Editing Jacques Vergès (section)

== High-profile defendants ==
After Vergès's return to public life he resumed his legal practice, taking on a variety of legal cases ranging from; Muslim children who wanted to wear [[Headscarf|headscarves]] in school, transfusion-transmitted [[HIV/AIDS]] patients contaminated by [[Contaminated haemophilia blood products|unscreened blood]], prostitutes suing their pimps for back pay to defending high profile war criminals and dictators.<ref name=":2" />

The first file that Jacques Vergès handled as a lawyer concerns Sonacotra. He engages in a "defence of rupture" (also called "strategy of rupture"), rather than what he calls the "defense of connivance", which was classically pleaded: the accused becomes the accuser, considers that the judge does not have jurisdiction or that the court does not have the legitimacy, and takes the opinion to witness.<ref>[https://hal.science/hal-02507444/document Jacques Vergès, Rupture Strategy and the ArgentineanNew Left: Circulations and Adaptations of a JudiciaryTheory]</ref>

=== Notable clients ===

Sources:<ref name=":2" /><ref name=":0" />

* [[National Liberation Front (Algeria)]]
* [[Red Army Faction]]
* [[Anis al-Naqqash]]
* [[Bernard Bonnet]]
* [[Bruno Bréguet]]
* [[Charles Sobhraj]]
* Félix Houphouët-Boigny
* [[Georges Ibrahim Abdallah]]
* [[Gnassingbé Eyadéma]]
* [[Idriss Déby]]
* [[Ilich Ramírez Sánchez]],  [[nom de guerre]] Carlos 
* [[Klaus Croissant]]
* [[Magdalena Kopp]]
* [[Omar Bongo]]
* [[Omar Raddad Affair|Omar Raddad]]
* The ex-captain [[Paul Barril]] the Élysée wiretapping affair
* Roger Garaudy
* [[Siné]]
* [[Slobodan Milošević|Slobodan Milosevic]] (legal council)
* [[Tariq Aziz]]

==== Klaus Barbie ====
The thrust of Vergès's defence in the case was that Barbie was being singled out for prosecution while the French state conveniently ignored other cases that qualified as crimes against humanity.<ref name="bbc_Barbie" /> Vergès adopted a ''[[tu quoque]]'' defense, asking the judges "is a crime against humanity to be defined as only one of Nazis against the Jews or if it applies to more serious crimes...the crimes of imperialists against people struggling for their independence?", going on to say there was nothing his client did against the Resistance that was not done by "certain French officers in Algeria" whom Vergès noted could not be prosecuted because of de Gaulle's amnesty of 1962.<ref name="auto1">Cohen, William "The Algerian War, the French State and Official Memory" pp.&nbsp;219–239 from ''Réflexions Historiques'', Vol. 28, No. 2, Summer 2002, p.&nbsp;230.</ref> As such, Vergès argued that the republic had no right to convict Barbie of anything given that French officers like the war hero General [[Jacques Massu]] had also engaged in torture and extrajudicial executions during the fight against the FLN.<ref name="auto1" /> Vergès argued in impassioned speeches before the court that the main conflict motivating history was the struggle between the [[Global North]] and the [[Global South]], and that American policy in the Vietnam war and French policy during the Algerian war were the "true face" of the West.<ref name="auto">Finkielkraut, Alain ''Remembering in Vain: The Klaus Barbie Trial and Crimes Against Humanity'', New York Columbia University Press, 2010 p.52</ref> Vergès maintained that to convict Barbie was a base act of hypocrisy for a French court as his actions were those of a typical Westerner, and therefore he could not be punished for doing merely other Westerners had done.<ref name="auto" />
[[File:Jacques Vergès et Klaus Barbie lors de son procès. Lyon 1987 (dessin de Calvi).jpg|left|thumb|Caricature of Vergès and Klaus Barbie during the trial, by Calvi]]
Besides his ''tu quoque'' defense of arguing that French actions in the Algerian War were no different from Barbie's, Vergès spent much time attempting to prove the Resistance hero [[Jean Moulin]] had been betrayed by either the Communists, the Gaullists, or both, which led him to argue Barbie was less culpable than those who had betrayed Moulin.<ref>Clinton, Alan ''Jean Moulin, 1899–1943 The French Resistance and the Republic'', London: Macmillan 2002 pages 203–204.</ref> Vergès claimed Moulin's colleagues were "playing a double game" and all those in the Resistance "whether they were anti-Gaullists or anti-Communists forgot their duty to the Resistance because of partisan political passions".<ref>Clinton, Alan ''Jean Moulin, 1899–1943 The French Resistance and the Republic'', London: Macmillan 2002 page 203.</ref> At one point, Vergès claimed that Moulin had actually wanted to be tortured to death and tipped off Barbie himself.<ref name="auto3">Clinton, Alan ''Jean Moulin, 1899–1943 The French Resistance and the Republic'', London: Macmillan, 2002. p.&nbsp;204.</ref> Under French law, defense lawyers are entitled to use competing theories in defense of their clients, unlike the prosecution who must stick to only one line of argument. Barbie was not on trial for the torture and murder of Moulin as the statute of limitations in the Moulin case had expired, but instead on trial for crimes against humanity for his role in deporting Jews from Lyons in 1942-44, for which there was no statute of limitations.<ref name="auto3" /> Barbie was on trial for his role in the arrest and deportation of 44 Jewish children from the Izieu orphanage on 6 April 1944.<ref name="auto2">Finkielkraut, Alain ''Remembering in Vain: The Klaus Barbie Trial and Crimes Against Humanity'', New York Columbia University Press, 2010 p.89</ref> Of the 44 children, 42 were killed at Auschwitz.<ref name="auto2" />

Vergès seems to have brought in the Moulin case as part of his defense of Barbie as a strategy of drawing attention from the actions that Barbie had actually been put on trial for.<ref name="auto3"/> Despite Vergès's efforts, the court found Barbie guilty of crimes against humanity, sentencing him to life imprisonment.<ref name="auto3"/> Reviewing the film ''[[Hôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie]]'', the film critic David Denby wrote the climax of the film was when the French filmmaker [[Marcel Ophüls]] pressed the "despicable" Vergès during an interview about his defense of Barbie, whom Denby wrote "...persists in pretending that Barbie is a victim of some sort".<ref>Denby, David "Criminal Element" pp.&nbsp;75–76 from ''New York Magazine'', 17 October 1988 p.&nbsp;76.</ref> Vergès was paid to defend Barbie by Swiss Nazi financier [[François Genoud]], whom Vergès had met during the Algerian War due to their mutual support for the [[National Liberation Front (Algeria)|FLN]].

In 1999 Vergès sued [[Amnesty International]] on behalf of the government of [[Togo]].<ref name="bbc_togo">{{cite news |date = 20 May 1999 <!--11:56 GMT 12:56 UK-->|url = http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/348602.stm |title = Togo to sue Amnesty International |publisher = BBC Newsb |access-date = 12 April 2008 }}</ref> In 2001, on behalf of [[Idriss Déby]], president of [[Chad]], [[Omar Bongo]], president of [[Gabon]], and [[Denis Sassou-Nguesso]], President of the [[Republic of the Congo]], he sued [[François-Xavier Verschave]] for his book ''Noir silence'' denouncing the crimes of the ''[[Françafrique]]'' on the charges of "offense toward a foreign state leader", using an arcane 1881 law.<ref name="bbc_Verschave">{{cite news |date = 25 April 2001<!--, 14:05 GMT 15:05 UK-->|url = http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1295740.stm |title = French author wins Africa book case |publisher = BBC News |access-date = 12 April 2008 }}</ref> The attorney general observed how this crime recalled the [[lese majesty]] crime; the court thus deemed it contrary to the [[European Convention on Human Rights]], thus leading to Verschave's acquittal.<ref name="bbc_Verschave" />

==== Khieu Samphan ====
[[File:Jacques Vergès - 21 November 2011 (cropped).jpg|thumb|Vergès on the first day of opening statements for the Samphan trial in 2011]]
In April 2008, former [[Khmer Rouge]] head of state [[Khieu Samphan]], and old associate of Vergès, made his first appearance at Cambodia's genocide tribunal. Vergès represented Samphan, using the defence that, while Samphan has never denied that many people in Cambodia were killed, as head of state he was not directly responsible.<ref name="BBC_Khmer_Rouge">{{cite news |date=<!--07:33 GMT--> 23 April 2008 |url = http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7362248.stm |title = Khmer Rouge leader seeks release |publisher = BBC News |access-date = 23 April 2008 }}</ref>

==== Saddam Hussein ====
After the US-led coalition forces invaded Iraq in March 2003 and deposed [[Saddam Hussein]], many former leaders in the [[Ba'athist Iraq|Baathist regime]] were arrested. In late 2003, Vergès offered to defend Hussein after he was approached by Sadam's nephew who was putting a legal team together.<ref name=":1" /> However, the Hussein family opted not to use Vergès.<ref name="bbc_defence_team">{{cite news |date= 8 August 2005<!--, 12:22 GMT 13:22 UK-->|url = http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4131474.stm |title = Saddam family slims defence team |publisher = BBC News |access-date = 14 August 2008 }}</ref>

In May 2008, [[Tariq Aziz]] assembled a team that included Vergès as well as a French-Lebanese and four Italian lawyers.<ref name="bbc_new_legal_team">{{cite news |date=<!--09:33 GMT--> 20 May 2008 |url = http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7409933.stm |title = Tariq Aziz trial resumes in Iraq |publisher = BBC News |access-date = 20 May 2008 }}</ref>