A French court has ruled that Paul Touvier, the 78-year-old former French Nazi collaborator, must stand trial for crimes against humanity.
The decision was rendered last week by the Versailles Court of Appeal, putting an end to a 20-year legal battle.
No date has yet been set for the trial, but Touvier would become the first Frenchman ever to stand trial on such charges.
Another Frenchman who was ordered to stand trial, Vichy Police Chief Rene Bousquet, was murdered earlier this year by a non-Jewish man.
Touvier, who was head of intelligence of the Vichy militia in the southeastern French city of Lyon, was tried in absentia for murder and condemned to death in 1945 and 1947.
But he vanished mysteriously and did not surface until he was found in 1989 hiding in a Catholic monastery.
He had been hidden since the end of World War II in various Catholic convents, with the approval of some of the highest members of the Catholic Church in France. This was shown by an investigation ordered two years ago by Cardinal Albert Decourtray, the archbishop of Lyon.
In the early 1970s, then-President Georges Pompidou pardoned Touvier, enabling him to come out of hiding and regain possession of his belongings, which included a home.
When members of the Resistance heard this, they lodged a lawsuit against Touvier for crimes against humanity, which is not covered by the statue of limitations on war crimes. Touvier again want into hiding in monasteries.
CLAIMS KILLINGS OF SEVEN SAVED HUNDREDS
On May 24, 1989, French gendarmes arrested Touvier in a convent near Nice.
Jailed for two years, he was released in 1991 by a court order that cited his age and poor health. He suffers from bladder cancer.
A first appeal by Touvier’s lawyers led to a surprising decision by a Paris court to throw the case out of court.
The ensuing uproar led the French Justice Department to appeal the decision.
In the long course of legal events, most of the charges against Touvier were dropped for technical reasons.
The only one remaining is the role of Touvier in the execution of seven Jewish hostages on June 29, 1944, in Rillieux-la-Pape, a suburb of Lyon, in retaliation for the assassination of Vichy’s minister of propaganda, Philippe Henriot.
Touvier has always acknowledged that it was he who picked the seven to be executed.
But he has maintained that by doing so he saved the lives of hundreds of Jews who would have been murdered.
A few months ago, French Nazi-hunter Serge Klarsfeld, who has kept the focus on French wartime collaborators, said in an interview that he was convinced that “unless Touvier leaves France or is killed by a lunatic or dies of old age, the trial will take place.”
But he also said that French judicial authorities are doing their best to delay the case of Maurice Papon, a Vichy official in Bordeaux who signed orders to deport hundreds of Jews, including children.
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