Editing Maurice Papon (section)

==Trial, prison and release==
{{more citations needed|section|date=March 2018}}
Evidence of his responsibility in the [[Holocaust]] emerged in 1981 and throughout rest of the 1980s, he fought a string of legal battles.

===The ''Canard enchaîné'' leaks===

On 6 May 1981, ''[[Le Canard enchaîné]]'' newspaper published an article, "Papon, aide de camps. Quand un ministre de Giscard faisait déporter des juifs" ("Papon, [[Aide-de-camp|aide of camps]]: When one of Giscard's ministers deported the Jews"). It also made public several documents that had been signed by Papon and showed his responsibility in the deportation of 1,690 Jews of Bordeaux to Drancy from 1942–44.<ref name="ChronoFig">[http://www.lefigaro.fr/france/20070217.WWW000000083_les_grandes_dates_de_l_affaire_papon.html The important dates of the Papon Affair], ''[[Le Figaro]]'', 17 February 2007. {{in lang|fr}}</ref> The documents had been provided to the newspaper by one of the survivors of Papon's raid, Michel Slitinsky (1925–2012). Slitinsky had received them from historian Michel Bergés, who had discovered them in February 1981 in the department's archives.<ref name="Express">[http://www.lexpress.fr/info/france/dossier/papon/dossier.asp?ida=408819 Les Français et Vichy] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070109021241/http://www.lexpress.fr/info/france/dossier/papon/dossier.asp?ida=408819|date=9 January 2007}}, ''[[L'Express (France)|L'Express]]'', 2 October 1997. {{in lang|fr}}</ref> The publication of the 6 May article occurred four days before the second round of the [[1981 French presidential election|presidential election]], opposing candidate [[François Mitterrand]], who would win the race, and incumbent president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing under whom Papon was a cabinet minister.{{Citation needed|date=December 2023}}

===Legal battles===
Noted [[Nazi hunter]]s [[Serge and Beate Klarsfeld]] helped bring him to trial, where Serge and his son, Arno, represented the families of the victims. Other important collaborators, such as [[René Bousquet]], head of the French police under Vichy, did not go to trial. Bousquet himself would be assassinated in 1993, shortly before his trial was to start. His adjunct, [[Jean Leguay]], died of cancer in 1989 before he could go on trial, a decade after he had been indicted for crimes against humanity for his role in the [[Vel' d'Hiv Roundup]] in July 1942. In 1995, President Chirac recognized the French state's complicity in the roundup.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/17/world/chirac-affirms-france-s-guilt-in-fate-of-jews.html|title=Chirac Affirms France's Guilt In Fate of Jews|last=Simons|first=Marlise|date=1995-07-17|work=The New York Times|access-date=2019-10-11|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331}}</ref>

Papon had begun writing his memoirs before his death; he criticised Chirac's official recognition of the involvement of the French state in the Holocaust.<ref name="Memoirs">[http://www.lefigaro.fr/france/20070220.WWW000000360_les_memoires_secretes_de_papon.html "Les mémoires secrètes de Papon"], ''[[Le Figaro]]'', 20 February 2007. {{in lang|en}}</ref>

Charges of crimes against humanity, complicity of assassination and abuse of authority were first brought against Papon in January 1983. Three months later, Papon sued the families of the victims for [[defamation]] but eventually lost.<ref name="DatesFig"/> The slow investigation was cancelled in 1987 because of legal technicalities (such as a mistake by the [[inquisitorial system|investigating magistrate]]). New charges were laid in 1988, in October 1990 and in June 1992.<ref name="DatesFig"/> The investigation was finished in July 1995.

In December 1995, Papon was sent to the ''[[Cour d'Assises]]'' and was accused of organising four deportation trains (later increased to eight trains). The French press contrasted Papon, the Bordeaux official who was "[[just following orders]]" in the commission of murder, to [[Aristides de Sousa Mendes]], the Portuguese Consul in Bordeaux at the time, who defied his government's orders and saved lives.<ref>Daniel Gervais, [http://www.liberation.fr/tribune/1996/03/22/bordeaux-1940-l-honneur-d-un-fonctionnaire-aristides-de-sousa-mendes_165097 "Bordeaux, 1940: l'honneur d'un fonctionnaire. Aristides de Sousa Mendes"], Libération.fr, 22 March 1996; retrieved 18 March 2014.</ref>

===The trial===
Papon finally went to trial on 8 October 1997, after 14 years of bitter legal wrangling. The trial was the longest in French history and went on until 2 April 1998. Papon was accused of ordering the arrest and deportation of 1,560 Jews, some children or elderly, between 1942 and 1944.{{citation needed|date=March 2018}}

As in [[Adolf Eichmann]]'s [[Eichmann trial|trial]] 30 years earlier, one of the issues of the trial was to determine to what extent an individual should be held culpable in a [[chain of responsibility]]. Papon's lawyers argued that he was a mid-level official, not the person making decisions about whom to deport. His lawyers argued that he had done the most good he could in the circumstances and had ensured that those to be deported were treated well while in his custody. The prosecution argued that the defence of following orders was not sufficient and that he bore at least some of the responsibility for the deportations. Calling on assistance from the best historians of the period, they dismantled his arguments of having tried to "humanise" the conditions of deportations of the Jews.{{citation needed|date=March 2018}}

While Papon claimed that he had worked to grant humane conditions of transport to the Camp of Mérignac, historians testified that his concerns were motivated by efficiency. Although Papon claimed that he had used ordinary trains and not livestock trains, as had been used by the [[SNCF]] in numerous other transfers, the historians asserted that he was trying to prevent any demonstration of sympathy toward the Jews from the local population.{{citation needed|date=September 2015}}

Leading historians of the period who testified as experts during the trial included [[Jean-Pierre Azéma]], [[Henry Rousso]], [[Maurice Rajsfus]], [[René Rémond]], [[Henri Amouroux]] and American historian [[Robert Paxton]].<ref name="Express"/> The defence tried to exclude Paxton's testimony by claiming the international and national context was irrelevant, but the magistrate dismissed that argument and said that "crimes against humanity" necessarily imply a larger context.{{citation needed|date=September 2015}}

Paxton, an expert in Vichy history, dismissed the "preconceived ideas" according to which Vichy had "hoped to protect French Jews" by handing "foreign Jews" over to the Germans: "From the start, at the summit, it was known that their departure [of the French Jews] was unavoidable.... Italians had protected the Jews. And the French authorities complained about it to the Germans.... The French state, itself, has participated in the politics of extermination of the Jews." In his 36-minute final speech to the jury, Papon rarely evoked those killed during the Holocaust. He portrayed himself as a victim of "the saddest chapter in French legal history." He denounced a "[[Moscow Trials|Moscow Trial]]" and compared his status to that of the Jew [[Alfred Dreyfus]] in the 19th century.<ref name="Express"/>

===Verdict, appeals and escape===
Having proved that Papon had organized eight "[[Holocaust train|death trains]]," the plaintiffs' lawyers recommended a 20-year prison term, as opposed to [[life imprisonment]], which is usually the norm for such crimes. Papon was convicted in 1998 as having been complicit with the Nazis in crimes against humanity.<ref name="nytimes.com">{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/18/world/europe/18papon.html|title=Maurice Papon, Convicted Vichy Official, 96, Dies|first=Craig R.|last=Whitney|newspaper=The New York Times |date=February 18, 2007|accessdate=November 7, 2021}}</ref> He was given a ten-year sentence but served less than three years. His lawyers filed an appeal in the [[Court of Cassation (France)|Court of Cassation]], but Papon fled to [[Switzerland]] under the name of [[Robert de La Rochefoucauld]], in violation of a French law that requires one to report to prison before the beginning of the appeal hearing. He was recaptured in 1999, but was required to serve little time because of his advanced age and medical problems.<ref name="nytimes.com"/>

The real Robert de La Rochefoucauld, a hero of the French Resistance who maintained that Papon had worked with the Resistance, had given Papon his passport to enable him to escape.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/9365640/Count-Robert-de-La-Rochefoucauld.html|location=London, UK|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120709150150/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/9365640/Count-Robert-de-La-Rochefoucauld.html|archive-date=9 July 2012|title=Count Robert de La Rochefoucauld}}</ref> Papon's appeal, scheduled for 21 October 1999,<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/oct/21/paulwebster?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487|title=French justice on trial as Papon flees|newspaper=[[The Guardian]]|author=Paul Webster|date=21 October 1999|access-date=13 September 2011|location=London, UK}}</ref> was automatically denied by the Court because of his flight.

===Prison and release===
[[File:La-Sante-Prison-MCB.jpg|thumb|Papon was incarcerated at [[La Santé Prison]], in [[Paris]], in 1999.]]France issued an [[Interpol notice|international arrest warrant]], and Papon was quickly apprehended by the Swiss police and extradited.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/oct/23/jonhenley|title=Swiss extradite Nazi collaborator Papon|newspaper=The Guardian|date=23 October 1999|access-date=11 September 2011|location=London, UK|first=Jon|last=Henley}}</ref> On 22 October 1999, Papon began serving his sentence at [[La Santé Prison]] in Paris.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/feb/19/guardianobituaries.france?INTCMP=SRCH|title=Obituary of Maurice Papon|newspaper=The Guardian|date=19 February 2007|access-date=11 September 2011|location=London|first=Douglas|last=Johnson}}</ref>

Papon applied for release on the grounds of poor health in March 2000, but President Jacques Chirac denied the petition three times. Papon continued to fight legal battles while he was in prison. His lawyers appealed to the [[European Court of Human Rights]], where they argued that the French court's denial of his appeal on a technicality, rather than on the merits of the case, constituted a violation of Papon's right to appeal his conviction. The Court agreed in July 2002, admonishing the Court of Cassation and awarding Papon 429,192 [[French francs]] (about 65,400 [[euros]]) in legal costs but no damages.{{citation needed|date=September 2015}}

Meanwhile, Papon's lawyers pursued a separate action in France and petitioned for his release under the terms of a March 2002 law, which provided for the release of ill and elderly prisoners to receive outside medical care. His doctors affirmed that Papon, now 92 years old, was essentially incapacitated. He became the second person released under the terms of the law and left jail on 18 September 2002, less than three years into his sentence. Former Justice Minister [[Robert Badinter]] expressed support for the release, prompting indignation from relatives of the victims as well as Arno and Serge Klarsfeld.<ref>[http://www.ina.fr/archivespourtous/index.php?vue=notice&from=fulltext&mc=Badinter,%20Robert&num_notice=1&total_notices=259 Film interview of Robert Badinter, Arno Klarsfeld and Gérard Boulanger], ina.fr; accessed 1 September 2015.</ref>

Relatives of Papon's victims and human rights [[nongovernmental organisations]] pointed out that many other detainees did not benefit from that law (including detainees in the terminal stages of [[AIDS]] as well as [[Nathalie Ménigon]], a member of ''[[Action directe (armed group)|Action Directe]]'' who was still imprisoned {{As of|2007|lc=on}} despite suffering from partial [[hemiplegia]]).

The ''[[Ligue des droits de l'homme]]'' (LDH, Human Rights League) criticised the inequality before the law, as Papon was freed but not other prisoners.<ref name="Last">[http://www.rfi.fr/actufr/articles/086/article_49780.asp Maurice Papon: la dernière polémique], ''[[Radio France Internationale|RFI]]'', 20 February 2007 {{in lang|fr}}</ref>