France A Verdict on the Butcher

By Frederick Painton

Throughout his eight-week trial on charges of crimes against humanity, Klaus Barbie, the Gestapo commander of Lyons during World War II, showed no sign of remorse and no great interest in defending himself. Except for three days at the beginning of the proceedings and two forced appearances in order to be identified by witnesses, Barbie exercised his right under French law to boycott the courtroom. The ailing Barbie, 73, seemed almost indifferent to the outcome of the trial. Instead of facing his accusers, he remained in his three-cell complex in St. Joseph prison.

But on the last day of his trial, the accused was ordered to be present. Looking drawn and tired, he stood expressionless last week while Presiding Judge Andre Cerdini read the verdict that had been reached after more than six hours of deliberation by nine jurors and three judges. The former SS officer was found guilty on all 341 counts of crimes against humanity. His sentence, the maximum, was life imprisonment.

As the verdict was read, a spontaneous burst of applause and cheers broke out from the spectators jammed together at the back of the courtroom. From outside in the street came more shouts of joy and the sound of cars honking. When Barbie's lawyer, Jacques Verges, appeared on the steps of the courthouse, an angry mob began forming, and from the crowd came shouts of "SS!" and "Assassin!" Police quickly moved to protect the lawyer, who had challenged not only France's moral right to try Barbie but also the testimony of his victims.

The outcome of the trial had never been in doubt. The evidence against Barbie was overwhelming. From the testimony of French Jews and Resistance fighters, Barbie's chief victims, came a portrait of a particularly brutal fanatic with a taste for sadism. In his final, calm but chilling summing up, Prosecutor Pierre Truche said, "This is not the trial of a German but of a torturer. It is of a man still loyal to his Nazi ideals."

While acknowledging that Barbie was a comparatively minor figure in the Nazi hierarchy, Truche accused him of cruelty far beyond the line of duty. "Was it necessary to strike Madame Lise Lesevre 19 times when he already knew she was in the Resistance?" the prosecutor demanded. "Was it necessary to deport her husband and son, who were not in the Resistance?" Truche pointed out that Barbie did not need to arrest 44 Jewish children in one school and have them shipped to Nazi death camps. Nor was it necessary to send 650 people, including a dozen children, to camps on the second-to-last convoy to leave France. Said Truche: "A crime against humanity presupposes a plunge into inhumanity. This plunge you have experienced here with these men and women, who have told us what they never dared tell those closest to them."

In 1983, when Barbie was deported to France by Bolivia, where he had fled to avoid prosecution, many believed that he would never be brought to court because he knew too much about treachery and informants within the French Resistance. Indeed, Barbie had bragged that he would reveal the extent of French collaboration with the Nazi occupiers. Many French feared the result would rip open barely healed wartime divisions among themselves. It turned out, however, that the French followed the trial with calm rather than passion. The proceedings were regarded almost as a history lesson rather than an occasion to refight painful and never forgotten war experiences.

Barbie's defense during the trial was in the hands of his controversial lawyer, Verges, a flamboyant Marxist with strong sympathies for Third World causes. The lawyer, who is known for taking on the legal defense of accused terrorists, brought in to help him Jean-Martin M'Bemba, 45, an attorney from Brazzaville in the Congo, and Nabil Bouaita, 36, a lawyer from Algiers. In the closing days of the trial, Verges and his two aides began the long-advertised attempt to put France rather than Barbie on trial. Verges sought to shift the focus of attention from Barbie to the alleged crimes of France, other West European countries and the U.S. in the Third World. The lawyer demanded of the court, "Do crimes against humanity only merit this name when they are committed against Europeans?"

Following up on Verges' theme, M'Bemba cited the 1947 murder of thousands of rebellious Africans by French settlers in Madagascar. "Can we judge Barbie after what happened then?" asked M'Bemba. "If there is a race that has been perpetually oppressed from slavery until now, it is the Negro race." When the Congolese lawyer said he had shaken Barbie's hand as a mark of respect when he met him, a murmur ran through the courtroom. M'Bemba snapped back, "I can understand your reaction. You have not lived what I have lived."

An uproar occurred in court when Lawyer Bouaita described himself as a "Semite defending an anti-Semite." He drew a comparison between Barbie's actions in the SS and alleged Israeli complicity in the Sabra and Shatila massacres in Lebanon in September 1982. "There is no hierarchy of atrocity," he said, "no discrimination between cemeteries, no differences between suffering." When Bouaita denounced the "nazification of the Jewish-Israeli people" and accused the Israelis of responsibility for a "Palestinian genocide," the courtroom erupted with whistles and shouts.

After conducting such diversionary tactics, Verges surprised many in the courtroom by launching into a classic defense of Barbie, attacking what the lawyers claimed were inconsistencies in the evidence and testimony presented by the prosecution. "I am not saying this to mock the witnesses," said Verges, "but after 40 years memories become confused." Not above a bit of theatrics, he called the expulsion of Barbie from Bolivia illegal and, as such, a "dishonor for France."

After Verges finished his closing arguments, the court ordered that Barbie be brought in to hear the 341 charges against him. Asked if he had anything to say, Barbie, looking frail in a gray suit, light blue shirt and necktie, replied in French, "I did not carry out the arrests ((of the 44 Jewish children)). I did not have the authority to order the deportations. I fought hard against the Resistance, which I respect. That was war, and the war is over."

Barbie, however, was no ordinary soldier merely doing his duty. Nor was World War II just another war to be gradually forgotten. That was why France put Barbie on trial, so that a ceremony of justice, however belated and imperfect, could bring some solace for his victims and a record for future generations.

With reporting by William Dowell/Lyons