Fate of elderly Papon still raises bitter French passion

Should Maurice Papon go free? The question, pondered by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg yesterday, has dominated political debate and newspaper opinion pages here for two weeks, since the former minister of justice, Robert Badinter, advocated the liberation of France's oldest prisoner.

With the bitter passion that still clings to France's role during the second World War, the Papon issue has divided political parties, human rights groups and even the French Jewish community.

Papon was convicted of complicity in crimes against humanity on April 2nd, 1998, after a six-month trial and 17 years of legal proceedings. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

From July 1942 until May 1944, while Papon headed the "Jewish Questions Service" for the Gironde region, 1,410 Jews were deported from Bordeaux to the death camp at Auschwitz.

His trial was seen as the trial of French collaboration with the Nazis; his conviction recognition that civil servants committed murder with pens and rubber stamps as surely as war criminals, such as Klaus Barbie and Paul Touvier, killed with weapons.

Papon is 90 years old now, and his lawyers' chief argument is that it is "inhuman and degrading" to make him die in prison.

His attitude has not helped. On the last day of his trial, Papon had the audacity to compare himself to Dreyfus, the late 19th century Jewish army captain who was falsely accused of spying. He has constantly portrayed himself as the victim, even speaking of "forgiving [his] persecutors". He never expressed the slightest remorse for his role in the deportations and filed libel suits against holocaust survivors who pursued him through the courts.

As a former prefect of Paris and finance minister under President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, Papon long enjoyed political protection. He was allowed to live in a luxury hotel during his trial.

In October 1999, rather than report to prison on the eve of his appeals court hearing as required by French law, he ran away to Switzerland, where French authorities caught up with him in Gstaad 10 days later.

Papon, who receives three pensions and owns a lovely villa outside Paris, claimed he could not pay the Ffr 4.6 million in damages that the court ordered. At Paris' La Sante prison, he has a private cell with a heater and television. He can order food, receive visits and have a shower whenever he pleases. Other prisoners are crowded four to a cell and are allowed one shower weekly.

Three French lawyers - two of them Jewish - personify the three schools of thought about Papon. Jean-Marc Varaut, who heads Papon's legal team, claims his client was a scapegoat and should never have been charged. Robert Badinter believes the trial was salutary, but claims it is now time to show compassion.

Serge Klarsfeld, the Nazihunter whose dogged work led to Papon's trial, insists the convict must serve his sentence.

Mr Varaut emphasises Papon's status as France's oldest prisoner. Yet 27 men over the age of 80 are held in French prisons, two of them, like Papon, are 90. If age is the criterion, opponents argue, why make an exception for Papon? And what about AIDS victims and other terminally-ill prisoners? The jury which handed down a 10-year sentence - the prosecution asked for 20 - knew he was an old man, likely to die in prison. "How would the families of Papon's victims feel if he were freed early and celebrated his 100th birthday?" Mr Klarsfeld asks.

Mr Badinter says he has no illusion that Papon would have spared him and his Jewish family had they lived in Bordeaux. But justice has served its purpose, he argues. Humanity must carry the day, even when it is a question of punishing crimes against humanity.

The Papon debate has sparked a curious division among rabbis.

The grand rabbi of Paris, Gilles Bernheim, says Papon should be freed because his trial helped France to recognise its Vichy past.

"Keeping him in prison until his last breath will add nothing to history," he said. But Joseph Sitruk, the grand rabbi of France, says the Jewish community is "nearly unanimous" in believing it is too early to consider freeing Papon.

That was not the opinion of the European Court of Human Rights, which yesterday agreed to give Papon's case emergency status.

Which means the ageing war criminal can expect a ruling in one year instead of four.