert D. (16 August 2013). "Jacques Vergès, Defender of Terrorists And War Criminals, Is Dead at 88". The New York Times.
  8. ^ "Jacques Vergès: 'The Devil's advocate'". BBC News. 29 March 2004. Retrieved 12 April 2008.
  9. ^ Event occurs at 00:04:04 – Director:Barbet Schroeder, Interviewee:Jacques Vergès (12 April 2008). Avocat de la terreur, L' (Documentary) (DVD). Canal+ [fr]. IMDB – 1032854. Retrieved 12 April 2008. For France to disappear was intolerable to me. That's why I enlisted.
  10. ^
    S2CID 153675195
    .
  11. ^ "MEP profile". European Union. 2007. Retrieved 13 April 2008.
  12. ^ a b Merkin, Daphne (21 October 2007). "Speak No 'Evil'". New York Times. Retrieved 12 April 2008.
  13. ^ van Hoeij, Boyd (2008). "review: L'avocat de la terreur (Terror's Advocate) (Rotterdam 2008)". european-films.net. Archived from the original on 3 April 2008. Retrieved 13 April 2008. Not mentioned either are his controversial defence of Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy and his formative work in Prague in the 1950s – in the middle of the Cold War, though possible connections with secret services and many underground organisations in countries ranging from Germany to Israel and Algeria are hinted at and explored.
  14. ^ L'autre secret de Jacques Vergès
  15. ^ MARCO CHOWN OVED (2 November 2008). "The Jackal's defender has his own one-man show". Radio France Internationale. Archived from the original on 21 September 2013. Retrieved 9 November 2008.
  16. ^ Ma'n Abul Husn (2007). "Women of Distinction: Djamila Bouhired The Symbol of National Liberation". pub. Retrieved 12 April 2008.
  17. ^ Michael Radu (14 April 2004). "Saddam Circus Is Coming to Town: the Strange Story of Jacques Vergès". Foreign Policy Research Institute. Archived from the original on 13 August 2008. Retrieved 14 August 2008. At a time when France was at war, Vergès openly supported and defended terrorists and their French accomplices— that is, traitors. He was jailed for this for two months in 1960 and temporarily disbarred.
  18. ^ Airdj, Jamila (16 August 2013). "Jacques Vergès, l'homme aux mille vies". Le Point (in French). Retrieved 16 August 2013.
  19. ^ Schroeder, Barbet (6 June 2007), L'avocat de la terreur (Documentary, Biography, History), La Sofica Uni Etoile 3, Canal+, Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée (CNC), retrieved 15 December 2022
  20. ^ Yaffe, Aharon (15 April 2008). "Dr". International Institute on Counter-Terrorism. Interdisciplinary Centre Herzliya. Archived from the original on 5 August 2020. Retrieved 5 August 2020. The Palestinian Liberation Organization, commonly known as the PLO, was founded on January 1st 1965, marking its first operation. On that day, the terrorist Mahmud Hijazi was caught having placed a small demolition charge at the National Water Carrier conduit in the Galilee.
  21. ^ Israel Refuges Entry to Algerian Who Came to Defend Arab Terrorist
  22. ^ "Interview with Notorious Lawyer Jacques Vergès: 'I Shift Events to Outside the Courtroom'". Spiegel.de. 21 November 2008. Retrieved 30 September 2016.
  23. ^ Event occurs at 00:50:29 – Director:Barbet Schroeder (12 April 2008). Avocat de la terreur, L' (Documentary) (DVD). Canal+ [fr]. IMDB – 1032854. Retrieved 12 April 2008."He was last seen on 24 February 1970, at an anti-colonial rally in Paris. He made a speech and vanished. After three months, Djamila Bouhired and his friends, were sure he was dead."
  24. ^ Event occurs at 00:52:56 – Director:Barbet Schroeder, Interviewee: Ieng Sary (12 April 2008). L'avocat de la terreur (Documentary) (DVD). Canal+ [fr]. IMDB – 1032854. Retrieved 12 April 2008. The Brilliant Bastard In that book are two passages I remember. It says ... that Jacques Vergès could have been in Cambodia. I remember that Pol Pot wrote in the margin: No.
  25. ^ Event occurs at 00:55:44 – Director: Barbet Schroeder, Interviewee: Pascal (12 April 2008). L'avocat de la terreur (Documentary) (DVD). Canal+ [fr]. IMDB – 1032854. Retrieved 12 April 2008. It was in May 1973, ... several politicians ... were meeting at Arafat's HQ. ... Arafat suddenly looked at [Abou Hassan Salameh PLO security chief] and asked: "Who is this Vergès? What is he?" Abou Hassan Salameh answered literally: "He's an important lawyer who defends the Palestinian cause." Arafat smiled and said: "Keep working with him." My codename was "Pascal". And Vergès? "Mansour".
  26. ^ Jacques Vergès, Rupture Strategy and the ArgentineanNew Left: Circulations and Adaptations of a JudiciaryTheory
  27. ^ a b Cohen, William "The Algerian War, the French State and Official Memory" pp. 219–239 from Réflexions Historiques, Vol. 28, No. 2, Summer 2002, p. 230.
  28. ^ a b Finkielkraut, Alain Remembering in Vain: The Klaus Barbie Trial and Crimes Against Humanity, New York Columbia University Press, 2010 p.52
  29. ^ Clinton, Alan Jean Moulin, 1899–1943 The French Resistance and the Republic, London: Macmillan 2002 pages 203–204.
  30. ^ Clinton, Alan Jean Moulin, 1899–1943 The French Resistance and the Republic, London: Macmillan 2002 page 203.
  31. ^ a b c d Clinton, Alan Jean Moulin, 1899–1943 The French Resistance and the Republic, London: Macmillan, 2002. p. 204.
  32. ^ a b Finkielkraut, Alain Remembering in Vain: The Klaus Barbie Trial and Crimes Against Humanity, New York Columbia University Press, 2010 p.89
  33. ^ Denby, David "Criminal Element" pp. 75–76 from New York Magazine, 17 October 1988 p. 76.
  34. ^ "Togo to sue Amnesty International". BBC Newsb. 20 May 1999. Retrieved 12 April 2008.
  35. ^ a b "French author wins Africa book case". BBC News. 25 April 2001. Retrieved 12 April 2008.
  36. ^ "Khmer Rouge leader seeks release". BBC News. 23 April 2008. Retrieved 23 April 2008.
  37. ^ "Saddam family slims defence team". BBC News. 8 August 2005. Retrieved 14 August 2008.
  38. ^ "Jacques Vergès". The Economist. 28 August 2013.
  39. ^ A Belgrade, Vergès soutient le candidat ultranationaliste
  40. ^ "Controversial French lawyer Verges dies at 88 - FRANCE 24". 21 September 2013. Archived from the original on 21 September 2013.
  41. ^ "VIDEO. Obsèques religieuses pour "l'avocat du diable", Jacques Vergès" (in French). Leparisien.fr. 20 August 2013. Retrieved 30 September 2016.

External links

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