Vergès attracted widespread public attention in the 1950s for his use of trials as a forum for expressing views against French colonial rule in Algeria, questioning the authority of the prosecution and causing chaos in proceedings – a method he promoted as "rupture defense" in his book De la stratégie judiciaire. He was imprisoned for his activism in 1960 and temporarily lost his license to officially practice law. He was a supporter of the Palestinian fedayeen in the 1960s. He would later disappear from 1970 to 1978, without ever explaining his whereabouts during that period. An outspoken anti-imperialist, he continued his vocal political activism in the 2000s, including opposing the 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 Ubon Ratchathani, Siam, and brought up on the island of Réunion with his twin brother Paul Vergès,[7][8] Jacques Vergès was the son of Raymond Vergès, a French doctor from Réunion, and a Vietnamese teacher named Pham Thi Khang. In 1942, with his father's encouragement, he sailed to Liverpool to become part of the 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]
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]
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 Israel, seeking to represent Mahmud Hijazi (מחמוד חיג'אזי), a Palestinian member of the Fatah movement who had at the time been sentenced to death by an Israeli military court on charges of terrorism, for crossing into Israel and setting a small demolition charge near the National Water Conduit in the Galilee.[20] Israel's Justice Minister Dov Yosef forbade Hijazi's being represented by a foreign lawyer. Vergès was detained at the airport and deported.[21] Nevertheless, though Vergès did not succeed in getting to represent Hijazi in court, his initiative generated considerable publicity and controversy which were influential in Hijazi's death sentence being eventually commuted by an appeals court. (Hijazi was later released in a 1971 prisoner exchange.)
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]
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.[31] The implication of Vergès's argument was that other aspects of Barbie's life were likewise uncertain and unknowable, making the question of whatever Barbie committed crimes against humanity impossible to answer. Despite Vergès's best efforts at obfuscation and a tu quoque defense of comparing Barbie's actions to French actions in Algeria and American actions in Vietnam, the court found Barbie guilty of crimes against humanity, sentencing him to life imprisonment.[31] Reviewing the film Hôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie, the film critic David Denby wrote the climax of the film was when the French filmmaker 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, whom Vergès had met during the Algerian War due to their mutual support for the FLN.
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]
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)
Pour Djamila Bouhired, with Georges Arnaud, Éditions de Minuit, 1957.
Le droit et la colère, with Michel Zavrian & Maurice Courrégé, Éditions de Minuit, Paris, coll. « Documents », 1960.
Le crime de colonialisme. Colloque de Rome, 2, 3, 4, février 1962, in Revue Les Temps modernes (N°190), Gallimard, Paris, March 1962.
De la stratégie judiciaire, Éditions de Minuit, Paris, coll. « Documents », 1968.
Pour les fidayine. La résistance palestinienne, Éditions de Minuit, Paris, coll. « Documents », Paris, 1969.
Agenda, Paris, Simoen, 1979
Pour en finir avec Ponce Pilate, Le Pré aux clercs, 1983
La Face cachée du procès Barbie. Compte-rendu des débats de Ligoure (with Étienne Bloch), S. Tastet, coll. « Formule rompue », 1983
Beauté du crime, Plon, Paris 1988
Je défends Barbie (preface by Jean-Edern Hallier), Jean Picollec, Paris, coll. « Documents dossiers », 1988
Avocat du diable, avocat de Dieu (entretiens avec Alain de La Morandais), Paris : Presses de la Renaissance, 2000 (ISBN 978-2-85616787-8)
Un procès de la barbarie à Brazzaville (co-author Dior Diagne), Jean Picollec, 2000
Noir silence, blancs mensonges, Jean Picollec, Paris, 2001
Les Sanguinaires : sept affaires célèbres, J'ai lu, 2001
Omar m'a tuer – histoire d'un crime, J'ai lu, 2001
L'Apartheid judiciaire, with Pierre Marie Gallois, L'Âge d'homme, Lausanne 2002
Le Suicide de la France, Olbia, 2002
Dictionnaire amoureux de la justice, Plon, coll. « Dictionnaire amoureux », 2002
Les Erreurs judiciaires, Presses universitaires de France – PUF, coll. « Que sais-je ? », 2002
Justice pour le peuple serbe, L'Âge d'Homme, coll. « Collection Objections », 2003
La Démocratie à visage obscène : le vrai catéchisme de George W. Bush, La Table ronde, 2004
Les Crimes d'État et comédie judiciaire, Plon, 2004
Passent les jours et passent les semaines : Journal de l'année 2003-2004, Plon, 2005
Jacques Vergès, l'anticolonialiste (conversations with Philippe Karim Felissi), Paris : le Félin, coll. « Histoire et sociétés », 2005 (ISBN 2-86645-584-3)
Malheur aux pauvres, Plon, 2006 (ISBN 978-2259199223)
Crimes contre l'humanité massacres en Côte d’Ivoire, Pharos, 276 p., avril 2006
Que mes guerres étaient belles !, Éditions du Rocher, 2007 (ISBN 978-2268060989)
Journal : La passion de défendre, Éditions du Rocher, 2008 (ISBN 978-2268065069)
Justice et littérature, Presses universitaires de France, coll. « Questions judiciaires », 2011 (ISBN 978-2130575382)
« Crimes et fraudes » en Côte d'Ivoire, Édite, 2011 (ISBN 978-2-84608-306-5)
Sarkozy sous BHL (with Roland Dumas), Éditions Pierre-Guillaume de Roux, 2011, 128 p.
De mon propre aveu, Éditions Pierre-Guillaume de Roux, 2013 (ISBN 978-2-36371-053-6)
Books and theses about Jacques Vergès (English language)
^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.'"
^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.
^ abMerkin, Daphne (21 October 2007). "Speak No 'Evil'". The New York Times. Retrieved 12 April 2008.
^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.
^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.
^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
^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.
^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."
^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.
^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".
^ abCohen, William "The Algerian War, the French State and Official Memory" pp. 219–239 from Réflexions Historiques, Vol. 28, No. 2, Summer 2002, p. 230.
^ abFinkielkraut, Alain Remembering in Vain: The Klaus Barbie Trial and Crimes Against Humanity, New York Columbia University Press, 2010 p.52
^Clinton, Alan Jean Moulin, 1899–1943 The French Resistance and the Republic, London: Macmillan 2002 pages 203–204.
^Clinton, Alan Jean Moulin, 1899–1943 The French Resistance and the Republic, London: Macmillan 2002 page 203.
^ abcdClinton, Alan Jean Moulin, 1899–1943 The French Resistance and the Republic, London: Macmillan, 2002. p. 204.
^ abFinkielkraut, Alain Remembering in Vain: The Klaus Barbie Trial and Crimes Against Humanity, New York Columbia University Press, 2010 p.89
^Denby, David "Criminal Element" pp. 75–76 from New York Magazine, 17 October 1988 p. 76.
.jpg)
.jpg)
