Jean Barbier, a French national who was a Gestapo official during the occupation of France and charged with the torture and shooting of hundreds of Jews and anti-Nazis, was disclosed today to have been jailed by the Marseilles military tribunal on his own request.
Condemned to death in absentia after France’s liberation, Barbier lived peacefully for years in Marseilles under an assumed name of Leroyer. It was learned today that police knew of his whereabouts since 1961 when a 13-year-old girl complained about brutalities Leroyer had inflicted on her. A police investigation of the charges disclosed Leroyer’s true identity but the Marseilles military tribunal accorded him “provisional liberty.”
The tribunal decided to incarcerate him at his own request made, it was believed, out of Barbier’s fears that survivors of the Gestapo’s torture dungeons might respond to the leniency shown Barbier by killing him.
In asking to be imprisoned, Barbier said he did so that he could reveal “the whole truth.” But there were reports that he had received threatening letters which induced him to choose the security of a prison until he might arrange to find a new refuge under a new identity. He was in charge of a special section of the Gestapo in Greenhold during the occupation.
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