Four hundred policemen and elite forces surrounded the Versailles courtroom where the first trial of a French citizen indicted for crimes against humanity was about to start.
Police marksmen were visible on the roofs of the Versailles Court of Justice on Thursday. More than 100 journalists from around the world packed the courtroom where Paul Touvier, after years of hiding from the authorities, was to go on trial.
Touvier, the 79-year-old former head of intelligence for the pro-Nazi French militia in German-occupied Lyons, entered the courtroom Thursday, walking with apparent difficulty. He has prostate cancer.
Only 15 seats were made available to the public, and they were occupied mainly by relatives of Touvier’s victims.
On June 29, 1944, Touvier personally picked seven Jewish hostages and had them executed in retaliation for the assassination the previous day of Philippe Henriot, the propaganda minister of the Vichy regime.
Touvier was condemned to death twice in 1946 and 1947 for war crimes, but he managed to clude French authorities. He subsequently took shelter in various French convents and monasteries until President Georges Pompidou pardoned him in November 1972.
Touvier emerged from hiding, but Jewish and French veterans groups initiated charges against him of crimes against humanity, a charge that is not subject to the statute of limitations and for which pardons do not apply.
Touvier went into hiding again. He was arrested after he was discovered in May 1989 hiding out in a Nice monastery.
The only person brought to trial in France before now for crimes against humanity was Klaus Barbic, the German Gestapo police chief in Lyon. Barbic was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1987. He died in jail of cancer in 1991.
LITTLE CHANCE FOR ANOTHER TRIAL
Three other Frenchman have been charged with crimes against humanity, but their cases never went to trial.
Rene Bousquet, who was Vichy’s police chief between 1942 and 1944 and was charged with the deportation of 2,000 Jewish children, was killed by a deranged gunman last June at the age of 82.
Jean Leguay, who was indicted in 1979 for organizing the first mass roundup of Jews in France in 1942, died of natural causes in 1989 at the age of 79.
Maurice Papon, a senior official in wartime Bordeaux, has managed to block his trial with a series of legal maneuvers. Papon, who served as Paris police chief in the 1960s and was a Cabinet member in the 1970s, is 83 and may never come before a court.
Part of the first day of Touvier’s trial was devoted to jury selection. Once the nine members of the jury were chosen, Touvier’s lawyer, Jacques Tremolet de Villers, argued that the court should dismiss all but one of civil suits that had been brought against Touvier by 23 plaintiffs.
Touvier’s lawyer based his argument on a new French penal code which a statute of limitation of 30 years for civil suits.
The court was recessed, and it took almost three hours for the three judges to reach their conclusion: International treaties on crimes against humanity supersede national laws. The plaintiffs were allowed to sue Touvier.
The rest of the session was devoted to establishing if all the witnesses against Touvier had been duly notified and would appear in court.
Prime Minister Edouard Balladur, who was secretary-general of the French presidency in 1971 when Pompidou pardoned Touvier, sent a letter asking not to testify. “I wasn’t instrumental in the pardon,” Balladur wrote.
The court will decide this later in the trial.
Jewish groups tried to demonstrate outside the courtroom but were kept at bay by the police.
French Nazi-hunter Serge Klarsfeld’s organization, the Sons and Daughters of Jews Deported from France, displayed banners that included a quote of Charles de Gaulle: “Touvier? Twelve bullets!”
Klarsfeld and his supporters tried to reach the Court of Justice, carrying wreaths of flowers in memory of Touvier’s victims, but they were prevented from doing so. They left the flowers by a tree in front of the building.
The majority of the French population was in favor of bringing Touvier to trial. More than 64 percent of those recently polled supported the idea, saying it would help shed light on this dark period of French history.
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