Sympathy for Salan

The outcome of the trial stunned France. In the dimly lit courtroom of the Palais de Justice, ex-General Raoul Salan had openly accepted responsibility for armed rebellion against De Gaulle's government and for more than 400 documented killings committed by his Secret Army Organization in Algeria. His deputy in the S.A.O., ex-General Edmond Jouhaud, had already been condemned to death. Two days before the Salan trial ended, an official asked newly appointed Justice Minister Jean Foyer where Salan should be imprisoned if his life were spared; Foyer dismissed the question as an "idiotic assumption." But last week, after deliberating 2 1/2 hours, the nine-man military tribunal found "extenuating circumstances" and sentenced Salan not to death but to life imprisonment.

A joint labor union communique called the verdict "scandalous," and the influential Paris newspaper Le Monde described it as "a trial for nothing, climaxing a war for nothing." In Algeria, the Moslem F.L.N. was enraged, and asserted that in the light of the verdict S.A.O. gunmen will conclude that they have nothing to fear from French justice. Apparently just as furious, De Gaulle met with his Cabinet. Algerian Affairs Minister Louis Joxe saw the verdict as a "blow at the morale of the forces of order, particularly the gendarmerie," which has done most of the fighting against the S.A.O. De Gaulle cried angrily: "There's no more state. There's no more democracy. It can't go on like this!" He bitterly contrasted his popular support among the mass of Frenchmen with the "resistance" on the part of the army and the judiciary.

Unpursued Lead. Despite De Gaulle's indignation, Paris was alive with the rumor that a deal had been made in which Salan's silence was the price of clemency. The weekly Canard Enchaine hinted at such a bargain in an issue published 18 hours before the verdict was handed down. In his statement to the court, Salan made the flat charge that in May 1958, when he was military commander in Algeria and led the army's pro-De Gaulle revolt against the Fourth Republic, he was also prepared to conduct a military operation against the French mainland and Paris on orders of De Gaulle himself. For some reason, Salan's lawyers failed to pursue this lead.

What Salan's chief attorney, showboating, right-wing Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour, did try to prove in court was that his client was continuously duped by De Gaulle. He produced in court a previously unpublished letter, dated Oct. 24, 1958, in which De Gaulle flatly promised Salan that his government would never deal politically with the Algerian F.L.N. Yet fully two months before the letter was written, Tixier-Vignancour cried sarcastically, De Gaulle's agent and present Premier, Georges Pompidou, "had already made contact" with the F.L.N. on political questions and had reported to De Gaulle that "the result was encouraging." Tixier-Vignancour made another persuasive point: that an amnesty movement was being organized in the National Assembly proposing forgiveness of all S.A.O.

crimes committed up to April 22, 1962.

"If Salan is executed, and the amnesty is voted three days later," cried Tixier-Vignancour, "a whole lifetime would not be enough to repair that error." He concluded: "Let us not sow in the future the seed of discord for a generation which is, gentlemen, in your hands."

Dying Core. What had probably influenced the nine judges more than any possible deals, more than courtroom melodrama, was the desire not to create a martyr and to keep the French right from being totally alienated. Since the April trial of ex-General Jouhaud, condemned to death by the same tribunal, the atmosphere has changed. Earlier, there seemed strong possibility that Moslems and Europeans might eventually live together in peace in Algeria, and the S.A.O.'s terror seemed all the worse against the backdrop of this hope. By the time Salan went on trial, the situation had deteriorated: the S.A.O. hard core seemed prepared to die rather than be ruled by Moslems, and the iron discipline of the Moslems themselves was cracking, suggesting that a massacre of Europeans might follow the French army's eventual withdrawal. This prospect, even though Salan and his S.A.O.

bear the major responsibility for it, paradoxically brought him some sympathy.

In the courtroom, the verdict was tumultuously received. Right-wing standees in the court yelled, howled, clapped their hands. Someone began singing the Marseillaise, and Lawyer Tixier-Vignancour stiffened to attention, bellowing out the chorus. Salan was visited in prison afterward by his 16-year-old daughter, Dominique, and told her: "I lived those last minutes of the trial in a dream. Then I saw all those people, so still and quiet all afternoon, suddenly jump up and shout and sing the Marseillaise. Magnificent! Me--I was in a fog."

The Salan verdict inspired the attorneys of his condemned deputy, ex-General Jouhaud, to appeal for a new trial. While the French Supreme Court took the matter under advisement, Jouhaud was granted a stay of execution. But there were suggestions that the angry De Gaulle might still insist on his death. The government promptly began using Jouhaud's fate as a political weapon to try to subdue the S.A.O. His life, French authorities hinted broadly, depended on the S.A.O. terrorists' immediately easing up on their attacks against Moslems in Algeria. At week's end, the S.A.O. seemed not yet to have got the message: as before, they continued to kill from 30 to 50 Moslems a day.

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