In the run-up to his trial for crimes against humanity, the former Vichy official Mr Maurice Papon (86) was yesterday banned from leaving France and ordered to notify authorities if he travels outside Paris before his trial begins in Bordeaux on October 8th. His passport and identity papers were confiscated. As secretary-general of the Bordeaux prefecture during the German occupation of France, Mr Papon is accused of organising the deportation of 1,560 Jews, including 223 children, between June 1942 and 1944.
In requesting the restrictions, Mr Arno Klarsfeld, the lawyer for the Association of Sons and Daughters of Deported French Jews, said the experience of Paul Touvier might encourage Mr Papon to leave the country before his trial. Mr Touvier, a wartime militia leader in Lyon, entered the courtroom a free man but died in prison last year after receiving a life sentence.
Mr Papon's lawyer, Mr Jean-Marc Varaut, said the measures were humiliating and strengthened Mr Papon's impression that he had already been convicted.
After the war, Mr Papon rose through the ranks of the French civil service, becoming prefect of police in Paris in 1961 and serving as budget minister under President Valery Giscard d'Estaing from 1978 until 1981.
Mr Michel Slitinsky, a Jewish resistance fighter whose family were deported on Mr Papon's orders, searched through more than 12,000 pages of archives before finding deportation orders signed by him.
President Francois Mitterrand, himself a former Vichy official, delayed legal proceedings against Frenchmen accused of collaborating with the Nazis, and Mr Papon was able to drag out appeals until January 1997, when the supreme court ordered that he stand trial.
elodrome (first eee acute) d'Hiver, who first acknowledged French complicity in the mass deportations. For the past 16 years, Mr Papon has claimed that he was merely obeying orders from his superiors, and that he served in the Resistance. Mr Papon's case is often called "the first trial of Vichy", and it is expected to open yet again the wounds of a dark, ambiguous period of French history.
