I'll defend Saddam, says French lawyer

Post-9/11 Era Forum

I'll defend Saddam, says French lawyer
IOL News
December 17 2003 at 03:57PM


Paris - Jacques Verges - a 79 year-old iconoclast with half a century of experience defending unpopular causes - confirmed on Wednesday that he was willing to act for captured Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein when he comes to trial.

Speaking to AFP before leaving by plane for Jordan, Verges said he has already been asked to act for Iraq's former vice-premier Tariq Aziz and that he was also ready to defend Saddam Hussein.

He said he was to meet members of Aziz's family in Amman. Aziz gave himself up to the US army in April and is believed to be in detention at Baghdad airport.

A quintessential devil's advocate who has made a career of arguing what most choose not to hear, Verges defended Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie - whose 1987 trial brought France face-to-face with its ambiguous wartime past - and convicted terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, commonly known as Carlos.

More recently he became vice-president of the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic and represented the former Yugoslav leader in a suit before the European Court of Human Rights.

Born in Thailand in 1925 of a French father and a Vietnamese mother, Verges grew up on the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion, where his experiences of racist discrimination contributed to his fierce anti-colonialism.

During World War 2 he went to Britain to join the Free French of General Charles de Gaulle. But afterwards, when France resorted to force to retain its colonial empire, he joined the French Communist Party (PCF) and became a radical student leader at law school.

Among his associates in Paris in the late 1940s was the future Cambodian leader Pol Pot, later to be accused of genocidal mass murder as the head of the Khmer Rouge.

After leaving the PCF because of its failure to take a stand against the Algerian war, Verges made his name by defending men and women accused of acts of terrorism against France. In 1962 he married one of his clients, Djamila Bouhired, who had been jailed for planting bombs in cafés in Algiers.

In 1970 Verges disappeared for eight years and what he did during that period has never been explained. According to one theory, he was with Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Verges himself says he "passed through to the other side of the mirror".

"It was my time in the shadows," he has said.

On his return he became the champion of extremists from both left and right. He was an advocate of Palestinian violence against the "imperialism" of Israel but he also defended neo-Nazi bombers and leapt at the chance to expose what he saw as establishment hypocrisy in the Barbie trial.

Most of his defendants lost their trials - including Barbie and Carlos - but Verges's flair was in courtroom provocation, attacking the prosecution and maximising the publicity of his defendants' cause.

Recently he has acted on behalf of a governor of the island of Corsica accused of arson, a leading member of President Jacques Chirac's political party accused of illegal fund-raising and a Moroccan-born gardener - Omar Raddad - accused of murdering his employer.

Somehow this seems as it should be ....

Please post what Saddam has done that the USA has not done in the past, (even ignoring the fact that Saddam was funded by the USA).

Body count, USA versus Iraq. Who do you think would win?

I would not want to be the guy publicing saying this early i am going to be the lawyer for Saddam Hussein. I would not be surprised if this guy doesn't last to see the inside of a court for this trial. It would have been smart to wrap something like that up for a while longer. The guy's got a big set, that's for sure. At least he found a lawyer.

Is someone here saying that for a lawyer defending Saddam Hussein is bad publicity? Given half a chance they'll be lining up around the block drooling with anticipation!

All French people are evil because of the type of wine, bread & cheese they eat.

Fred Hooper

The U.S. has a lawyer who is willing defend Saddam too. Lawyers are only in it for their own ego and financial gains. You guys have to know that, don't you? It's not about guilt or innocence for them. They provide a service and turn a blind eye to morality. It's their job.

If you want to blame someone for the people starving from sanctions, blame Saddam, he had the food we (The World) gave him but kept it for his thugs.
It's rediculous to apply this to America.