Editing Maurice Papon (section)

===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>