Jacques Vergès
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Jacques Vergès (born March 5, 1925 in Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand) is a controversial French lawyer and former Free French Forces guerrilla. He has been noted for defending unpopular figures such as Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie in 1987 and Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy in 1996.
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[edit] Biography
Throughout his career as an attorney, Vergès has primarily taken political cases, and his clients have included both left and right-wing terrorists, war criminals and militants. He defended the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie (1987) (the Butcher of Lyon), Ilich Ramírez Sánchez a.k.a. Carlos the Jackal (1994), the Kelkal faction (1995), the Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy (1996) and Slobodan Milošević (2002).
Born in Thailand and brought up on the island of Réunion, he is the son of Raymond Vergès, a French diplomat, and a Vietnamese woman. He joined the Communist Party on Reunion and in 1942 he became part of the Free French Forces under Charles de Gaulle. After the war, while his brother Paul was imprisoned for murdering a political rival to their father, Jacques went to the University of Paris to study law. In 1949 he became president of the AEC (Association for Colonial Students), where he met and befriended Pol Pot[citation needed]. In 1950 at the request of his Communist mentors he went to Prague to lead a youth organization for four years.
[edit] Left-wing supporter of the Algerian independence movement
After returning to France, Vergès became an attorney and quickly gained fame for his willingness to take controversial cases. During the struggle in Algiers he defended many accused of alleged "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. He also left the French Communist Party following their political move towards the Fourth Republic.
Vergès became a nationally-known figure following his defense of suspected anti-French Algerian guerrilla Djamila Bouhired on terrorism charges (she was accused of blowing up a café, a civilian target). She was condemned to death but pardoned and freed following public pressure and married Vergès. Vergès himself was sentenced to sixty days in 1960 and lost his license to officially practice law for "anti-state activities".
Just out of prison he used his publicity tactics to defend the Jeanson network. It was during a ferocious cross examination that Paul Teitgen, commander of the Algerian police, publicly admitted to the use of torture.
[edit] Later career
After working in Algeria, Vergès moved onto Israel - he saw Israel as a base for neo-imperialism in the Middle East and when the wave of PFLP civilian hijackings started in 1968 Vergès often appeared in court to defend them.
Then from 1970-78 he disappeared from public view without explanation. His whereabouts during these years have remained a mystery. Rumours have suggested that he was in Cambodia with Pol Pot.
Upon his return he resumed his legal practice defending such characters as the terrorist George Ibrahim Abdullah and Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie. The thrust of his defence in the later case was that Barbie was being singled out for prosecution while the French state conveniently ignored other cases that could defined as "crimes against humanity".
In 1999 Vergès sued Amnesty International on behalf of the government of Togo. In 2001, on behalf of Idriss Déby, president of Chad, Omar Bongo, president of Gabon, and Denis Sassou-Nguesso, head of the Republic of the Congo, he sued François-Xavier Verschave for his book Noir silence denouncing the crimes of the Françafrique on the charges of "offense toward a foreign state leader". The attorney general observed how this crime recalled the lese majesty crime; the court thus deemed it contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights, thus leading to Verschave's acquittal.
After the US-led occupation forces invaded Iraq in March 2003 and deposed president Saddam Hussein, Vergès was asked to represent Tariq Aziz in court. On 13 December 2003, the United States arrested Saddam. Jacques Vergès also offered to defend Saddam if he was asked to. "If I have to choose between defending the wolf or the dog, I choose the wolf, especially when he is bleeding". However, in the event Vergès was not involved in Saddam's trial.
Because of his tendency to represent some of the most infamous defendants, Vergès is sometimes referred to as "The Devil's Advocate."
He is the twin of Paul Vergès, a Reunionese politician.
[edit] See also
- François-Xavier Verschave critics of Françafrique
