A miscarriage of justice about to be rectified

The most notorious miscarriage of French justice in the 20th century is about to be recognised, 77 years after it was perpetrated.

In 1924, Guillaume Seznec, the owner of a timber mill in Brittany, was convicted of murdering Pierre Quemeneur, a local politician who was trafficking in surplus Cadillacs left behind by US forces after the first World War. Although police never found a body or a weapon, Seznec received a life sentence of forced labour and was deported to the French penal colony at Devil's Island in Guyana.

A judge who participated in the trial resigned and published a book called Justice for Seznec. Six jurors retracted their verdict and also demanded a retrial. Insp Pierre Bonny, who built the case against Seznec, was fired from the French police force for falsifying evidence. During the second World War, Bonny joined the Gestapo, for which he was shot at the Liberation.

Before his execution, the former police inspector told his son: "I'm sorry I sent an innocent man to the penal colony. He's been there for 20 years, and it's my fault."

But the French justice system would not admit fallibility. Gen de Gaulle pardoned Seznec in 1946, claiming it was for good behaviour, despite the Breton's three escape attempts. At the age of 59, Seznec made a triumphant return to France. Yet a film about Seznec was banned by the government in 1951. Two years later, when US and British producers took an interest in the project, Seznec was mysteriously pushed under a van and died.

Seznec's grandson Denis (54), has spent his life attempting to clear Guillaume's name. Working mornings as a proof-reader at the Journal Officiel, Seznec devoted his afternoons to lobbying Breton politicians and writing two books. The first, We the Seznecs, has sold 200,000 copies since 1992. The second, Seznec, the Penal Colony, was published last month and is now fifth on the French best-seller list.

The Seznec affair is often compared to that of the Jewish Capt Alfred Dreyfus, who was falsely convicted of spying for Germany at the end of the 19th century. Dreyfus's granddaughter, Simone Perl, signed on to the campaign to rehabilitate Seznec in the 1980s, along with Catherine Deneuve, Yves Mon tand, Bertrand Tavernier and a host of French writers, actors and politicians. During that same period, Denis Seznec won the support of a parliamentary assistant from Morlaix named Marylise Lebranchu.

Brittany has always seen the Seznec affair as an affront, and Ms Lebranchu did not forget the cause when she became France's Justice Minister last October. On April 2nd she announced that a commission of five judges was reviewing the 1924 trial - the first time that the French ministry of justice has ever questioned an assize court decision. Denis Seznec hopes that his grandfather will at last be cleared this year.

"This case destroyed three generations of my family," Seznec says. "Twenty people connected with it have died by murder or suicide." Guillaume Seznec's wife Marie-Jeanne refused her husband's plea to "accept the divorce of the devil" so that she could keep the family property. She died in poverty in 1931.

Their daughter Jeanne married Francois Le Her, a trial witness who testified he'd seen Quemeneur alive after Seznec allegedly killed him. When Seznec returned from Devil's Island in 1947, Le Her tried to capitalise on his father-in-law's popularity. He turned violent and threatened Jeanne; she seized his gun and killed him. Jeanne Seznec was acquitted by the same assize court that convicted her father 24 years earlier. Denis Seznec admits that his quest to clear his grandfather may be a response to his mother killing his father.

When Denis was a boy, Guillaume told him tales of the lush jungle, colourful birds and poisonous serpents of Guyana. "The prison guards were very cruel," he says. "My grandfather told me how they would bind a prisoner, stuff his mouth with grass, splash sugar water over him and leave him to be eaten by red ants. It was a terrible way to die."

Seznec was 12 years old when he learned the family secrets. "I went with my mother to Brittany, to look for Quemeneur's body," he recalls. Later he would gain the support of Olivier Quemeneur, the grandnephew and last descendant of the man his grandfather was convicted of killing. Quemeneur was planning a television documentary on the case when he was murdered while filming a news story in the Algiers Casbah in 1994.