See also: Rods

Jacques Vergès is a lawyer French born the March 5th 1925 in Ubon Ratchatani in Thailand. It is famous for its convictions anticolonialists, for his past of old resistant, but also to have defended an author of Crimes against humanity, Klaus Barbie at the time of its lawsuit with Lyon in 1987.

Childhood and adolescence

Wire of a teacher Vietnam ienne and of the doctor Raymond Rods, consul of France in its birthplace, he is the brother of the Politician Paul Vergès, of which he would be the twin.

As from the death of their mother which has occurred whereas it is three years old, it lives with the Réunion, where part of its ancestors are established since the end of the 17th century and sometimes carries out from this island some briefs stays with Madagascar. The family settles initially with Saint-Denis, then with Hell-Borough and finally with Saint-Andrew.

He is sensitized very early with the policy: in the twelve years age, it takes part with his brother in a large procession of the Popular front which will mark it, in the Port. Its youth is moreover the occasion to attend future leaders. Child, it has as a classmate the future woman of the politician Pierre Lagourgue. Later, it is provided education for with the Lycée Leconte de Lisle in the same class as Raymond Barre, with which it disputes the place of first.

It obtains its vat at sixteen years and its first year of right the following year. It leaves the Meeting at 17 years and half to engage in the Résistance to the side of the Free French Forces. It will return there on a journey only in 1961 then 1984.

Political commitment

Arrived at Paris, Jacques Vergès adheres in 1945 to the Communist party. In 1950, it is elected member of the office of the Congress of the International union of the students with Prague against the opinion of this last. In 1952, he becomes secretary of the movement, always against the opinion of its party. It remains on the spot until in 1954. It obtains its second year of right there.

From return in France, it obtains its third year in 1955. The same year, it is registered at the Bar of Paris after having passed WRAPPED it. The following year, it is presented to the Contest of the Conference of the bar of Paris, also called Concours of the Conference of the training course Conférence Berryer where it meets Edgar Faure and Gaston Monnerville, inter alia.

The young lawyer anticolonialist request then in PCF and the PSU to deal with businesses in Algeria. He militates then for FLN and defends their combatants, of which emblematic the Djamila Bouhired, which had been captured by the French paras, tortured then judged and condemned to died for bomb attacks in Algérie. In 1965, its customer will become for a few years his wife and they will have 2 children. He leaves PCF in 1957.

With the independence of the Algeria in 1962, Jacques Vergès settles with Algiers and becomes the principal private secretary of the Foreign Minister. It founds then a review third-mondiste financed by FLN, African Révolution . Jacques Vergès meets Mao Zedong in March 1963 and adopts very quickly the theses Maoists. It is then relieved of its functions and must return to Paris. In September, it creates a new review, Révolution , which is then the first newspaper Maoist published in France. In 1965, the dismissal of the president Ben Bella makes it possible Jacques Vergès to return in Algérie. It puts an end then to the review Révolution . He will be lawyer until 1970 in Algiers.

Disappearance

From 1970 with 1978, it disappears: Jacques Vergès always maintained the mystery over this period. To the journalists who asked to him whether it were with the Lebanon, Moscow or if it worked for the Khmer Rouge at Pol Pot, the Kampuchea, J. Rods answered that it was “very in the east of France” and “with friends who are still alive, for which some have important responsibilities. ” “The events, adds it, that we lived together are known. It is our role which is not it; not really mine, which was modest, but theirs. It does not belong to me to speak about it”. Bernard Violet, one of its discussed biographers, advances a business of big money to the Katanga. The judge Thierry Jean-Pierre, who wrote a book on the Vergès brothers, wire-drawer of an escape ahead: “At the time, it is badly. Michel Debré wants his skin, and the Mossad wants to kill it, because it defends of the Palestinians. It leaves the day at the following day, to Asia, agent of the Chinese secret services. They use it in Kampuchea and Vietnam. ” In documentary the the Lawyer of terror , of Barbet spaniel Schroeder, it admits having been punctually present in Paris in a clandestine way for this period.

Lawyer career

The first file that Jacques Vergès managed as a lawyer relates to the Sonacotra. It engages in a defense of rupture (the defendant is done accusing and takes the opinion with witness), rather than the defense in complicity which was classically pled. Since, with the crossroads of the policy and the legal one, it associated its name with many mediatized lawsuits, in particular those of the following personalities:

It appears often put in scene in its office in Bois of iron, true odds and ends decorated with many African objects and in particular with lithographies of Louis Antoine Roussin.

To turn in derision the charge, it takes the practice to introduce its pleadings by the famous one “and it is for that me am disturbed? ” borrowed according to some from famous Marseilles lawyer Me Juanito.

Publications

  • Of the legal strategy , Editions of Midnight, Paris 1er April 1981;
  • to finish some with Pontius Pilate , the Pre one with the clerks, 1er November 1983;
  • Beauty of the crime , Plon, Paris 1988;
  • I defend Barbie (foreword of Jean-Edern Hallier), Jean Picollec, Paris 1988;
  • Justice is a play , Albin Michel, February 27th, 1992;
  • Open letter with become Algerian friends of torture , Albin Michel, October 28th, 1993;
  • My God forgive them , Michel Lafon, 1er November 1995;
  • Intelligence with the enemy , Michel Lafon, 1er January 1996;
  • the luminous Bastard , Michel Lafon, 1er January 1996;
  • I have more memories than if I were thousand years old , Éditions 84, May 6th, 1999;
  • a lawsuit of cruelty with Brazzaville (joint author with Dior Diagne), Jean Picollec, September 15th, 2000;
  • Bloodthirsty men: seven famous businesses , I read, February 26th, 2001;
  • Omar has to kill me - history of a crime , I have Lu, March 21st, 2001;
  • legal Apartheid (joint author with Pierre Marie Welsh), the Age of man, Lausanne 2002;
  • the Suicide of France , Olbia, March 16th, 2002;
  • Dictionary in love with justice , Plon, October 24th, 2002;
  • Miscarriage of justices , University Presses of France - PUF, November 15th, 2002;
  • Justice for the Serb people , the Age of Man, March 1st, 2003;
  • the Democracy with face obscene , the Roundtable, October 7th, 2004;
  • Crimes of State , Plon, March 25th, 2004;
  • Spends the days and spends the weeks: Newspaper of the year 2003-2004 , Plon, February 10th, 2005.
  • Jacques Vergès, the anticolonialist (talks with Jacques Vergès with Philippe Karim Felissi). - Paris: the Cat-like one, coll “History and companies”, 2005. - 116 p., 24 cm. - ISBN 2-86645-584-3.
  • Crimes against humanity massacres in Ivory Coast , Pharos, 276p, April 2006
  • That my wars were beautiful! , Editions of the Rock, April 5th, 2007

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