Jacques Vergès (; 5 March 1925 – 15 August 2013) was a French-Algerian lawyer of Vietnamese origin and anti-colonial activist. Vergès began as a fighter in the French Resistance during World War II, under Charles de Gaulle's Free French forces. After becoming a lawyer, he became well known for his defense of FLN militants during the Algerian War of Independence. He was later involved in a number of controversial and high-profile legal cases, with a series of defendants charged with terrorism, serial murder, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. This includes Nazi officer Klaus Barbie, "the Butcher of Lyon", in 1987, terrorist Carlos the Jackal in 1994, and former Khmer Rouge head of state Khieu Samphan in 2008. He also defended infamous Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy in 1998, as well as members of the Baader-Meinhof gang. As a result of taking on such clients, he garnered criticism from members of the public, including intellectuals Bernard-Henri Lévy and Alain Finkielkraut, political activist Gerry Gable and Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld.
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 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. The media sensationalized his activities with the sobriquet "the Devil's advocate", and Vergès himself contributed to his "notorious" public persona by such acts as titling his autobiography The Brilliant Bastard and giving provocative replies in interviews, such as "I'd even defend Bush! But only if he agrees to plead guilty."Event occurs at 01:58:42 – "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.
Biography Born on 5 March 1925 in Ubon Ratchathani, Siam, and brought up on the island of Réunion with his twin brother Paul Vergès, 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.Event occurs at 00:04:04 – He went on to fight in Italy, France, and Germany.
After the end of World War II he entered the University of Paris, where he enrolled in the Faculté des lettres pursuing a degree in history, studying the Hindi and Malagasy languages. In 1945 he joined the Young Communists movement of the French Communist Party, while his father was helping to organize the Reunionese Communist Party. During this time he befriended Erich Honecker, future leader of East Germany, Henri Alleg and Felix Hophouet-Boigny, future President of the Ivory Coast. He would also marry his first wife Karine at this time. His twin brother, Paul, returned to Reunion, later becoming leader of the Communist Party there, and a member of the European Parliament. In 1949 Jacques became president of the AEC (Association for Colonial Students), where he befriended Pol Pot and Khieu Samphan. In 1950, at the request of his Communist mentors, he went to Prague to lead a youth organization for four years. He returned to Paris, where he went on to study law, passing his final exams in 1955. Vergès was then elected Secrétaire of the Conférence du barreau de Paris.
Political activities 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.L'autre secret de Jacques Vergès
Algerian independence movement
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. This is where he pioneered the rupture strategy, in which he accused the prosecution of the same offenses as the defendants. 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. 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. After Algeria gained its independence in 1962, Vergès obtained Algerian citizenship, going by the name of Mansour. 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.
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. Israel's Justice Minister Dov Yosef forbade Hijazi's being represented by a foreign lawyer. Vergès was detained at the airport and deported.Israel Refuges Entry to Algerian Who Came to Defend Arab Terrorist 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.)
Missing years
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." 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.Event occurs at 00:50:29 – "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." 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)Event occurs at 00:52:56 – 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.Event occurs at 00:55:44 –
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.
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.Jacques Vergès, Rupture Strategy and the ArgentineanNew Left: Circulations and Adaptations of a JudiciaryTheory
Notable clients
Sources:
National Liberation Front (Algeria) Red Army Faction Anis al-Naqqash Bernard Bonnet Bruno Bréguet Charles Sobhraj Félix Houphouët-Boigny Georges Ibrahim Abdallah Gnassingbé Eyadéma Idriss Déby Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, nom de guerre Carlos Klaus Croissant Magdalena Kopp Omar Bongo Omar Raddad The ex-captain Paul Barril the Élysée wiretapping affair Roger Garaudy Siné Slobodan Milosevic (legal council) Tariq Aziz
Klaus Barbie 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. 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.Cohen, William "The Algerian War, the French State and Official Memory" pp. 219–239 from Réflexions Historiques, Vol. 28, No. 2, Summer 2002, p. 230. 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. Vergès argued in impassioned speeches before the court that the main conflict motivating history was the struggle between the Global North and 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.Finkielkraut, Alain Remembering in Vain: The Klaus Barbie Trial and Crimes Against Humanity, New York Columbia University Press, 2010 p.52 Vergès maintained that 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 what other Westerners had done.