"Jacques Vergès wrote... that he knew me for 20 or 30 years... as someone polite, discreet... and smiling." "Some say the genocide was wholly intentional." "I say it wasn't." "There were deaths and famine, but it was unintentional." "There was reprehensible repression and torture." "But not on millions of people." "About the number of deaths:" "The mass graves found don't tally with the number of alleged victims." "Torture and crimes were committed, but it was lumped together." "The U.S. Bombardments weren't considered, or the famine from the U.S. Embargo and blockade." "It became a package, and it was all blamed on the Khmers Rouges." "Fiighting in awarseemed risky to me, but an adventure worth having." "And under De Gaulle, a general sentenced to death." "It felt like total happiness." "To me, France isn't the settlers, it's Montaigne, it's Diderot, the French Revolution." "For France to disappear was intolerable to me." "That's why I enlisted." "I could've stepped on a mine and been castrated." "It was one of my big fears." "Or be disfigured, another of my frivolous fears." "It didn't happen." "I'd have lost my nose, but become a hero." "My opinions would have been valued, even though I'd have been bitter." "This is my only warwound:" "Eating oysters in Tremblade, before disembarking at Oléron." "I was so greedy that my British Army knife snapped back on my finger." "Oall it luck, or grace!" "While in France they rejoiced over the victory, here in Algeria on May 8, 1945, it was more like a day of mourning." "The Sétif massacres were on Armistice Day, that's what's so appalling." "The day Gemany surrendered," "Frenchmen slaughtered Algerians." "Numbers always vary in cases like that." "The minimum number is 10,000." "The United States consulate estimated it at 45,000." "May 8, 1945, was the day of the Allies' victory celebration," "and we felt we'd been part of that war." "We called for a peaceful demonstration, with our slogans, and ourflag." "To carry a flag was a crime, an insult to France for the French settlers." "The orders were:" "If you see the Algerian flag, shoot at them." "So the massacre took place." "The place where I was born and grew up, Kherrata, is known to all Algerians for the repressive terror that took place there." "May 8, 1945 stands for Sétif, Guelma and Kherrata." "I'm from Kherrata." "This massacre took place in 1945, and in 1954 the revolution broke out." "The two events are connected." "It was General Duval who said:" ""It got us peace for ten years."" "In a lawsuit in France, one of my clients, a friend, said:" ""I was ten years old," ""my parents drove me to a mass grave" ""and said:" "Never forget that!"" "So those massacres heralded the Algerian revolution." "I was a colonel, in charge of military operations in the autonomous zone ...of greaterAlgiers and became the political-military boss of the autonomous zone which is called "autonomous", because it depended on no one, on no willaya." "Extremist French settlers made a bomb... a powerful one... it killed dozens." "I went there at the time and I helped pull out bodies from the rubble..." "The local people wanted to rush into the European quarter, kill them, start a civil war." "We stopped them... and said:" ""Keep cool, don't do anything." ""We, the FLN army will avenge you."" "For the Milk-Bar." "Stop!" "Go on..." "Excuse me..." "May I pass, sir?" "We needed good-looking girls and boys to infiltrate that world and plant bombs." "That's how... we started recruiting." "First, Djamila Bouhired who lived in the casbah." "I recruited her saying: "Do you agree to do it..." ""to plant bombs?"" "She agreed absolutely." "Then she started to recruit, and so did I." "That'show I assembled a team of girls, and only I decided where bombs would be placed." "It was early in the moming." "I said we're changing hideouts." "We disguised ourselves as women..." "There was Ali La Pointe, the whole group..." "Zohra Drif, was one of us." "As we crossed the casbah to reach our new hideout, suddenly there were patrols." ""Stop!"" "I was 15 meters ahead of the rest," "I turned around with my submachine-gun and I fired..." "Djamila Bouhired was coming, she was the last, carrying the documents..." "She was hit, and they captured her." "The moment she was arrested, we needed a lawyer." "I sent Zohra Drif, who knew Djamila well, we were living together," "to find a lawyer." "I took law in Paris after literature and Far-Eastem languages." "I was admitted to the bar in 1955." "I was 30, so I wasn't a kid but also not very old." "I get to Algiers, and at the time I stayed" "at the Hotel Aleti where Paris lawyers stayed, when an emissary from the Algiers FLN, of the autonomous zone came to see me:" "It was Zohra Drif." "I ask for the lawyerfrom Paris." "I'm told: "Wait, we'll call him."" "Then I see Attorney Vergès." "Big surprise." "First, Vergès, is a very French name, and I see someone who's more like us, by his complexion, his eyes..." "I was wearing a hijab because I was a wanted person, so all you could see was my eyes." "Right away I knew... there was a feeling of mutual trust..." "I let her know that I... who had a Vietnamese mother," "a father from Réunion Island," "I sympathized with the Algerian struggle, and didn't condemn their violence." "I was obsessed by this case as I'd been told she was in a hospital, was tortured on her hospital bed." "Then was handed over to a paratroop regiment." "I went every day to the Law Oourts to get news." "Every day I saw the DA." "One moming, I asked him:" ""Any news of my client?"" "He said:" ""She's being interrogated now."" "I said: "By which prosecutor?"" "He gave me the name and I sped off." "The prosecutor, a bully, asked me why I was there," "I said Djamila's parents hired me to defend her." "I showed my letter of empowerment." "I gave Djamila my most meaningful look, so she'd realize I knew her parents and friends." "The DAtried to make her talk." "I signaled to her she needn't answer." "She refused to answer him." "Muslim terrorists, Djamila Bouhired and Djamila Bouazza to be tried by a military court." "We're in front of what was once the military courthouse, the permanent military tribunal." "This tiny street was filled during the trials by a crowd, a mixed crowd of fascist thugs and paratroopers," "who were in this street and in the courtroom." "We pleaded, with these people behind us, who threatened and growled, and all around were reporters who did this for our clients." "The trial took place in this lynch mob mood, to the point that one day when the spectators interrupted me," "I asked Judge Rouanar:" ""Your Honor, am I in a court of law" ""or a murder plot?"" "We were dealing with idiots." "They had a very limited view of the world:" "I was just a mercenary and a traitor." "My clients and friends were assassins or apes, as they called them." "So they couldn't understand us." "But we could understand them, and how their tiny brains worked." "So it was easy for me, when I felt the mood was getting too calm, to turn around arrogantly, then I'd hear these growls in the courtroom, and I'd ask the Judge:" ""Your Honor," ""is this a nomal trial or a murder plot?"" "Orwhen people shouted "the Ohinaman", to say:" ""Your Honor, must I remind them that" ""when their ancestors ate acoms in the forest," ""mine were building palaces."" "The problem wasn't to play for sympathy, as leftwing lawyers advised us to do, from the murderous fools who judged us," "but to taunt them, to provoke incidents that would reach Paris, London, Brussels or Oairo." "What's nice about the Djamila Bouhired affair, is that Vergès, who told French lawyers to go to hell, who was outspoken, and insulted judges," "suddenly... meeting Djamila Bouhired, a prisonerwho'd just been tortured, he broke down sobbing and was deeply upset." "I don't know if he fell in love with Djamila Bouhired herself, he fell in love with a young woman who shattered him because she'd just been tortured by French officers, and she was totally dignified." "Djamila now appeared as the embodiment of Algeria." "Indeed, at the time of the trial, it was obvious that now the revolution was present in the courtroom and had Djamila's face, and the revolution had hers." "For us, Djamila was a great militant." "She symbolized the struggle for national liberation in Algiers, and all Algeria, and especially for women." "She was an example to all the women who desperately wanted to militate and plant bombs, and take part in armed actions and be present." "At the time we noticed something:" "After her arrest, in many homes where girls were born, they were given the name "Djamila"." "She favored the most offensive defense, she didn't want to yield." "She had said in court:" ""You know nothing about me," ""but you must know that if I'm ordered to place a bomb," ""I'll do it."" "Which is worse for them than saying:" ""I placed a bomb and I'm sorry."" "So he was defending soldiers." "Who, from his point of view, were all committed to that war." "He wasn't trying to get a 6-months shorter sentence from a judge, as is done today in France, by appealing for mercy and all that..." "You can see why he was furious at lawyers who came from Paris and tried that tactic." "That's when was born the idea of using a "rupture defense"." "So that when the judge says:" ""You're French", the prisoner says: "I'm Algerian."" "The judge says:" ""You're in a criminal conspiracy."" "The prisoner says:" ""I'm in the resistance."" "The judge says:" ""You committed murder", he says: "I executed a traitor."" "From then on, no dialogue is possible." "5 death sentences in trial of "two Djamilas"" "Violent incidents:" "Vergès put on notice." "Djamila Bouhired and 5 others were sentenced to death." "When Djamila heard the death sentence, she laughed." "What the Judge said is worthy of an anthology:" ""Don't laugh, Miss, it's serious."" "I found out from a local rightwing lawyer that the prisoners were going to be executed." "A lawyer said to me:" ""Do you care about your client's life?"" "I answered: "More than my own."" ""Then don't waste another minute." ""Mr Lacoste promised us her head."" "So I told my colleagues:" "The only way now to save the prisoners, is to activate French and international public opinion." "Djamila is Algeria's Joan of Arc" "Film made of her life" "Young socialist goes on hunger strike" "Jordan wants her pardoned" "Nehru opposes Algeria executions" "For Djamila 76 British MPs for her pardon" "Ho Chi Minh asks for her pardon" "French President urged to spare her" "Letters, telegrams from all over plead for her" "Pardon for Djamila!" "Germans ask for her pardon" "Death row was in this block." "This was death row?" "It was quite plush..." "Look at this faucet, discreetly hidden." "Those were the toilets." "We did our..." "We washed there and did our..." "You realize..." " Night and day..." " We were shackled." "Hand and foot..." "Ourfeet were shackled..." "Those sentenced to death aren't another species, they're militants who raised themselves to higher spheres, who transcended the problems and the delicate situations that each of them faced." "They were a model for other inmates who emulated their behavior, and based their attitude on those sentenced to death." "When there was a struggle against the Department of Prisons, when those sentenced to death sided with the other inmates, it always worked." "A strike by inmates on death row isn't like an ordinary inmate strike." "There was a great deal of anxiety, and also fear," "but we accepted it, because we knew why we were there." "We were convinced we'd done right." "Someone sentenced to death knows he has 45 days before him to be pardoned or not by the French President." "And once someone on death row hasn't been pardoned, he awaits death every day." "We even prepared the statement we'd make in front of the guillotine." ""Long live free Algeria, Inch'Allah!"" "We couldn't sleep at night." "There were 5 of us:" "Djamila Bouhired, Bouazza, Guerroudj and Netter." "In two cells." "So we couldn't sleep." "In the morning, we heard the keys in the doors, we heard the guillotine being set up" "and wondered: "Will it be us today?"" "God is great!" "We heard them climbing the guillotine steps." "They said "Allah Akbar"" "and we answered "Allah Akbar"" "and sang a patriotic song, and did our traditional walls, and from the casbah the women answered." "We climbed on each other's shoulders knowing that the brothers who'd be executed were behind that wall." "Then we sang patriotic songs, did our traditional walls..." "And the whole city woke up at 4 AM out of solidarity for one of them." "The day following an execution was a day of fasting." "All the inmates fasted." "No coffee in the morning, no soup at noon, no soup in the evening." "It was total silence, everyone prayed, and the people were... they were in a state of extraordinary spirituality." "I've had clients, friends, who were sentenced to death." "Several dozen." " None was executed." " I wanted to ask you..." "I no longer slept." "If any of them had been killed, I'd have shot..." "The writer GeorgesArnaud said to me:" ""What if she's executed?"" "I said: "I'll shoot someone."" "I can get an appointment with Mr Lacoste or General Massu, and I'll shoot him." "Then I'll be at peace with myself." "Luckily, Almighty God didn't want it." "Djamila Bouhired and Jacqueline Guerroudj pardoned" "Their sentences commuted to life at hard labor" "I'd lived in a colonized country, son of a Réunion Island father and a Vietnamese mother." "My childhood memories are of a country where colored people had to step aside to let the Europeans go by." "It was a sight, an unacceptable feeling to young kids like us." "I think he was born at war, born angry," "born colonized." "Once you've been colonized, the only attitude for a man or a woman, is to be against things." "You can't go along with them, make compromises." "So you're against things." "I think he became a lawyer by accident." "It was the only place where he had a venue." "If you took up ams, you'd just be another soldier." "Being an angry lawyer, in a colonized country, you have the best venue there is." "Better than joumalism, or anything else." "All eyes are focused on a duel between two people, one a judge, the other a "terrorist", in quotation marks, and the trial can become memorable, as no one can stop you from talking." "After World War II, colonial student associations regrouped, and new ones were formed." "Like that of the Khmer students, headed by a certain Saloth Sar who later became Oomrade Pol Pot, those groups were fomed then." "Like the Union of Algerian Muslim Students, the UGEMA." "These groups, like the Réunion Students Group which I headed, had liaison committees, our paperwas called "Anticolonialist Students", and we constantly organized demonstrations in the Latin Quarter." "When I tumed 29, it was time to quit being a perennial student:" "I'd done 2 years of Law, I'd do a 3rd year, pass my exams, and be lawyer." "It's not an odious profession, that's all one can say." "On my first case as a public defender, as I sat facing my small-time hoodlum client," "I said to myself: "That guy is me."" ""I could've done what he did," ""if I'd been in his shoes."" "Then I knew it was my calling." "Lawyers were remarkable go-betweens." "We had no telephones to communicate from one jail to another." "How did everyone, overnight, go on strike in every French prison?" "Lawyers were very important links." "That's how I met Jacques Vergès and kept on seeing him." "In jail he was my lawyer, he came to see me." "Here's a story..." "We were 1,200 inmates in Fresnes prison," "200 could read and write, 1,000 couldn't." "After the hunger strikes, we got the right to teach courses." "Ayear later, all 1,200 could read and write, and in 2 languages, Arabic and French." "We even gave music courses." "We had LPs..." "That's revolutionary, too." "Because a revolution isn't a beast that devours its best children, it also saves them." "Bomb blast at Corniche casino 7 dead on dance floor" "I cried one day after the bomb blast at La Oorniche, because I'd sworn" "to stop planting bombs." "Enough of that!" "Why?" "Because they mutilate people." "The deaths I didn't mind, we all have to die." "But people losing their arms and legs, that makes me sick." "So I said, no more bombs." "Enough of that!" "And I fell back into it..." "Once they start executing," "I go back to doing it." "The real question to me is, who does one do it for?" "The difference between the FLN and some groups in France, that carried out bomb attacks, like some local groups, is that Algerians were for their terrorists." "The French weren't for theirs." "Algerian public opinion was pro-terrorist." "Once the battle of Algiers started, all the Algerian lawyers were arrested." "Which meant we had a huge task." "The P.M., Michel Debré, said:" ""These lawyers harm us more than a whole division."" "It's true:" "Morally, the use of torture was a terrifying defeat." "French soldiers aren't torturers!" "In every trial, we'd say torture was used, humanists reproached us for that." "Every case involved torture." "In every case that came up, the Algerian people brought up the use of torture." "Hence the murder of one of us, Ould Aoudia." "We were told to kill them, starting with Attorney Aoudia." "You say you were told." "Who told you?" "Mr Debré, the Prime Minister." "The order was given to shoot the four people defending the group, the four lawyers:" "Ben Abdallah, Oussedik," "Ould Aoudia and me." "We got a letter, anonymous of course, that said: "You too", and below there was a number." "It was very clear." "Vergès was N° 2, so he took it seriously." "He'd sleep at my home, to keep a low profile." "I had a lot of novelty items:" "He loved to take my water-pistol, we'd go out in my car, I drove, he sat beside me, and as soon as he spotted someone at a red light, he'd fire a jet of water and we laughed like kids." "He had such joie de vivre..." "Probably, to relax from the tension of the trials, because he really took risks in the trials." "He insulted the judges, refused to rise for them, sang the Kassamen, the Algerian anthem with the patriots who were on trial, he waved FLN flags in the middle of his pleading," "I mean it was really..." "He could have been arrested at once and jailed." "Once Algeria became independent," "I founded a newspaper with Djamila and Zohra called "African Revolution"." "He put out a call to his old pals in Paris, so I and others went over there, I did the layout." "But I didn't have the freedom I had at L'Express," "Algeria became a drag, more restrictive than France." "I couldn't talk about girls, or booze..." "Ben Bella who ran things there was a bit shocked:" ""Don't print that drawing"" "or "You'll shock real Algerian militants"." "I said: "I've had it" and I quit." ""African Revolution" is what took me to Ohina." "Chinese Spring", by D. Bouhired  J. Vergès" "I realized it was a big moment, I'd make important life-long contacts." "You sense that the Ohinese don't agree with the Russians about "peaceful co-existence."" "They're more committed to the struggle in colonial countries." "On that point, I side with them." "Very soon I got to meet Ohairman Mao." "I filled him in about the activities of pro-Ohinese groups in Africa." "He listened very attentively, maybe out of courtesy." "As we were leaving, he asked me," "indicating Djamila:" ""Will you two get married?"" "I was very surprised by the question, and said: "We're thinking of it."" "If anything was going on between us, we tactfully hid it until she was freed." "In Barberousse, we met in the visiting room." "In the women's wing of Maison Oarrée prison, in summer, sometimes we met our clients in the yard." "Then the prisoners were transferred to France, first to Pau prison, then to Rennes." "I always went to visit her, except that... in early 1961," "I was suspended for a year." "They tried to get rid of us by various means, so I used this 1-year ban to go to Morocco, where I counseled the government on African affairs." "And when Djamila was freed, she and other prisoners went back to Algeria via Morocco." "That's where you got married?" "No." "Jacques is sentimental, much more than I am." "He's desperately sentimental." "I promise you that, I've seen him in certain situations..." "Jacques, is really sentimental." "I'd gone to visit Djamila, her mother didn't approve of her daughter marrying a non-Muslim." "I always said, Jacques:" ""You mustn't convert," ""You'll have to be circumcised, you're nuts," ""and you'll have to give up pork!"" "I reminded him of all the pork we ate, and the wines, he adored vintage Bordeaux, now suddenly he only drank water, he set his alam at 5.30 AM." "And ate dates before breakfast." "We had rows, amicable ones." "I said: "You've really gone down in my book!"" "Some say, but I don't think it's true, that Ben Bella wanted to marry Djamila, not because of her beauty..." "Have you met her?" "Yes." " Is she still as pretty?" " Magnificent." "She's a superb woman." "But she was also a national heroine, and Ben Bella... was ambitious." "I don't think Vergès liked Ben Bella's Algeria." "To him, it lacked a sense of direction." "He wanted to steer it closer to the Ohinese model." "The ideas in "African Revolution" didn't agree with those of President Ben Bella at the time, and I was soon dismissed from my job." "Then, I opened my law office." "It soon had a political slant when Bouteflika said to me:" ""Our Palestinian friends want a lawyerfrom here" ""to go defend a Palestinian" ""in the occupied territories," ""in Israel." ""I thought of you because you can travel."" "So I went to Israel then in 1965," "just after my marriage." "A Palestinian is yesterday'sAlgerian." "To us Israel is basically a colonial phenomenon." "I flew to Israel, and was met at the airport by the Police Ohief who said:" ""You're persona non grata." ""You'll spend the night here and fly out tomorrow."" "They put me in a small room, it was on the first floor, suddenly the window opened and a reporter said:" ""Oan we have a statement?"" "I'm a perfectionist, I hate improvisation," "I had a written statement, rolled in a ball." "I threw it to him, he caught it and left." "The next morning, I flew to Zürich." "The airline stewardesses were very kind, because the "Jerusalem Post"" "told of my misadventures." "It had published a photocopy of my declaration:" ""You have no right to judge me." "You're occupiers." "I'm a patriot."" "And I knew that my client would read that newspaper that the guards also read, and would know what position to take." "He was sentenced, I think, to 15 years." "I don't know where he is now." "Then, I was appointed to defend the Palestinians arrested in Athens, for attacking an El Al plane." "First, my friend shot and I put the bombs in the turbines." "El Al jet machine-gunned" "Some 40 Greek children got into the airplane." "So that's why we didn't destroy it completely." "We only killed one Major-General." "The PFLPclaims responsibility for the attack on the Israeli plane" "I'd gone to Athens, with Bar President Bentoumi, we'd been hired to defend them." "We met them at the jail, we met the magistrates," "but we didn't get to plead, it was settled... politically." "They made a deal and we were released after 13 days." "Then we went to Zürich." "Zürich was similar:" "An El Al plane attacked by Palestinians." "This time, we got to plead." "It was the famous trial of Winterthur where we adopted Jacques Vergès' strategy of "rupture defense":" "We refused to be part of the trial." "I think that's what saved him, he felt grateful to the Algerian government for sending him to defend Palestinians, and he published a book," ""For The Fedayeens" at that time." "But it was the only thing that stimulated him intellectually." "He'd returned to Algeria, married Djamila Bouhired, and instead of being a major politico, a thinker, he'd become a small-time divorce lawyer:" "That's all Algeria gave him." "It had let him be the husband of Djamila Bouhired." "She wasn't Jacques Vergès' wife, he was the husband of Djamila Bouhired, who's as famous there, as Jean Moulin here." "He'd become a Muslim and I think he was bored." "Those were terrible years for him." "He left to be done with it." "My last client... was the son of a fisherman from Dellys, a small Algerian port." "Or really his father:" "The son had been run over by a car, and I sued the insurance company." "Everybody was intrigued by Jacques' disappearance." "His ex-wife, who I knew well, Karine, had no news either." "FLN lawyer missing for 3 months" "He was last seen on February 24, 1970, at an anti-colonial rally in Paris." "He made a speech and vanished." "After 3 months," "Djamila Bouhired and his friends, were sure he was dead." "They put an ad in the papers, asking if anyone had seen him." "They were very worried." "A new Ben Barka affair?" "When you... go underground," "of course you have to cut all ties." "Especially with people to whom you're most attached." "When I went on "long vacation", a pipe is very recognizable." "To pass unnoticed," "I threw my pipe away." "I removed the labels from all my clothes." "I destroyed lots of documents, photos, etc." "I heard what everyone said, that he was with Pol Pot." "The Brilliant Bastard" "In that book are two passages I remember." "It says... that Jacques Vergès could have been in Oambodia." "I remember that Pol Pot wrote in the margin: "No"." "Most people say he was in Cambodia" "If Jacques Vergès had entered Oambodia," "Pol Pot would have known." "He couldn't have not known it." "They say there are some things only you know." "It's true, only I know." "After Pol Pot, only I know." "What you heard is true." "He was General-Secretary, I was Under-Secretary." "But some things only I knew." "Pol Pot said: "We rule together, but each has his area."" "When he vanished from 1970-1978, he wasn't being a lawyer." "He did something that interested him, and was a cure forwhat he could no longer stand." "He rethought the world, but he did his revolution all alone." "His strength is to have never turned his struggle into something official." "I was drawn to what seemed important to me." "It was in May 1973, and a very tense period." "We were several politicians, of different tendencies." "I remember clearly that the ambassador of Kuwait was there, and the head of the National Group, Raymond Eddé." "We all were meeting at Arafat's HQ." "Suddenly, there was a battle, a gunfight between the Lebanese army and the Palestinian groups." "So we were surrounded inside Arafat's HQ." "And we stayed there from 5 PM till 2 AM or 3 AM, almost for 7 to 8 hours." "I was sitting in Arafat's office." "He was calling people, giving military orders and also talking to the Arab leaders, trying to stop what was going on." "When he calmed down," "his security chief Abou Hassan..." "Arafat suddenly looked at him and asked:" ""Who is this Vergès?" "What is he?"" "Abou Hassan Salameh answered literally:" ""He's an important lawyer who defends the Palestinian cause."" "Arafat smiled and said:" ""Keep working with him."" "Vergès has the extra merit of being committed, and to other struggles." "My codename was "Pascal"." " And Vergès?" " "Mansour"." "Remember crossing a lake with him?" "I crossed lakes several times." " With him?" " I can't talk about that incident..." ""I first crossed the lake with Bachir, we were wanted."" "I was in a lot of countries but what mattered to me was the Arab world:" "Egypt," "Iraq," "Syria, Lebanon." "During this period of exile, I had other activities, always along the same lines," "to do with liberation movements, the emancipation of peoples." "Including the Palestinian movement, especially that." "There were several radical Palestinian movements, and he may have been there at that time." "In that era, when many believed in the internationalist myth that what would happen in Palestine was the spark that would set fire to the whole Middle East." "2 people headed this organization," "Georges Habbache and Dr Waddi Haddad." "They're both physicians... and both of them are from the Ohristian-Palestinian bourgeoisie and are Marxists." "Haddad and Habbache are Intemationalists." "Haddad had a brilliant idea." "This was in the late 1960s, early 1970s." "In Europe and all over the world, even Japan, there were student demonstrations and unrest." "Many new revolutionary organizations were born of this unrest, or saw their ranks swell enormously, and many of them were hungry for action." "Waddi Haddad and the Palestinians realized that if they could enlist terrorists who weren't Palestinians, it would multiply their capacity for action." "He was the boss, without him, no one got through." "It was very easy to enter..." "Somalia, or Mogadishu, to get into Yemen, orAden, at the time there were 2 Yemens, and I mean South Yemen." "It was easy to get into Iraq, or Baghdad, all you needed to get in was a password." "But to get out you needed Waddi Haddad's OK." "Vergès could or should have been a terrorist." "At one point he was very pro-Palestinian, and his anger against the Jews" "could have made a terrorist of him." "But he couldn't be the kind of fighter who sleeps in cellars and eats tinned food." "He's too fond of the good life." "He likes fine cuisine, and reading books, he's an egghead." "I don't see him as a karate man." "But pressing a button to blow things up, if that's all it takes, would be no problem to him." "I wasn't on the moon." "I was among people." "Who are as discreet as I am." "Maybe for serious reasons." "That's why I can't talk about them." "It's all very simple." "I met Vergès at François Genoud's." "I met a lot of François Genoud's friends:" "Arabs, Africans," "Germans, who came to his home." "It was always on Thursdays, from 3 PM to 7 PM, we drank tea or coffee at his home, and talked." "François Genoud is a Swiss Nazi, not a neo-Nazi:" "He was pro-Nazi in the Nazi era, an early fan of National Socialist ideology." "He also managed the book-royalties of Nazi leaders." "Genoud also financed the FLN and Palestinian groups via financial deals that went through a bank he set up in Switzerland." "There were close relationships between Nazism and some revolutionary or independentist groups in the Middle East." "Like Husseini..." "Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who wanted a Holy War against the British, and was financed by the Gemans to make trouble in the British colonies." "Palestine was then under British mandate." "The fact is, that's how Genoud got going," "in an explosive Middle East." "So he was influenced by all that..." "But regarding François Genoud, many people try to link him to Vergès and to me..." "Because of our relationship... we agreed on certain things..." "To me, Genoud was always a mystery." "As to the notorious François Genoud, they met during the Algerian war, at the start of independence, when both were close to Ben Bella." "They met for the first time over the case of the Palestinians in Zurich, who had hijacked an El Al plane." "Genoud was everywhere and nowhere." "He was in contact with the families of the men imprisoned in Switzerland, in contact with Vergès, with me, with Bentoumi." "In contact with the Palestinian leaders." "Everyone knows he had a privileged relationship with the top Palestinian leader." "François was a worthy man who took part in the discussions" "and I'm sure gave" "A strategic dimension on an operational level to Waddi Haddad." "Which is why he was given the title of Sheik." "Sheik means "chief" or "elder"." "François Genoud and Waddi Haddad had a very close and warm relationship." "We liked him a lot." "I know that they were close," "Vergès, Boumaza and Genoud." "All during the struggle, they were pro-Palestinian, and active in Palestinian affairs, but that's all I can tell you." "With Waddi Haddad?" "Yes..." "He was the brains, the thinker." "Everybody admired and respected him." "We tried, for example, to unite the Palestinian movement." "To tell them of the mistakes we made," "Messali Hadj and the FLN slaughtered each other, how they'll try to divide you, make Palestinians fight each other." "We even gave lectures..." "If you read the newspapers..." "One of my collaborators... was Mohammed Boudia, killed by the Israeli secret service in Paris, blown up by a bomb." "He was part of our group the RUR, that fostered revolutionary solidarity." "I'd lost sight of Boudia:" "Now he was a lump of flesh and bones." "One evening, I was in Paris, I went for a walk." "I remember it very clearly, it was on Rue Tronchet, behind the Madeleine." "There's a café on a corner of the square." "Walking by," "I saw Boudia, who had disappeared, at a table." "I came in to shake his hand, and I said: "You're here?" He said: "You, too!"" "We never discussed future actions..." "In those days, everyone was sure Vergès had disappeared for 8 years." "But I ran into Jiri Pelikan who'd known him at the International Student Union," "and who was head of Prague TV in 1968." "He said, and it came as a shock:" ""During those 8 years, I saw Jacques in Paris."" "I said: "It's impossible." "He's disappeared."" "He said: "He hasn't."" "And I see Jacques cross the street." "Areal shock!" "I went up to him, took him by the shoulder and said: "Jacques?"" "Vergès answered:" ""Hush!" "I'm not here." "Don't say I'm in Paris, I'm incognito."" "One day a guy called Pelikan, who was a good friend of his, came into the restaurant where I was dining with Karine, and says:" ""I just saw Vergès, he hasn't changed."" "Karine said: "What's this?"" "He'd already been gone 3 years." ""I just saw him!"" "I said: "It can't be, you're crazy!"" "I'm in Paris, in a little hotel, under an assumed name." "It's a Monday, all the stores are closed, I go to a caterer, to buy country bread... and cheese..." "When I leave, I see standing in line, a colleague's widow, who stares at me." "I say to myself:" ""She'll tell everyone she saw me in Paris." ""How can I stop her?"" "Sometimes the brain works like a computer." "I don't know how I got the idea, but I said to her:" ""Hi, Fatso!" ""How's tricks?"" "She went: "Ohhhh!"" "And I walked off." "I figured she'd tell that story, all she'd get right is:" ""Hi, Fatso!" "How's tricks?"" "No one'll believe her." "They'll say: "Since her husband died, she's flipped."" "What interested me a lot was meeting another lawyer, Attorney Oain, who was very close to Jacques Vergès," "and who told me that several times during those years," "Vergès visited him in Paris, still incognito, and slept there." "So for Oain, his disappearance was a farce, he knew that Vergès was somewhere, that he worked, hadn't disappeared, and wasn't in jail." "So what Oain told me, and he showed me the tickets, was that Jacques Vergès had, in the last years of his "disappearance"," "1977 and 1978, made many trips on airlines to the Far East." "One company claimed he owed a fortune." "The last time that Vergès came back to France to stay, he had a suitcase full of small banknotes, and said to Oain:" ""Pay the airline with that."" "Seems he had more money than he owed the airline." "Oain asked him who it came from, maybe he was kidding, he answered:" ""From Moise Tshombé."" "He also repaid Jérôme Lindon at the Editions de Minuit with a suitcase full of money and said:" ""It came from Tshombé."" "Yet Moise Tshombé is the presumed assassin of Patrice Lumumba, of whom Jacques Vergès had a photo at home." "So defending Tshombé for him, though it tamished his ideals a bit, was a way to make money." "I soon knew, after my little inquiry, among those he saw at the time, that he got money from Tshombé's family to get him out of jail." "He also got a loan from the National Bank of Algiers, of a hundred million francs at the time." "The deal with Tshombé's family was, according to Vergès," ""If I get yourfather out of jail," ""you repay this loan." ""If I don't, then I have to repay it."" "But Moise Tshombé died in jail in 1969." "He didn't get him out of jail." "So Vergès will have to repay it." "He has to repay that sum." "So the Tshombé family were after him, because they guaranteed the loan at the BNA, which still hadn't been repaid in 1995." "I went to Algiers, and met one of the heads of legal dept." "At the BNA:" "Jacques Vergès still owed them money." "He didn't leave for a cause, he left for personal reasons." "I don't know why, and don't want to." "And if I did..." " Not for political reasons?" " No." "I'm sure of that." "I think Vergès was a secret agent." "Some said he worked for East Germany." "Maybe he was also an agent for the French." "Which is why he had no problem getting back to France." "If Vergès was dead, we could talk." "Someone who knew, could talk." "Later they may tell historians:" ""Yes, he worked for us."" "Whereas now... this person might fear that Vergès would sue." "If that was the case..." "I got back thin, with a tanned and hardened complexion." "With a more distant perspective on things." "Once he got back, it was like he'd lost faith in political models." "He expected nothing from politics." "So he settled in France, became a lawyer, and a multi-purpose lawyer, as has been said." "When Jacques saw me:" ""Hi, Bob!" "How are things?" "Great to see you!", as if we'd last met a week ago." "I invited him for the weekend:" "I lived 25 miles from Paris then, in a nice country house." "He came, and my mother liked him a lot." "She knew him well, as he'd lived at my home." "My mother said to him:" ""Jacques, really!"" "She spoke out, called him a bastard." "She said: "It's insane!" ""You dumped yourwife and kids." ""You're a real scoundrel!"" "Jacques was laughing:" ""Don't worry." "They heard from me."" ""You liar!"" "That's when he said..." "I asked: "How did Djamila react?"" "I'd heard she said:" ""If I ever see Jacques again, I'll slice off his balls!"" "He said: "I haven't been in touch with her." "Who knows?"" "So I got back broke." "Then I was hired by young German women of the Red Army Faction, who'd been arrested in France." "And then by Oarlos' friends." "So that's it." "Between "Action Directe", separatists, squatters, we were constantly at work, defending victims of police brutality, it was a lot of fun." "We had lots of work and I got along fine with Vergès." "I went to Stammheim Prison to see him, and as luck had it, the day I got there, he was told he was free." "We created," "Jacques Vergès, Klaus Oroissant and I, the "Intemational Association of Defenders of Political Prisoners"." "But Klaus Oroissant and Jacques Vergès didn't get along." "So Klaus Oroissant quit." "He was very active for a while, worked hard to create that outfit." "When he was freed he came to Paris, then went back to East Germany." "You neverworked together?" "No." "I was Oroissant's bodyguard." "So I was with him day and night," "I saw everything that happened there." "Oroissant's office was used to recruit new members for the Baader-Meinhof gang." "The story of Oroissant's office, all the young people who came to it" "later became hardliners." "They all came via Oroissant." "All the jailbreak plans were hatched in the cells on the 7th floor of Stannheim Prison." "To get the ideas out, you needed lawyers, and they did it." "The weapons were smuggled into the jails by the lawyers." "Later with Sartre, I was the driver." "I'm for violence as a political weapon where it is needed, meaning where there are mass confrontations, orwhere they can be fostered." "Officially among leftists, there's no hierarchy, but that's crap." "The top dogs were the Böse/Kuhlmann couple, then came Weinrich/Magdalena Kopp." "I knew she was Weinrich's girlfriend." "Haddad and Oarlos planned to kidnap an Arab ambassador." "He was a very rich guy, we wanted a ransom of 30 or 40 million dollars." "We were there for a month..." "with Magdalena Kopp." "The boss wasn't Oarlos, it was Michel Moukarbel." "Oarlos killed him later in Paris." "Apolice Lt and two detectives go to Oarlos's house in Paris." "Oarlos opens the door, understands fast, three Frenchmen with Moukarbel." "Pretending to get his papers, he gets a gun, fires, kills the 2 detectives, severely wounds the Lt, and "executes", as he says, Moukarbel." "Anyway, Oarlos..." "He's not normal." "He's a psychopath." "Oarlos came into the boardroom and he was like a kid, he fired at the ceiling and yelled:" ""I'm Oarlos, you must've heard of me."" "But the operation got fouled up from the start." "They started to shoot at once, and it turned into a gunfight, and they killed some policemen." "In the gunfight," "H.J. Klein got a bullet in the stomach." "By the time they got me to Algeria, I was clinically dead." "I was seriously wounded, all smashed inside." "The operation in Vienna against the OPEP had several goals." "The first was to collect funds, force Iran and Saudi Arabia to come up with money." "The other goal was to execute" "Zaki Yamani, the Oil Minister." "This goal made no sense to us." "Why attack Zaki Yamani, who wasn't against us, who was for the Palestinian cause." "So I had a talk with Oarlos, who was in the operation, to change the goals, and not concentrate on the execution, because there'd be huge dangers later." "Fortunately, during the Vienna operation, we got along fine." "At first, I was politically in charge, and he was militarily in charge." "Later we decided to trade roles." "In the end, they managed to land in Algeria and freed all the hostages for money" "which infuriated Waddi Haddad." "It meant 3 to 5 million dollars for Oarlos." " To spare Yamani." " Yes." "To me, he's a figure at Algiers airport:" "A man who was thin then, wearing a Ohe Guevara beret, and Bouteflika beside him." "We were in a huge government villa, we were treated like kings." "The head of the Algerian secret service came every day, sometimes with the Algiers Police Ohief." "Then I started to have doubts:" "The Police Ohief knew I was German and said:" ""Hitlerwas a good man."" "I said to myself: "Poor FLN."" "They were put up in a villa and the Police Ohief, I knew everyone..." "Oarlos had already seen The Battle of Algiers." "They asked to see me," "I went there, we saw the film again, and we even played soccer..." "There was a yard nearby, we tried to have fun like that." "He told me his..." "We exchanged phone numbers, and passwords, etc." "We ate with Boumediène." "He was Foreign Minister then." "Later, Klein disappeared from sight for 20 years." "He mailed his gun to a big German newspaper saying: "I'm H.J. Klein, I did those things," ""now I've tumed a page," ""and I'm renouncing violence."" "When Waddi Haddad died, his organization split up into small groups that became mercenaries." "Oarlos created his own organization." "He saw that terrorism meant big money." "The Oarlos group was watched day and night while they were in East Europe." "In East Germany the STASI watched them, spied on their hotel rooms, taped everything" "and wrote reports." "Oarlos now lived behind the Iron Ourtain, in East Germany and also in Hungary." "The East Germans quietly expelled him there, without advising their Hungarian friends." "When the Hungarians found out he was in Budapest, they went to talk to him, but never to hand him to the West that wanted him." "The only person who's purer than me is Johannes Weinrich." "He's too pure." "This can be a dirty business." "He's virginally pure." "I'm not exaggerating." "Magdalena, via Johannes Weinrich, met Oarlos, and changed lovers:" "She dropped Weinrich for the boss." "They had a villa in Budapest, it was Oarlos' HQ for several years." "What does a couple talk about in bed, what's their pillow talk before going to sleep?" "In bed, Oarlos told Magdalena Kopp that she had to do something, because she'd been in the group a long time, and had never dirtied her hands." ""Go to Paris, where we're going to strike." ""You have to go get the explosives" ""and move them to where we'll strike."" "The Hungarian secret services taped it all." "The two ran away." "The police... knocked down Magdalena Kopp as she crossed the Ohamps Elysées." "And arrested her." "In a street further on," "Bruno Bréguet drew his gun and aimed at the policemen." "It jammed:" "He threw it away and surrendered." "I remember the arrest of Magdalena Kopp and Bruno Bréguet," "I was on duty when they were nabbed gun in hand." "In the car they abandoned, a bomb was found, with a detonator." "The bomb was set to go off that day at 10.30 PM." "He had just dumped a briefcase." "In it were found 2 grenades, 5 kilos of penthrite and a detonation system." "That's a powerful explosive used in France only by the army." "But in the car due to be exploded, were also 2 gas cylinders, to boost the blast." "The idea was to place the bomb in front of the Paris embassy of an Arab country, to explode it and blackmail that country." ""Pay us X number of millions," ""or the next bomb will kill many people," ""and it may even be in your capital city."" "They accepted a public defender." "Then after thinking it over, maybe like Joan of Arc, they heard voices, and appointed me..." "Oarlos left a letter at the French Embassy in The Hague, saying:" ""We're not your enemies." ""We have a secret deal, free them."" "To Mr Gaston Deferre, Defense Minister" ""Sir, Two of our group, MC Kopp and Bruno Bréguet..."" "Signed." "Carlos." "My thumbprints authenticate this letter." "Several ministers met and one of them tells the press." "Deferre said: "Whoever did that is responsible for any bloodshed."" "Once it was public, Deferre's position was that Oarlos would have to make good his threat." "In this letter, dated late February, the ultimatum was one month:" "If they didn't get a satisfactory answerwithin a month, there'd be reprisals." "After this, I had talks with the Interior Ministry." "They were embarrassed and decided to hold the trial during the summer vacations, that way... during the vacations, they'd face less repressive prosecutors." "Bruno Bréguet had an automatic pistol that jammed as he was about to fire at the policeman..." "The whole case rested on that." "If he threw away his gun because it jammed, but intended to kill, it was murder:" "He'd get at least 7 years." "But if he'd only aimed to frighten, he'd get much less." "We had to convince the DA that he was just carrying a banned weapon, he'd waved it in the air, had pulled the trigger accidentally:" "Luckily the gun jammed." "First we had to convince the DA, then the Prosecutor, who concurred." "Mr Jean-Louis Debré, who was DAin this case, now a majority leader, and MrAlain Marsaud, who was the Prosecutor now a right-wing deputy, both agree that the orders from up above were not to be too tough..." "It was a real perversion of our judicial system" "and not a glorious page..." "It's best to tum that page fast." "Did Carlos, with his known sympathies for the PLO and his Syrian connections, organize the deadly blast Rue Marbeuf?" "The explosion went off just when the trial was due to start, had it started on time." "Both Bruno Bréguet and Magdalena Kopp remained silent this morning." "Proud, smiling scornfully, they ridicule the trial." "They didn't rise when their names were called out, as if they knew that Carlos or someone would free them." "Dynamite in a train station locker." "Carlos again." "Train bomb threat." "You seem to know him well?" "No, not at all." "No letters or phone calls from him?" "Absolutely not." "You're not acting on instructions from Mr Oarlos?" "Absolutely not." "I'm here to defend the two prisoners, and I won't hide the sympathy and esteem I feel for them." "That's all." ""The truth is, Magdalena Kopp and Bruno Bréguet will be freed." ""You know that, and so do they." ""They're soldiers of a noble cause" ""who want to free the oppressed," ""and restore dignity to humiliated people." ""The rest of their army will keep striking" ""until they are free." ""Your only problem is when you free them and avoid bloodshed."" "It was the truth." "Which isn't the best thing to say." "But it is:" "The Oourt will pay heed to the truth." "Only the irresponsible press won't." "They'll write:" ""That's horrible..." "How can one say such things?"" "I stood in line at Ohristmas, as families could bring 5 kilos of foodstuff to prisoners." "I took the orders." "I nicknamed Bruno Bréguet "The Squirrel":" "He liked candied fruit." "Magdalena Kopp was more refined:" "She wanted smoked German ham, country bread," "ice-cream..." "I brought her all that, waited in line among families, who were amazed to see me in the line with them." "I can admit it now." "Alcohol is forbidden in jail, but on the ice-cream I poured armagnac." "He was her lawyer, and they developed a strong platonic relationship, and he gave her jewelry." "And if you see Magdalena Kopp today, she still wears a gold ring with a small red stone that Vergès gave her, and a gold chain with a red stone that he gave her." "It was new for Magdalena Kopp, who'd been seen as a sex object, for someone to be interested in her as a person, for a man to talk to her." "Of course, there was surely also a sexual aspect to it." "I have here a note about the trip of Attorney Jacques Vergès, to East Berlin, capital of East Germany, Dec 20, 1982." "This document states that representatives from the Oarlos group met Vergès (Oode name "Herzog")" "Who advised them how to free their members jailed in France," "Kopp... and Brèguet, or how to help them escape." "I read here:" ""For Magdalena's escape," ""Herzog suggests getting her to a doctor" ""to check her physical and psychological health," ""and to use this visit" ""to organize Kopp's escape."" "The purpose of this report was definitely to inform superiors." "Like me, for instance, as head of the unit." "I consider this report as objective and true to reality." "I was able to get in contact with many of them, who confirmed it to me." "It wasn't a single STASI officer, a whole department kept the Oarlos group under surveillance." "It's very well documented." "There are stacks of documents on the Oarlos group and its relations with Vergès." "And just after the Wall came down they were made public." "I don't see how they could've been faked!" "Central Prison near Paris" "These notebooks, photographed secretly by the STASI, during a search, clearly belonged to Johannes Weinrich." "They've even been published since." "They were clearly diaries for Weinrich, who wrote about what he did, to remind him what had been concluded, when and with whom." ""New name:" "Neda = Sonja." ""She'll act as liaison between me and Gabriel."" "New Vergès codename=Gabriel" ""Gabriel arrives September 10." ""Herzog's hotel bill." ""Herzog got $3000."" ""Gabriel will come once a month." "(His idea)" ""He'll have a coverfor his visits."" "In 1982, in Budapest." "It was ourfirst meeting at my home." "We toasted with champagne." "We got on well, he's a nice guy." "So I recruited him." "I said." ""Listen, you'll carry messages to the French government."" "One day, I see the warden of Fresnes prison, and I tell him:" ""Magdalena Kopp will be out soon." ""Please tell me when."" "One day he tells me: "Let's say, she'll be freed next Monday."" "So the following Monday, I'm there at 8 AM to be ready for anything, and I see a police car tear out with her inside." "I say to the warden: "You promised and didn't keep yourword."" "He says: "When the police come here, what can I do?"" "That evening, Magdalena Kopp calls me:" ""I'm in Offenburg, in Germany, it's close to..." ""Strasbourg." ""I don't know what's going on."" "I jumped on a plane to Strasbourg, then by car to Offenburg, where we drank champagne, actually German fizzy wine, to toast her liberation." "Abit later, the phone rang." "She picked it up and a voice said: "It's me."" "She knew it was Oarlos." "He didn't say his name, but she knew at once it was Oarlos." "He said to her:" ""Oome and see me at once."" "And hung up." "I realized, if I had his child, he'd never involve me again in his activities," "because I was the mother of his child." "Vergès wanted to screw her, in that hotel by the German border." "He did." "I know it, I know everything." "Before your arrest, how many times did you see Vergès?" "5 times, 10 times?" "20 times, 25 times." "Before your arrest?" "Yes..." "I don't know how many times." "25 times in Damascus." "And the following years, up to 1991." "We last met in Damascus in August, 1991." "Anyway, Vergès used to come and see us." "We liked him a lot." "Even the neighbors' kids knew him." "His slanted eyes were a curiosity in Damascus." "My little girl knew him as her Uncle Jacques." "The neighbors' kids in the street knew him." ""Jacques is here!"" "So Oarlos lived in Damascus with Weinrich and Magdalena Kopp." "One of their rare regular visitors in Damascus was François Genoud." "We heard of Barbie's arrest, in February, 1983 by the Bolivians, and handed over to the French." "I said to my wife:" ""We'll have to take care of it."" "My wife, who was getting a bit tired said:" ""François, you don't know him." ""Do you really" ""have to help him?"" "I answered: "Elisabeth, if we don't do it, who will?"" "I phoned Vergès." "He said:" ""I was just thinking about you."" "So I said to him:" ""When I think about a friend, I phone him." ""How do you feel about this?"" "He said: "It's very interesting."" ""Would you agree to take on his case?"" "He first went to see Oussedik to ask him to defend Barbie." "Oussedik refused because it was Barbie, and said," ""If I agreed to do it," ""I'd feel I was betraying what I did for the Algerian revolution," ""and that's out of the question." And he said: "Go see Vergès," ""I'm sure he'll do it very well."" "Oan you confirm you're involved in Barbie's defense?" "It's for TF1, French TV." "No comment." "Are you paying for his defense?" "I have nothing to say on this matter." "But you're interested in this trial?" "Like everybody else." "You know Vergès, Barbie's lawyer?" "He's an old friend." "That's all." "In Lyon they put on a real show." "They tumed the main hall into a courtroom, to seat 700 people." "Araised courtroom with stairs leading up to it." "The French government built the set." "Then it was up to us, within their set, to improvise our play." "The court is in session." "Guards, bring in the prisoner." "No one else could have done what he did." "He derailed a huge machine that wanted to make Barbie's trial, the exemplary trial of World War II, of the Holocaust, the Shoah..." "That's fine, but they wanted to keep out anything that could focus on the crimes against humanity committed in Algeria, sub-Saharan Africa, slavery..." "It was exhilarating." "There's 39 lawyers on the other side... and I'm all alone." "It means each of them is only worth a fortieth of me." "Shortly before the trial," "Roland Dumas said to me:" ""I've just been hired by a Resistance group, what do you think?"" "I answered:" ""I don't fear you, but don't take it."" "There'll be 30 or 40 lawyers like you, singing the same song," ""feigning emotion that you don't feel."" ""No!" ""It's for human dignity!"" "I say to him: "The first three, if they're good actors," ""will be a hit."" "But by the fourth orfifth, people will be fed up with it." "But he took it on." "I ask you, and you don't have to answer, tell me the name of one of those legal eagles?" "A trial is magical, full of surprises." ""Never again", we've heard that a hundred times." "But opposite me they were saying:" ""What ploy will the bastard come up with today?"" "They couldn't wait to hear the bastard's ploy." "And, being imaginative, he found one every day." "I said: "Shit!" "You can't defend Barbie, that's outrageous." ""You're baiting everyone."" "He said: "Yes, but...", then explained at length, though I understood quite fast what his aim was." "He converted me because he's pretty smart." "He said: "I'll put the French on trial, the use of torture in France," ""I'll relate it to the Algerian war." ""Follow the trial, you'll see."" "There's not much difference between the methods used in Algeria and the methods used by the Gestapo in Lyon." "People died under torture in Algeria." "I know it, I've researched that myself." "I think Vergès is deeply anti-colonial and always will be." "He can't stand it." "He won't let up on them, he'll claw at them... until France recognizes" "that some of its officers behaved like Nazi officers." "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."" "When Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in 1978, he got a lot of help from the Palestinians." "The Palestinians played an important role in his takeover." "During the Iranian Revolution," "Ohapour Bakhtiar, the Shah's last Prime Minister fled Iran and settled in Paris." "Khomeini decided that Bakhtiar had to be killed, executed." "It was probably a "confidential" task that Ayatollah Khomeini gave this fellow Naccache, who had no talent at all for dirty deeds." "Our attempt was a total failure:" "I was wounded and all my commandos arrested." "In a gunfight in front of Bakhtiar's apartment, a neighborwas killed, a cop badly wounded." "Naccache, was acting on Khomeini's fatwa." "Khomeini can't let him end up in jail." "Anti-French riots in Teheran to free "The 5 Fighters"" "The Naccache affair is yet another problem between France and Iran." "Iran is at warwith Iraq, that is backed by France, supplying arms, planes, training Iraqi pilots." "France had received from the Shah of Iran at the end of his reign, a huge sum of around a billion dollars to set up a nuclear industrial project." "Iran wants that money back." "France says: "The Shah lent it to us, we won't repay Khomeini."" "But Iran needs this money to fund the war." "In a way, our diplomacy had declared war on Iran and didn't know it." "But Iran was very aware of it, and was the victim of these operations." "It wanted to get a message across." "Eiffel Tower bomb!" "Champs Elysées bomb!" "Bookstore bomb!" ""The bookstore was us, too."" "Bomb in FNAC store!" "4 blasts in 3 days" ""Free Naccache and Garbidjian fast."" "Bullet Train bomb!" ""The Bullet Train will be the first of a new series."" "Starting in February, March, there was a big wave of attacks, committed and claimed by a new organization supporting Arab political prisoners, demanding the liberation of 3 people with very different profiles, at least for 2 of them:" "Anis Naccache, Iranian-backed." "Garbidjian, formerly with Waddi Haddad." "And Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, a former Waddi Haddad commando member, who created the Lebanese Revolutionary Army, and killed U.S. And Israeli diplomats." "We, in Govemment Security, couldn't believe a single organization had been formed to demand these liberations." "I realized that these 3 characters, whose liberation the organizations demanded, and who were all serving life sentences," "hadn't been in contact with anyone." "Judge Marsaud tried, I say, to use extreme measures, threatening Abdallah with being sent on a "wood chore", ie executed." "Without waming me, he was moved from the Fleury prison to the Santé prison." "But... prisons have leaks." "A guard phoned me to say:" ""Your client is in the Santé prison."" "Abdallah was negotiating with us, orwe were negotiating with him, so he could phone Beirut and tell his brothers, who were suspected of perpetrating the attacks, and tell his brothers, that he opposed being freed by this kind of action." "Things were going quite well, except that there was a leak, most probably by a guard in the Santé prison, who let him know that Vergès was on his case, and concemed about his treatment." "From then on, it's true that Abdallah's attitude changed completely and he clammed up, as he had for years, knowing that Vergès was on his case." "Why was the last attack on Sept 17?" "Because they'd run out of explosives." "They had no more explosives." "Arrested terrorists linked to Iran" "If we'd known that, we'd have told Naccache:" ""Get on the phone to Hezbollah or the mullahs."" "But we didn't know Iran was behind it." "So to us Naccache was just in it, almost by accident." "I started making political statements, like backing Khomeini's fatwa on Salman Rushdie." "I had ideas about the position of Muslims in Europe." "All we wanted was to get Naccache out of France fast." "But that point of view wasn't shared by..." "President Mitterrand was against it." "During those ten years, much had changed, there were new Islamic movements, resistance movements." "They all felt that I was a symbol, and had to be freed from jail." "He wrote me asking me to go see him." "I went, and he said then:" ""Attorney, I'm serving a life sentence." ""So far I haven't been on a hunger strike." ""But now, it looks like France and Iran" ""will settle their nuclear differences." ""If they reach an agreement, I'll be forgotten." ""I'll be a minor item." ""I want to be part of that agreement." ""So I'm going on a hunger strike" ""and need you as my lawyer."" "When he visited me the first time in jail, he asked me about my childhood, why I was a militant, etc." "I told him:" ""I went on my first demonstration aged 7." "It was for Djamila Bouhired."" "He smiled, and said:" ""I was Djamila's lawyer and husband for a while."" "We became friends and I saw we were on the same political wavelength, that he could make the needed statements to the media on my behalf" "on why I'd taken this step." "He lost 27 kilos, he now weighs 48 kilos." "Tomorrow he'll be put on a drip feed for 4 days." "So his state is alarming." "We waited and when... we saw it was legally feasible," "Roland Dumas and I went to see the President." ""Now's the time to do it," ""and immediately!" "We can't lose..." ""We should expel this guy."" "So President Mitterrand pardoned us, though all 5 of us had life sentences, and we got out after 10 years." "It was a political solution." "Naccache was the first prisoner who clearly said he was part of a revolutionary Islamism." "It was the first step of Islam-inspired terrorism in a western country." "We were the first to have to deal with it, long before the Americans, British or Spaniards." "Oarlos' error in France was killing 3 undercover cops." "They neverforget that." "Oarlos was kidnapped in Sudan." "We know Oarlos and Vergès knew each otherwell, for a long time, and when he was arrested," "Oarlos said he was his lawyer." "When the judge tried to reach Vergès, he couldn't reach him all day." "So Oarlos then appointed Oussedik." "Oussedik filed a kidnapping complaint." "Oarlos agreed to it, and signed the complaint." "But later he told us that he withdrew it, claiming it was too soon." "It would irk Pasqua, the Interior Minister." "Vergès said he'd negotiate with Pasqua, and to drop the complaint." "He's a traitor." "I always thought he was on our side, that he was a Communist at heart." "That's a betrayal." "And as a lawyer, he can't do that." "Oussedik was furious." "At Vergès, who advised..." "Oarlos to drop the kidnapping complaint against France, and its secret service, for kidnapping him in Sudan." "He's furious, doesn't understand Vergès' position." "So he starts asking questions, looking around..." "Oussedik starts to inquire..." "Vergès." "His real links to Carlos." "Vergès was Carlos' link to France in 1982" "A new visit yesterday for Carlos." "Jacques Vergès told him that he, Vergès, has been accused of complicity." "He laughs a lot." "He said: "Soon you'll be inside."" ""I'll get out, and bring you oranges."" "Judge Bruguière has new evidence on Vergès and Carlos" "Judge Bruguière wants you off the case, then to charge you, to indict you." "They're trying, with documents they say they got from the STASI, to throw me off balance." "I await that very calmly." "If they hope to get rid of me on this case by indicting me, they won't succeed." "I'll be in the dock, with Oarlos, and I'll certainly talk." " Are you part of Oarlos' network?" " Of course not." " You'd swear to it?" " Of course I would." "You'd swear it in a law court?" "Of course." "You spoke to Oarlos before he came back?" " No." " Never?" " You had no news?" " No." " Never?" " Never." "Even on trips you made." "Nothing at all?" " Since how long?" " Since forever." "Since forever?" "You weren't in Eastern bloc countries to see Oarlos' deputy?" "Never." "The STASI claim that, but it's a lie." "Even if I saw Carlos, it's my right." "Oarlos was my client for a few months." "He isn't anymore." "Professional rules forbid me to talk of him." ""Omar killed me"" "We lawyers have a big advantage over doctors." "We can tell someone:" ""I don't want to defend you."" "But if we agree to do it, this trust compels us to fight tooth and nail to defend him, and use all every legal device there is." "But we must never cross that white line, or else... we become vulnerable." "Translation:" "Sandy Whitelaw" "Subtitles:" "ONST, Montreal"