Chirac orders appeal over Papon release
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Your support makes all the difference.The French government said yesterday it would appeal a court decision to release the 92-year-old war criminal, Maurice Papon, on health grounds.
The Justice Minister, Dominique Perben – apparently on the direct orders of President Jacques Chirac – has asked public prosecutors to appeal to France's highest court, the Cour de Cassation, against Papon's release.
The decision is regarded as a political gesture, although an important one. The Cour de Cassation can only re-examine important points of law. The legal consensus is that an appeal will not succeed.
But the government has decided that, on political and moral grounds, it must be seen to do everything it can to put Papon back in jail.
Mr Chirac, who has taken a tougher line against the collaborationist Vichy regime than any previous president, was said to have been angered by the Paris appeal court decision on Wednesday. The judges decided that, under a new law which took effect in March, Papon should be allowed to go home after serving three years of a 10- year term for "complicity in crimes against humanity".
Papon was found guilty in 1998 of helping round up, and deport, Jews while he was a government official in Bordeaux in 1941-3. The appeal court ruled that Papon, suffering from heart illness, should benefit from a change in the law which orders that sick and elderly prisoners be released. Exceptions can only be made if the prisoner is a "threat to public order".
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