Preparing Barbie's Defense (1983-1987)

It was clear that the victorious colonial nations were doing exactly what the Germans had done in France. -- Jacques Vergès (Attorney for Klaus Barbie in 1987)

During the first few days following Barbie's return, it seemed that his upcoming trial would run along the lines of France versus the forces of evil. On the day after Barbie's arrival, Le Monde printed a special section intended to educate the public on who Barbie was and what he had done. The press emphasized two things the most: that Barbie was the murderer of Jean Moulin and that Barbie had been working for the Americans when he was in Bolivia. There was very little mention of Barbie's role in the Final Solution and even less mention of the French collaborators. Once the papers tired of printing chronologies of Barbie's whereabouts and the like, they opened up their pages to political writers and philosophers. Instantly the mood changed from nervous glee to just nervousness. In an article entitled "The Justice of Whom?" the prominent political writer Gilbert Comte worried aloud that the Barbie trial would "demoralize the youth of France more than it instructs them."²⁵ Opposite Comte's article was a piece by Joseph Rovan, a former résistant and historian. Rovan complained that the trial came too late and the only thing that could come from it was pain. In Rovan's opinion the French would try to place too much weight on the trial and act as if "Bolivia gave us Hitler himself." Doing that, feared Rovan, would hurt Franco-German relations, and would ultimately hurt the French themselves.²⁶ As the politicians and writers scrambled to have their views on Barbie printed, perhaps the most poignant statement on Klaus Barbie was one by Philip Potter, a pastor from the Antilles. Tucked neatly under the continuation of a huge article about Jean Moulin's death, a tiny side column several pages deep into February 11th's Le Monde quoted Potter as saying:

In reality, Barbie and his like are the products of your [French] history. Hitler, Barbie, Eichmann and company represent the end of the Aufklärung (century of Enlightenment) which produced four things: the Industrial Revolution, which subordinated man to the machine; the founding of the United States on a declaration of independence where liberty and equality were applied to all men - except for blacks and Indians; - the French Revolution of 1789 where liberty brotherhood, and equality were indeed claimed by the bourgeoisie; and imperialism based on racism. ²⁷

When Barbie arrived in the Montluc Prison in Lyons, this time as a prisoner, he was greeted by his lawyer, Alain de la Servette, head of the Lyons Bar Association. De la Servette, a fairly liberal lawyer of "impeccable reputation" had, like many of his peers, volunteered to defend Barbie. For a young aspiring lawyer, the Barbie trial could be the chance of a lifetime, but de la Servette had already succeeded and though he stood to gain much respect from his peers for taking such a tough case, what he really wanted was a fair trial.²⁸ De la Servette, who had a great deal of experience in criminal law was concerned that because the evidence was overwhelmingly against Barbie and because the charges were so serious, the accused would not be able to receive a fair trial in a country quite hostile to his presence. If Barbie was to be convicted under French law, then he must enjoy its benefits as well. Of all of France's lawyers, de la Servette believed he was the one most qualified to defend Barbie because he had experience, because he avoided politics, and because he had a sense of judicial fairness. If justice were to prevail during the Barbie trial, claimed de la Servette, then that trial must be fair. Unlike all the others who volunteered to defend Barbie, de la Servette, as head of the Lyons Bar Association, was in charge of picking a lawyer for Barbie, so he picked himself for the job.

Keeping with his desire to see Barbie receive a fair judgment, de la Servette brought onto the defense team Robert Boyer, a nationally-renowned priest-turned-lawyer. Boyer, who had earned his reputation as a "champion of the wronged" by defending a man wrongly convicted of murdering a child, served a special purpose on de la Servette's team.²⁹ Specifically, Boyer would serve to counter-act the Church's official condemnation of Barbie and his presence would to boost national respect for de la Servette's defense team.

Unfortunately for de la Servette and Boyer, the Barbie trial had far less to do with justice than it did with memory. It had not to do with just memories of the Occupation but with memories of all of France's inconsistencies over the past forty years. It was not Barbie who was on trial but France, and had de la Servette and Boyer, two lawyers interested in only the legal process of Barbie's trial, remained in charge of the defense team, the trial still would have been disturbing, but chances are that much of France's past would have still remained hidden in its dark closet.

While de la Servette and Boyer ploughed through law books in search for a good defense for Barbie, the pressures of the trial's true nature, a repressed past, begin to exert themselves on the two lawyers. Boyer, who joined de la Servette's team in the face of Church condemnation of Klaus Barbie, was under enormous pressure from the Church to drop out of the case. On his part, de la Servette became increasingly disturbed by bad publicity, death threats, and ridicule he was receiving because he was Barbie's lawyer. The main factor that made de la Servette uncomfortable, however, was the ever-growing pressure put on him by two groups: those who supported Klaus Barbie and those who saw in Barbie's trial the enormous potential to make France answer to its past.

Those who supported Klaus Barbie because they admired him had very little in common with those who wanted the Barbie trial to catalyze France's awakening to its past. Both groups, however, did share one interest, they did not want the "fair," quiet trial de la Servette and Boyer were preparing for. Trouble for the defense team began when François Genoud, a Swiss businessman who was a Nazi both during and after World War Two, offered to bankroll Barbie's defense and give advice to the defense team. Although de la Servette rejected Genoud's offer once he figured out who Genoud was, he hesitantly allowed Genoud an advisory role on Barbie's defense team.³⁰ For Genoud, de la Servette was running the wrong sort of trial, and he worried that his enemies, the Jews, would benefit from such a trial. Genoud was convinced that the Jews as a group were trying to use the Barbie trial boost support for Zionism by drawing attention to the Holocaust, something whose existence he denied. From the minute he heard that Barbie had been extradited to France, Genoud was looking for a way to prevent him from being punished for doing his duty. What Genoud really wanted though, was the trial and punishment of those who were trying, judging, and convicting Klaus Barbie. As it turns out, this desire was shared by the least likely of allies.

On the far opposite end of the political spectrum from François Genoud was the man who held the key to the closet of France's past. His name was Jacques Vergès, and he was the living, breathing icon of France's inconsistencies, both past and present. The last thing in the world Vergès wanted was for the Barbie trial to run the way France wanted it to, that is, a trial that would glorify the Resistance and bring attention to the Holocaust. Such an outcome was intolerable for Vergès who was a sworn enemy of both the French Resistance and Israel. Although he could not have cared less about what happened to Klaus Barbie, Barbie and the Occupation were in the national spotlight, and he saw the perfect opportunity to push the rest of France's history on stage as well. For Vergès, who had tried in vain since the mid-fifties to make France answer to its past, the Barbie trial was not only a battle against his enemies, but a once in a lifetime chance to make the world listen to what he thought was the truth. All he needed to do was to convince de la Servette that he, Jacques Vergès, a half-Vietnamese and wholly Leftist lawyer, was the man for the job or if that did not work, get rid of de la Servette.

With the help of the Nazi, Genoud, Vergès forced his way onto de la Servette's team. Initially, de la Servette welcomed the help of such an intelligent, prominent lawyer, but when it became apparent that Vergès wanted far more than to defend an old man against the wrath of a nation, he began to worry. De la Servette feared mostly that Verges' increased presence would turn the Barbie trial into a media circus. Just as Vergès had done to numerous other trials, he promised to do the same for Barbie's trial and, in doing so, would potentially distract France from what de la Servette thought was the real issue, a fair trial. De la Servette's fears proved correct; and no sooner had Vergès arrived than had the press. Unlike de la Servette and Boyer, Vergès was loud and did not hesitate to use the media to voice his opinions. In a matter of days, all of France knew that Vergès, who was already infamous for his courtroom tirades and his method of "attacking the prosecution," promised to do the same for the Barbie case. With Vergès on the case, it would be France sitting in the box for the accused and not Barbie, and de la Servette and Boyer wanted no part of Vergès' politicized courtroom shenanigans. On June 15, 1983, de la Servette and Boyer resigned as Barbie's attorneys and handed the entire task of defending Barbie over to Vergès.³¹ With de la Servette gone, Vergès, "a man with a mission to create moral discomfort," was free to run the show his way when he promised that "this trial will hurt France," he would disappoint nobody.³²

To understand Jacques Vergès is to understand the true nature of the Barbie trial, and all one has to do to understand Vergès is look at his life. From the moment of his birth in 1925, in Thailand, Vergès had experienced racial hatred firsthand. His father, Raymond Vergès, a French doctor and a diplomat, had lost his job because he married a Vietnamese woman, something Frenchmen were simply not allowed to do in those days. The same racism that cost Raymond Vergès his career would play an important role in shaping the personalities of his biracial twin sons, Jacques and Paul. For the Vergès twins, growing up half-Asian on the island colony of Reunion in the Thirties would be tough and they would be victims of the racism that went along with imperialism for their entire lives. Everywhere around him, said Jacques Vergès of his youth, he saw racism, and where he saw racism he saw the evils of unfairness, and when he saw unfairness he became angry. When the young Jacques Vergès was treated as a second-class citizen, he became angry; when he saw native coolies being kicked by their white passengers, he became angrier; and when saw African men working fourteen hours a day on the docks for just a few scraps of food, he barely managed to contain his rage. One of the few political groups on Réunion that did not exclude non-whites was the island's budding communist party, and Jacques Vergès, hater of imperialism and its racist colonial system, joined along with his father and brother. When news reached Réunion in 1940 that some French were actively resisting the Germans and the collaborators, Jacques Vergès wanted to help them. In 1942, even though he was only seventeen, he joined the Resistance but because France was blockaded, he wound up with the Free French in Britain under the command of General Charles de Gaulle.

Towards the end of the war against Germany, Vergès would discover the truth about the inseparability of French nationalism and French imperialism. For the French, the smooth transition from a war of liberation to a war protect the colonies seemed natural, but for Vergès it was not. When the natives of the Algerian city of Constantine rose up against the French just one week after Hitler's suicide, the French reaction was swift and brutal. The Algerians counted 40,000 victims of the repression, but the French admitted to only 1,500.³³ As Vergès later recalled, he was horrified by the repression of the Constantine revolt:

I was still in the Resistance and I was terribly shocked. I didn't understand how they [the Resistance] could fight Hitler then turn around and do that. Two years later there was a similar repression in Madagascar. The Nuremburg trials were taking place at the time. I simply could not understand how nations could hold these trials so that the sort of thing the Germans did would never happen again. It was clear that the victorious colonial nations were doing exactly what the Germans had done in France.³⁴

Besides having a passionate hatred for colonialism and racism, Vergès also had talent. While at the Sorbonne, Vergès discovered that he had a special flair for public speaking and for getting others to see things his way. In 1949, he became president of the AEC (Association for Colonial Students), and quickly turned the group into a militant organization. One of the more active members of Vergès' student organization and one who influenced Vergès very much as over the years was the young Pol Pot, who was studying Radio-Physics at the Sorbonne. Pol Pot was so involved in the "revolutionary activities" of Vergès' group that he was forced to leave Paris when he failed his exams.³⁶ Although Pol Pot quickly moved to bigger and even more radical things than the AEC, he remained one of Vergès' lifelong friends. As was the case for his friend Pol Pot, the AEC was but the first step in a journey that would take Vergès around the world and across the political spectrum.

The Communist Party knew Vergès had talent too and in 1950, they sent him to Prague to lead a youth organization there.³⁷ For four years in Prague³⁸ , Vergès was immersed in Party doctrine and on one occasion even met Joseph Stalin. Although he was influenced by Party training to a degree, perhaps the most important aspect of Vergès' experience in Prague were the lifelong friendships he forged with other young Communists, many of whom were from Third World countries and many of whom would be active leaders and fighters over the decades to come. All Vergès needed now was something to struggle against and as France tried to tighten the grip on its empire, he found his calling.

Of all the post-war powers, it would be France that conducted the grandest struggle against those who were fighting to remove the shackles of colonialism. For the French, who were from recovering from the psychological wounds inflicted on them during the Occupation, reasserting France's stature in the world became a matter of utmost importance. The best way to recover from the spectacularly quick defeat by the Germans and from the shameful acts of the Vichy Regime, would be for the Fourth Republic to boost its esteem by reasserting France as a world power. In terms of world power, France, which was no longer an economic or military leader following World War Two, had only its crumbling empire. Unlike the British, the other big colonial power, the French considered their empire part of France and the colonized peoples potential Frenchmen. Thus, to lose part of that empire was to lose part of France on more the just an economic level. France may have lost World War Two twice, but it was not going to lose its empire.

Although the colonies were considered eternally bonded to France by many French, most of the colonized who were fed up with the oppression, exploitation, and racism of imperialism did not see things the same way. When the colonized began to revolt, the French reaction was swift and brutal. In 1945, when Muslims revolted in Algeria, tens of thousands were killed by French colonial authorities and the 1947 repression in Madagascar was even more violent. Ironically, the brutality of the colonial suppressions worked against their intended purpose of strengthening the empire and therefore France. Instead, the native populations became even more alienated from the French and massive reform would be required to save French imperialism. That reform was laid out in the Fourth Republic's constitution when the empire was renamed the French Union and the colonial peoples were given a small amount of autonomy as well as a few seats in parliament. The "reforms," however, changed none of the largest problems of imperialism, like racism or exploitation, and in the face of the lack of change, the colonized began to revolt.

The first war the French would fight to preserve their empire started in 1946 in Indochina (now Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia). From the outset it was apparent that the French were losing their grip on the region but it was not until 1954, when they were defeated by the Communist-nationalist Ho Chi Minh at their stronghold at Dien Bien Phu, that they official let go. What especially sickened Vergès about the Indochinese war was that much of the fighting and oppression was done not by the French themselves but by mercenaries from Senegal and the Congo. For Vergès, it was clear that the colonized had the moral upper-hand and that imperialism was only a destructive process that pitted whites against natives and natives against each other.³⁹ Like many others who had suffered under and therefore opposed imperialism, Vergès knew Indochina was only the beginning.

While the French were still coping with the loss of Indochina, another, much larger and much more important revolt was taking form. This time the colony was Algeria, right across the Mediterranean; and this time both colonizer and colonized really had something at stake. Algeria, which was more important to France than the rest of the empire combined, had been a French colony for two hundred years and more than a million Europeans, mostly French, called it home. Economically, Algeria was both profitable and vital for France as the colonial system there yielded France enormous agricultural benefits and the recent discovery of oil in Algeria's southern desert promised a very profitable future. If losing Indochina was regrettable, then losing Algeria was unthinkable.

What Algeria offered in terms of economic reward, it lacked in moral progress. The white regime in Algeria, which had openly sided with Vichy during the war, was a notoriously racist bastion of old French conservancy. To the dismay of most Frenchmen, the Algerian colonial government refused to yield any political or economic concessions to the overwhelming native majority. Faced with a refusal to give them even the most basic of rights, the natives had a choice, submit to imperialism or fight. When it came apparent that the white colonists, or pieds noirs (literally "black feet"), would never give them more than a few superficial rights, bombs began to go off.

When the Algerian Muslims revolted in 1954, the obvious response was to for France to protect the colonial regime in the name of preserving the empire and therefore France itself. Many of those who fought in Indochina and Algeria had also served in the Resistance and saw the colonial wars and the Resistance as part of a larger battle to protect France. Thus, for the men and women who fought for Algerie Française, the war to keep Algeria was no different than the war fought to liberate France from the Nazis, and by fighting to preserve the empire, they were fighting to preserve France. Although many French, especially the generation of the Resistance, supported the colonial wars at first, there was also an large segment of the population, mainly young people, who opposed using violence and economic oppression to maintain an empire. When résistant Vergès, however, saw France sending her armies off to yet another war of racism and oppression, he knew on which side of the line he fell. As Erna Paris put it, "Jacques Vergès was set on a collision course with his former [Resistance] comrades who now defended colonialism."⁴⁰

With years of pent-up anger towards colonialism and with his Communist training and ideals, Jacques Vergès the attorney was from the start a firebrand. Vergès did not take just any case, he took just the ones he wanted and those were the controversial ones. In France, in 1954, where political parties of all kinds flourished, where the men who ran Vichy were running the Fourth Republic, and where the veterans of the Resistance were calling for wars in the colonies, there was no shortage of controversy. Vergès' first major case was to defend a group of communist militants who had tried to disrupt the departure of a trainload of draftees headed for Algeria. He fought passionately and won.⁴¹ But just as he seemed headed for a fruitful career as a politicized attorney for the Communists, Vergès got a taste of the PCF politics, and was sorely disappointed. Specifically, as Vergès identified more and more with the Moslem rebels, who like himself were treated as second-class citizens in their own country, the PCF pulled the rug out from under him by conforming to the Fourth Republic's foreign policy and therefore supported the colonial war with Algeria. For the Communists, conforming to the Republic was just another turnabout in a long series of political maneuvering, but for Vergès it amounted to betrayal.⁴² Thus ended Vergès' career as a French Communist.

By mid-1956, the various factions of the Algerian nationalists who launched guerrilla attacks against the French presence in Algeria were united by the Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN). Even though the French had tried to make concessions to appease those responsible for the guerrilla attacks, the FLN was not appeased when it discovered the superficial nature of those concessions. As the rebel attacks intensified, French troops began to pour into Algeria and by 1958 over 500,000 French troops had been deployed to protect French interests. What had started as a an expedition to protect French interests soon became a war of attrition, and both sides used tactics that can only be described as barbaric. For the FLN revolutionaries, war often meant planting bombs in crowded cafés and firing mortar shells into open-air markets. The French, however, were no less brutal in their efforts to stop the guerrilla attacks and many French military commanders used torture to interrogate their prisoners and, more importantly, as a means of intimidation. The use of torture was widespread and as personal diaries of many French soldiers in Algeria recall, Vergès' remark that "the French were Nazis in Algeria"⁴³ was not too far off the mark: "The captured terrorist...was to expect harsh treatment from the French army if he did not give the 'requested information,' in which case 'specialists must force the secret from him."⁴⁴

As pitched battles were being fought on the streets of Algiers, Vergès brought the war into the courtroom. During the Algerian war, Vergès made his name by defending men and women accused of terrorism against France. His strategy was to "disrupt" and his goal was public attention, not legal victory. The case that transformed Vergès into a nationally-known figure was his defense of Djamila Bouhired, a twenty-year-old Algerian woman accused of planting bombs in two cafés in Algiers that were popular with European young people.⁴⁵ Instead of trying to defend Bouhired, Vergès used the occasion to publicly attack the French army, the government, and the judicial system. During his defense speeches, in which he was trying to get his audience to understand why Bouhired hated the French enough to blow up their cafés, Vergès condemned the atrocities conducted by the French army in Algeria and the inherent unfairness of the imperial system that the government supported. As passionate as Vergès' speeches were, they could not save his client and Bouhired was sentenced to death. Soon after the trial, however, several journalists demanded that Bouhired be released on the account of her youth. The rabble-rousing worked, and by 1962 Bouhired was freed.

By defending Bouhired, Vergès became one of the first of a growing number of people who devoted themselves increasing public awareness about the Algerian War. When Vergès spoke, he often shocked people, and when people are shocked, they tend to listen. Soon whole publishers, most notably Les Editions de Minuit⁴⁶, devoted themselves to printing anti-war books and Vergès was one of the most successful authors of this genre.

As the ranks of those who opposed the Algerian War both grew in size and prestige, Vergès' reputation grew as well. The increased attention made Vergès even more bold, but his disruptive tactics earned him a two-month stint in prison for "attempting to undermine the security of the state" and cost him his license to practice law.⁴⁷ In November 1960, Vergès, fresh out of jail and chomping at the bit, made his second major public appearance. This time Vergès, with or without an official license, would defend members of the Jeanson network, a group of intellectuals who openly and actively opposed French control of Algeria. Building on the success of his previous strategy, Vergès and his clients used the case to voice their views to the international press and, as the attention mounted, Vergès knew exactly how to use it. In the glare of the spotlights and with all eyes on him, Vergès was at his best. Vergès was only at his best when he was angry and, in 1960, just as the war in Algeria was reaching its peak, he was furious. It was during Vergès' ferocious cross examinations that Paul Teitgen, secretary general of the police in Algiers, publicly admitted to the use of torture. And it was Vergès, who after his tirades against the French military and government, got to produce a letter from Jean-Paul Sartre denouncing the French presence in Algeria.⁴⁸ With the letter from Sartre, France became polarized, much like the U.S. became polarized during the Vietnam War, and in the glow of political chaos basked Jacques Vergès.

In France, the Algerian crises wreaked havoc in the Fourth Republics's administration. As the war intensified and the losses mounted, an increasingly vocal minority within the National Assembly began to push for negotiations between the French and the FLN. Negotiation, for the most part, was unpopular because of Algeria's perceived importance to France, and this unpopularity was spearheaded by the Right's harsh opposition to any sort of compromise regarding France's sovereignty over Algeria. When it became clear that those who favored negotiation were gaining power, extremist Right-wing groups, most notably ones with close ties to pied noirs, hatched a plot to overthrow the Fourth Republic and replace it with a military regime. Like the general public, the government contained groups that both violently opposed and violently supported the French presence in Algeria. In May, 1958, the Cabinet openly confronted the National Assembly, and in response, Right-wing extremists took to the streets. With the Right-backed military growing politically bolder by the day, a coup seemed imminent, and just as France had turned to Joan of Arc and Marshall Pétain in its times of need, it turned to its newest great figure, Charles de Gaulle. With the approval of the National Assembly, de Gaulle took full powers on June 1, 1958, and in putting an end to the Fourth Republic, he put an end to the threat of a military coup. With the end of the Fourth Republic also came the end to the French empire because de Gaulle believed that stability could only be achieved by ending the war in Algerian and order to end the war, one had to negotiate.

When France gave independence to Algeria, de Gaulle faced yet another crisis, recovering from the loss of Algeria. One the first effects of Algeria's loss was the flood of pied noirs and pro-French Arabs into France, and as a result of France's painful withdrawal from Algeria, many groups felt betrayed. De Gaulle had a simple solution: pardon everybody, both Algerians and French, for what they did in Algeria, and move on. Just as the Fourth Republic forgot the ambiguities of the Occupation to preserve itself, the Fifth Republic quickly forgot the trauma of Algeria for the same reason. By pardoning everyone, including the torturers, the controversy of what took place in Algeria was ignored and because it was ignored, it could create no instability. Although France could ignore what had happened in Algeria for the sake of French unity just as it pardoned many of those responsible for the Vichy regime, the democratic nature of French society ensured the France would eventually have to face the past.

While France was busy forgetting Algeria, Jacques Vergès was making it his mission to make sure France never forgot anything. He saw the French crimes in Algeria as comparable to those the Nazis committed during the Holocaust, and when the Fifth Republic dismissed those crimes just for the sake of political unity, Vergès became furious. The national push to bury the memories of Algeria, however, created an atmosphere where it was impossible for even Vergès to attack. He would have to wait, and as he waited for the right moment to strike, his rage built.

By 1962, the war in Algeria was over. The Fourth Republic of Pierre Mendès had fallen and in its place arose the Fifth Republic of General de Gaulle. When Algeria finally won its independence, Vergès chose to move there and convert to Islam. In 1963, Vergès, now a Muslim, married Djamila Bouhired, whom he made his name by defending. For their honeymoon, the couple went to China to visit Chairman Mao and Vergès returned an avid Maoist and officially dropped out of the PCF.⁴⁹ The reason for his break with the PCF was simple, they did not support his battle against colonialism whereas the Maoists did, and without that battle, Vergès would have nothing.

Just as soon as his old enemy, colonialism, had fallen in Algeria, Jacques Vergès had acquired a new enemy, Israel. In the aftermath of the Algerian war, Vergès began to grow closer to radicals in the Third-World who opposed the remnants of imperialism in their region. These radicals represented all parts of the political spectrum and came from dozens of ethnic groups, but one thing almost all of them agreed on was that Israel was a growing bastion of imperialism in a world where imperialism was supposed to be collapsing. In order to stop imperialism, the Third-World radicals believed they had to stop Israel because they feared its "the real ambition...was to annex the entire Middle East."⁵⁰ With Israel around, imperialism would never die, and when many Third-World leaders began to oppose Israel, Jacques Vergès, anti-colonialist extraordinaire joined them. To consider Jacques Vergès an anti-semite is probably a mistake, but it is absolutely true that he opposed Israel's existence body and soul, and like others who opposed Israel, he often blurred the line distinction between "Zionist" and "Jew." Thus, it should have been no surprise that when PFLP terrorists were being tried for hijacking El Al planes in 1969, Vergès appeared as their attorney. Again, Vergès employed his strategy of disruption by claiming the terrorists' acts were political, not criminal, and that Israel was to be blamed for the El Al passengers' deaths, not the Palestinians.⁵¹ As in his previous cases, his defendants were found guilty, but in the process of their trial, their cause was well publicized thanks to their provocative attorney.

By 1970, Jacques Vergès was one of the most formidable lawyers in the world. Vergès, however, was more than just an outspoken lawyer, he was a man with a cause and there seemed no shortage of battles for him to fight. No matter where he went, Vergès was followed by a hoard of eager reporters waiting to hear his newest accusation and, for the first time, when he spoke, even his enemies listened. In short, he had it all. Then, the strangest thing happened. Vergès, one of the world's most active and most prominent anti-colonialists, just disappeared off the face of the earth. Naturally, there was much speculation that one of Vergès' numerous enemies had finally decided to do away with him. Perhaps some pieds noirs blamed him for the loss of Algeria. Maybe the Mossad, Israel's secret service, had decided he was too much a nuisance. Or perhaps one of myriad other groups decided the world was better off without him. But in truth, nobody knew what happened and for the next eight years, his fate remained a mystery.

Then, just as suddenly as he disappeared, Jacques Vergès reappeared. In 1978 he was spotted buying groceries in Paris but when reporters asked about his missing years, he remained uncharacteristically silent. Even in 1983, all he had to say about his disappearance was, "I am a discreet man. I stepped through the looking glass, where I served an apprenticeship..."⁵² Whatever the reason for Vergès' absence, it did not change him much and he returned the same disruptive anti-colonial, anti-Israel lawyer that he had been eight years before.

Just as he did in the in fifties and sixties, Vergès took up political cases and his specialty soon became defending terrorists and just as in the fifties and sixties, most of Vergès' clients were found guilty of the crimes of which they were accused. Over the next five years, Vergès defended terrorists from both ends of the political spectrum. He defended Neo-Nazi bombers and Armenian plane hijackers alike.⁵³ As long as the case was political, and as long as his clients were fighting against either the French establishment or Israel, Jacques Vergès was happy to provide his services. As was reflected by a low win rate so low that he earned the nickname "Monsieur Guillotine," Vergès' priorities in the courtroom had little to do with protecting the freedom of his clients. When he defended his radical clients, he used his well-known "attack the prosecution" method of defense and even if he did not win the case, he would bring attention to his client's and ultimately his own cause. Another important aspect of Vergès' cases during the early 80s was that they revealed and bond between groups on the far left and on the far right. Although Neo-Nazis and Third-World leftists should have hated each other with a passion, they had one goal in common, the destruction of the status quo, and because of that goal they often cooperated. It was through this merger of the extreme ends of the political spectrum that Neo-Nazis gave weapons to African and Asian militants while anarchists smuggled white-supremists in and out of various countries. It was also through this merger that Vergès made connections with the neo-fascists and ex-Nazis. Thus, there was nothing awkward about the request for help Vergès received from the Swiss Nazi François Genoud about a week after Klaus Barbie's forced return to France in 1983. Genoud wanted Vergès' help defending Barbie and Vergès instantly complied. Within an hour, Vergès was on a plane to Geneva and after a brief meeting with Genoud, he flew to Lyons to meet his client.

When Klaus Barbie realized that the half-Asian man who came to visit him in Montluc Prison was going to be his lawyer, he was shocked. Barbie simply could not understand why anyone but another Nazi would want to defend him. As Vergès later recalled, Barbie's first words to him came in the form of a question: "Why is it that you are defending me today?"⁵⁴ Vergès, of course, knew exactly why. For Vergès, the Barbie case presented the chance to tie all the loose ends that had been accumulating over the years. Unlike cases involving contemporary terrorists, Barbie's trial concerned crimes the took place forty years earlier and, because of that, promised to delve deep into national history. If the court could examine crimes from the 1940s, then bringing up crimes from the 50s and 60s would not be too difficult. It was the crimes of the 50s and 60s, specifically those the French committed in Indochina and Algeria, the Vergès wanted to address. Furthermore, there was an added bonus in the Barbie trial; the defendant was being accused against crimes against humanity. If France could accuse Barbie of such an immense crime, then Vergès, using the same logic, could apply equal weight to what happened in France's struggle to maintain its empire. Thus, the immensity of the Barbie trial finally provided Vergès with the means to do what he had long dreamed of, to topple imperialism and all of its facets, especially French society and Israel, in the courtroom.

References for Chapters 4 and 5

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