URL: http://www.inq7.net/wnw/2002/sep/19/text/wnw_6-1-p.htm
French court orders Nazi
war criminal freed
Posted:9:01 PM (Manila Time) | Sept. 18, 2002
Agence France-Presse
PARIS ? A French appeals court on Wednesday ruled that 92-year-old Nazi collaborator Maurice Papon be freed from prison on the grounds of poor health, his lawyers said.
Under the terms of his release, which was expected imminently, Papon must remain at home and seek court authorization to travel, lawyer Jean-Marc Varaut said, but insisted: "It is not right to call it house arrest."
France's only surviving convict from World War II, Papon has been serving a 10-year term in a Paris jail after being found guilty of complicity in crimes against humanity for his role in the deportation of more than 1,500 Jews from the southwestern city of Bordeaux.
At a hearing on September 4 his lawyers argued that he needed to be released urgently because of the grave deterioration in his medical condition, with doctors reporting chronic malfunction of the heart, circulatory system and kidneys.
The state prosecutor opposed his release, arguing that the crimes of which he was convicted in 1998 were of an "exceptional seriousness" and could "incite disturbances to public order," if he were set free.
Last year, President Jacques Chirac refused to grant Papon clemency, despite appeals from a number of eminent public figures. Jewish groups oppose his release because they say he has showed no remorse for his actions.
"This is a great victory," said another Papon lawyer, Francis Vuillemin.
But the president of the League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA) Patrick Gaubert said: "This is an upsetting decision. Maurice Papon deserved to stay in prison.
"We have always said that he should stay in prison because he committed crimes that were unpardonable ... His detention was the minimum that society could do for those poor children who died because of him," he said.
Michel Slitinsky, a holocaust survivor who in 1981 first exposed Papon to the media, said it was a "shocking decision .... This measure will only encourage extremists who now know they have partial impunity for their anti-Semitic convictions."
Papon's lawyers made use of a recent change in France's legal code that says that a prison term can be suspended if the convict's state of health is "incompatible with continued detention."
In one medical report produced before the court, Papon's health was said to be "very precarious and in constant and rapid deterioration ... he is bed-ridden and practically totally incapacitated ... This condition is now and will remain incompatible with his continued detention."
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