A strategic dimension
on an operational level to Waddi Haddad.
Which is why he was given the title of Sheik.
Sheik means "chief" or "elder".
François Genoud and Waddi Haddad
had a very close and warm relationship.
We liked him a lot.
I know that they were close,
Vergès, Boumaza and Genoud.
All during the struggle, they were pro-Palestinian,
and active in Palestinian affairs,
but that's all I can tell you.
With Waddi Haddad?
Yes...
He was the brains, the thinker.
Everybody admired and respected him.
We tried, for example,
to unite the Palestinian movement.
To tell them of the mistakes we made,
Messali Hadj and the FLN slaughtered each other,
how they'll try to divide you, make Palestinians fight each other.
We even gave lectures...
If you read the newspapers...
One of my collaborators...
was Mohammed Boudia,
killed by the Israeli secret service in Paris,
blown up by a bomb.
He was part of our group
the RUR, that fostered revolutionary solidarity.
I'd lost sight of Boudia:
Now he was a lump of flesh and bones.
One evening, I was in Paris, I went for a walk.
I remember it very clearly,
it was on Rue Tronchet, behind the Madeleine.
There's a café on a corner of the square.
Walking by,
I saw Boudia, who had disappeared,
at a table.
I came in to shake his hand,
and I said: "You're here?" He said: "You, too!"
We never discussed future actions...
In those days, everyone was sure Vergès had disappeared for 8 years.
But I ran into Jiri Pelikan
who'd known him at the International Student Union,
and who was head of Prague TV in 1968.
He said, and it came as a shock:
"During those 8 years, I saw Jacques in Paris."
I said: "It's impossible. He's disappeared."
He said: "He hasn't."
And I see Jacques cross the street. Areal shock!
I went up to him,
took him by the shoulder and said: "Jacques?"
Vergès answered:
"Hush! I'm not here. Don't say I'm in Paris, I'm incognito."
One day a guy called Pelikan,
who was a good friend of his, came into the restaurant
where I was dining with Karine, and says:
"I just saw Vergès, he hasn't changed."
Karine said: "What's this?"
He'd already been gone 3 years.
"I just saw him!"
I said: "It can't be, you're crazy!"
I'm in Paris, in a little hotel,
under an assumed name.
It's a Monday,
all the stores are closed, I go to a caterer,
to buy country bread...
and cheese...
When I leave, I see standing in line,
a colleague's widow,
who stares at me.
I say to myself:
"She'll tell everyone she saw me in Paris.
"How can I stop her?"
Sometimes the brain works like a computer.
I don't know how I got the idea, but I said to her:
"Hi, Fatso!
"How's tricks?"
She went: "Ohhhh!"
And I walked off.
I figured she'd tell that story,
all she'd get right is: "Hi, Fatso! How's tricks?"
No one'll believe her.
They'll say: "Since her husband died, she's flipped."
What interested me a lot
was meeting another lawyer, Attorney Oain,
who was very close to Jacques Vergès,
and who told me
that several times during those years,
Vergès visited him in Paris,
still incognito,
and slept there.
So for Oain, his disappearance was a farce,
he knew that Vergès was somewhere,
that he worked, hadn't disappeared, and wasn't in jail.
So what Oain told me, and he showed me the tickets,
was that Jacques Vergès had,
in the last years of his "disappearance",
1977 and 1978,
made many trips on airlines to the Far East.
One company claimed he owed a fortune.
The last time
that Vergès came back to France to stay,
he had a suitcase full of small banknotes,
and said to Oain: "Pay the airline with that."
Seems he had more money than he owed the airline.
Oain asked him who it came from, maybe he was kidding,
he answered: "From Moise Tshombé."
He also repaid Jérôme Lindon at the Editions de Minuit
with a suitcase full of money and said: "It came from Tshombé."
Yet Moise Tshombé is the presumed assassin of Patrice Lumumba,
of whom Jacques Vergès had a photo at home.
So defending Tshombé for him,
though it tamished his ideals a bit,
was a way to make money.
I soon knew, after my little inquiry,
among those he saw at the time,
that he got money from Tshombé's family
to get him out of jail.
He also got a loan from the National Bank of Algiers,
of a hundred million francs at the time.
The deal with Tshombé's family was,
according to Vergès,
"If I get yourfather out of jail,
"you repay this loan.
"If I don't, then I have to repay it."
But Moise Tshombé died in jail in 1969.
He didn't get him out of jail.
So Vergès will have to repay it.
He has to repay that sum.
So the Tshombé family were after him,
because they guaranteed the loan at the BNA,
which still hadn't been repaid in 1995.
I went to Algiers,
and met one of the heads of legal dept. At the BNA:
Jacques Vergès still owed them money.
He didn't leave for a cause, he left for personal reasons.
I don't know why, and don't want to. And if I did...
- Not for political reasons? - No.
I'm sure of that.
I think Vergès was a secret agent.
Some said he worked for East Germany.
Maybe he was also an agent for the French.
Which is why he had no problem getting back to France.
If Vergès was dead, we could talk.
Someone who knew, could talk.
Later they may tell historians: "Yes, he worked for us."
Whereas now...
this person might fear
that Vergès would sue.
If that was the case...
I got back thin, with a tanned and hardened complexion.
With a more distant perspective on things.
Once he got back,
it was like he'd lost faith in political models.
He expected nothing from politics.
So he settled in France, became a lawyer,
and a multi-purpose lawyer, as has been said.
When Jacques saw me:
"Hi, Bob! How are things? Great to see you!",
as if we'd last met a week ago.
I invited him for the weekend:
I lived 25 miles from Paris then, in a nice country house.
He came, and my mother liked him a lot.
She knew him well, as he'd lived at my home.
My mother said to him: "Jacques, really!"
She spoke out, called him a bastard.
She said: "It's insane!
"You dumped yourwife and kids.
"You're a real scoundrel!"
Jacques was laughing:
"Don't worry. They heard from me."
"You liar!"
That's when he said...
I asked: "How did Djamila react?"
I'd heard she said:
"If I ever see Jacques again, I'll slice off his balls!"
He said: "I haven't been in touch with her. Who knows?"
So I got back broke.
Then I was hired
by young German women of the Red Army Faction,
who'd been arrested in France.
And then by Oarlos' friends.
So that's it.
Between "Action Directe", separatists, squatters,
we were constantly at work,
defending victims of police brutality,
it was a lot of fun.
We had lots of work
and I got along fine with Vergès.
I went to Stammheim Prison to see him,
and as luck had it, the day I got there,
he was told he was free.
We created,
Jacques Vergès, Klaus Oroissant and I,
the "Intemational Association of Defenders of Political Prisoners".
But Klaus Oroissant and Jacques Vergès didn't get along.
So Klaus Oroissant quit.
He was very active for a while, worked hard
to create that outfit.
When he was freed he came to Paris,
then went back to East Germany.
You neverworked together?
No.
I was Oroissant's bodyguard.
So I was with him day and night,
I saw everything that happened there.
Oroissant's office was used
to recruit new members for the Baader-Meinhof gang.
The story of Oroissant's office,
all the young people who came to it
later became hardliners.
They all came via Oroissant.
All the jailbreak plans
were hatched in the cells
on the 7th floor of Stannheim Prison.
To get the ideas out, you needed lawyers,
and they did it.
The weapons
were smuggled into the jails by the lawyers.
Later with Sartre, I was the driver.
I'm for violence as a political weapon
where it is needed,
meaning where there are mass confrontations,
orwhere they can be fostered.
Officially among leftists, there's no hierarchy,
but that's crap.
The top dogs were the Böse/Kuhlmann couple,
then came Weinrich/Magdalena Kopp.
I knew she was Weinrich's girlfriend.
Haddad and Oarlos planned to kidnap an Arab ambassador.
He was a very rich guy,
we wanted a ransom of 30 or 40 million dollars.
We were there for a month... with Magdalena Kopp.
The boss wasn't Oarlos, it was Michel Moukarbel.
Oarlos killed him later in Paris.
Apolice Lt and two detectives
go to Oarlos's house in Paris.
Oarlos opens the door, understands fast,
three Frenchmen with Moukarbel.
Pretending to get his papers, he gets a gun,
fires, kills the 2 detectives, severely wounds the Lt,
and "executes", as he says, Moukarbel.
Anyway, Oarlos...
He's not normal.
He's a psychopath.
Oarlos came into the boardroom
and he was like a kid,
he fired at the ceiling and yelled:
"I'm Oarlos, you must've heard of me."
But the operation got fouled up from the start.
They started to shoot at once,
and it turned into a gunfight,
and they killed some policemen.
In the gunfight,
H.J. Klein got a bullet in the stomach.
By the time they got me to Algeria, I was clinically dead.
I was seriously wounded, all smashed inside.
The operation in Vienna against the OPEP
had several goals.
The first was to collect funds,
force Iran and Saudi Arabia
to come up with money.
The other goal was to execute
Zaki Yamani, the Oil Minister.
This goal made no sense to us.
Why attack Zaki Yamani, who wasn't against us,
who was for the Palestinian cause.
So I had a talk with Oarlos, who was in the operation,
to change the goals,
and not concentrate on the execution,
because there'd be huge dangers later.
Fortunately, during the Vienna operation, we got along fine.
At first, I was politically in charge,
and he was militarily in charge.
Later we decided to trade roles.
In the end, they managed to land in Algeria
and freed all the hostages for money
which infuriated Waddi Haddad.
It meant 3 to 5 million dollars for Oarlos.
- To spare Yamani. - Yes.
To me, he's a figure at Algiers airport:
A man who was thin then,
wearing a Ohe Guevara beret,
and Bouteflika beside him.
We were in a huge government villa,
we were treated like kings.
The head of the Algerian secret service came every day,
sometimes with the Algiers Police Ohief.
Then I started to have doubts:
The Police Ohief knew I was German and said:
"Hitlerwas a good man."
I said to myself: "Poor FLN."
They were put up in a villa
and the Police Ohief, I knew everyone...
Oarlos had already seen The Battle of Algiers.
They asked to see me,
I went there, we saw the film again,
and we even played soccer... There was a yard nearby,
we tried to have fun like that. He told me his...
We exchanged phone numbers,
and passwords, etc.
We ate with Boumediène.
He was Foreign Minister then.
Later, Klein disappeared from sight for 20 years.
He mailed his gun to a big German newspaper
saying: "I'm H.J. Klein, I did those things,
"now I've tumed a page,
"and I'm renouncing violence."
When Waddi Haddad died,
his organization split up
into small groups that became mercenaries.
Oarlos created his own organization.
He saw that terrorism meant big money.
The Oarlos group was watched day and night
while they were in East Europe.
In East Germany the STASI watched them,
spied on their hotel rooms,
taped everything
and wrote reports.
Oarlos now lived behind the Iron Ourtain,
in East Germany and also in Hungary.
The East Germans quietly expelled him there,
without advising their Hungarian friends.
When the Hungarians found out he was in Budapest,
they went to talk to him,
but never to hand him to the West that wanted him.
The only person who's purer than me
is Johannes Weinrich.
He's too pure.
This can be a dirty business.
He's virginally pure. I'm not exaggerating.
Magdalena, via Johannes Weinrich, met Oarlos,
and changed lovers:
She dropped Weinrich for the boss.
They had a villa in Budapest,
it was Oarlos' HQ for several years.
What does a couple talk about in bed, what's their pillow talk
before going to sleep?
In bed, Oarlos told Magdalena Kopp
that she had to do something,
because she'd been in the group a long time,
and had never dirtied her hands.
"Go to Paris, where we're going to strike.
"You have to go get the explosives
"and move them to where we'll strike."
The Hungarian secret services taped it all.
The two ran away.
The police...
knocked down Magdalena Kopp as she crossed the Ohamps Elysées.
And arrested her. In a street further on,
Bruno Bréguet drew his gun and aimed at the policemen.
It jammed: He threw it away and surrendered.
I remember the arrest of Magdalena Kopp and Bruno Bréguet,
I was on duty when they were nabbed gun in hand.
In the car they abandoned,
a bomb was found, with a detonator.
The bomb was set to go off that day at 10.30 PM.
He had just dumped a briefcase.
In it were found 2 grenades,
5 kilos of penthrite and a detonation system.
That's a powerful explosive used in France
only by the army.
But in the car due to be exploded,
were also 2 gas cylinders, to boost the blast.
The idea was to place the bomb
in front of the Paris embassy of an Arab country,
to explode it and blackmail that country.
"Pay us X number of millions,
"or the next bomb will kill many people,
"and it may even be in your capital city."
They accepted a public defender.
Then after thinking it over,
maybe like Joan of Arc, they heard voices,
and appointed me...
Oarlos left a letter at the French Embassy in The Hague, saying:
"We're not your enemies.
"We have a secret deal, free them."
To Mr Gaston Deferre, Defense Minister
"Sir, Two of our group, MC Kopp and Bruno Bréguet..."
Signed. Carlos. My thumbprints authenticate this letter.
Several ministers met and one of them tells the press.
Deferre said: "Whoever did that is responsible for any bloodshed."
Once it was public, Deferre's position
was that Oarlos would have to make good his threat.
In this letter, dated late February,
the ultimatum was one month:
If they didn't get a satisfactory answerwithin a month,
there'd be reprisals.
After this, I had talks with the Interior Ministry.
They were embarrassed and decided
to hold the trial during the summer vacations,
that way...
during the vacations,
they'd face less repressive prosecutors.
Bruno Bréguet had an automatic pistol
that jammed as he was about to fire at the policeman...
The whole case rested on that.
If he threw away his gun because it jammed,
but intended to kill, it was murder: He'd get at least 7 years.
But if he'd only aimed to frighten,
he'd get much less.
We had to convince the DA
that he was just carrying a banned weapon,
he'd waved it in the air,
had pulled the trigger accidentally:
Luckily the gun jammed.
First we had to convince the DA,
then the Prosecutor, who concurred.
Mr Jean-Louis Debré,
who was DAin this case,
now a majority leader,
and MrAlain Marsaud, who was the Prosecutor
now a right-wing deputy,
both agree that the orders from up above
were not to be too tough...
It was a real perversion
of our judicial system
and not a glorious page...
It's best to tum that page fast.
Did Carlos, with his known sympathies for the PLO
and his Syrian connections,
organize the deadly blast Rue Marbeuf?
The explosion went off just when the trial was due to start,
had it started on time.
Both Bruno Bréguet and Magdalena Kopp
remained silent this morning.
Proud, smiling scornfully, they ridicule the trial.
They didn't rise when their names were called out,
as if they knew that Carlos or someone would free them.
Dynamite in a train station locker. Carlos again.
Train bomb threat.
You seem to know him well?
No, not at all.
No letters or phone calls from him?
Absolutely not.
You're not acting on instructions from Mr Oarlos?
Absolutely not.
I'm here to defend
the two prisoners,
and I won't hide the sympathy and esteem I feel for them.
That's all.
"The truth is, Magdalena Kopp and Bruno Bréguet will be freed.
"You know that, and so do they.
"They're soldiers of a noble cause
"who want to free the oppressed,
"and restore dignity to humiliated people.
"The rest of their army will keep striking
"until they are free.
"Your only problem is when you free them and avoid bloodshed."
It was the truth.
Which isn't the best thing to say.
But it is: The Oourt will pay heed to the truth.
Only the irresponsible press won't. They'll write:
"That's horrible... How can one say such things?"
I stood in line at Ohristmas,
as families could bring 5 kilos
of foodstuff to prisoners.
I took the orders.
I nicknamed Bruno Bréguet "The Squirrel":
He liked candied fruit.
Magdalena Kopp was more refined:
She wanted smoked German ham,
country bread,
ice-cream...
I brought her all that, waited in line among families,
who were amazed to see me in the line with them.
I can admit it now.
Alcohol is forbidden in jail,
but on the ice-cream I poured armagnac.
He was her lawyer,
and they developed
a strong platonic relationship, and he gave her jewelry.
And if you see Magdalena Kopp
today, she still wears a gold ring with a small red stone
that Vergès gave her, and a gold chain with a red stone
that he gave her.
It was new for Magdalena Kopp,
who'd been seen as a sex object,
for someone to be interested in her as a person,
for a man to talk to her.
Of course, there was surely also
a sexual aspect to it.
I have here a note
about the trip of Attorney Jacques Vergès,
to East Berlin, capital of East Germany, Dec 20, 1982.
This document states that representatives
from the Oarlos group
met Vergès (Oode name "Herzog")
Who advised them how to free their members jailed in France,
Kopp... and Brèguet,
or how to help them escape.
I read here:
"For Magdalena's escape,
"Herzog suggests getting her to a doctor
"to check her physical and psychological health,
"and to use this visit
"to organize Kopp's escape."
The purpose of this report
was definitely to inform superiors.
Like me, for instance, as head of the unit.
I consider this report
as objective and true to reality.
I was able to get in contact with many of them,
who confirmed it to me.
It wasn't a single STASI officer,
a whole department kept the Oarlos group under surveillance.
It's very well documented.
There are stacks of documents on the Oarlos group
and its relations with Vergès.
And just after the Wall came down they were made public.
I don't see how they could've been faked!
Central Prison near Paris
These notebooks, photographed secretly by the STASI,
during a search,
clearly belonged to Johannes Weinrich.
They've even been published since.
They were clearly diaries for Weinrich,
who wrote about what he did,
to remind him
what had been concluded, when and with whom.
"New name: Neda = Sonja.
"She'll act as liaison between me and Gabriel."
New Vergès codename=Gabriel
"Gabriel arrives September 10.
"Herzog's hotel bill.
"Herzog got $3000."
"Gabriel will come once a month. (His idea)
"He'll have a coverfor his visits."
In 1982, in Budapest.
It was ourfirst meeting at my home.
We toasted with champagne.
We got on well, he's a nice guy.
So I recruited him. I said.
"Listen, you'll carry messages to the French government."
One day, I see the warden of Fresnes prison,
and I tell him:
"Magdalena Kopp will be out soon.
"Please tell me when."
One day he tells me: "Let's say, she'll be freed next Monday."
So the following Monday, I'm there at 8 AM
to be ready for anything, and I see a police car tear out
with her inside.
I say to the warden: "You promised and didn't keep yourword."
He says: "When the police come here, what can I do?"
That evening, Magdalena Kopp calls me:
"I'm in Offenburg, in Germany, it's close to...
"Strasbourg.
"I don't know what's going on."
I jumped on a plane to Strasbourg, then by car to Offenburg,
where we drank champagne, actually German fizzy wine,
to toast her liberation.
Abit later, the phone rang.
She picked it up and a voice said: "It's me."
She knew it was Oarlos. He didn't say his name,
but she knew at once it was Oarlos.
He said to her: "Oome and see me at once."
And hung up.
I realized, if I had his child,
he'd never involve me again in his activities,
because I was the mother of his child.
Vergès wanted to screw her,
in that hotel by the German border. He did.
I know it, I know everything.
Before your arrest, how many times did you see Vergès?
5 times, 10 times?
20 times, 25 times.
Before your arrest?
Yes... I don't know how many times. 25 times in Damascus.
And the following years, up to 1991.
We last met in Damascus in August, 1991.
Anyway, Vergès used to come and see us.
We liked him a lot. Even the neighbors' kids knew him.
His slanted eyes were a curiosity in Damascus.
My little girl knew him as her Uncle Jacques.
The neighbors' kids in the street knew him.
"Jacques is here!"
So Oarlos lived in Damascus
with Weinrich and Magdalena Kopp.
One of their rare regular visitors in Damascus
was François Genoud.
We heard of Barbie's arrest, in February, 1983
by the Bolivians, and handed over to the French.
I said to my wife: "We'll have to take care of it."
My wife, who was getting a bit tired said:
"François, you don't know him.
"Do you really
"have to help him?"
I answered: "Elisabeth, if we don't do it, who will?"
I phoned Vergès.
He said: "I was just thinking about you."
So I said to him:
"When I think about a friend, I phone him.
"How do you feel about this?"
He said: "It's very interesting."
"Would you agree to take on his case?"
He first went to see Oussedik to ask him to defend Barbie.
Oussedik refused because it was Barbie, and said,
"If I agreed to do it,
"I'd feel I was betraying what I did for the Algerian revolution,
"and that's out of the question." And he said: "Go see Vergès,
"I'm sure he'll do it very well."
Oan you confirm you're involved in Barbie's defense?
It's for TF1, French TV.
No comment.
Are you paying for his defense?
I have nothing to say on this matter.
But you're interested in this trial?
Like everybody else.
You know Vergès, Barbie's lawyer?
He's an old friend. That's all.
In Lyon they put on a real show.
They tumed the main hall into a courtroom,
to seat 700 people.
Araised courtroom with stairs leading up to it.
The French government built the set.
Then it was up to us,
within their set, to improvise our play.
The court is in session.
Guards, bring in the prisoner.
No one else could have done what he did.
He derailed a huge machine
that wanted to make Barbie's trial, the exemplary trial
of World War II, of the Holocaust, the Shoah...
That's fine, but they wanted to keep out
anything that could focus
on the crimes against humanity
committed in Algeria, sub-Saharan Africa, slavery...
It was exhilarating.
There's 39 lawyers on the other side...
and I'm all alone.
It means each of them is only worth a fortieth of me.
Shortly before the trial,
Roland Dumas said to me:
"I've just been hired
by a Resistance group, what do you think?"
I answered: "I don't fear you, but don't take it."
There'll be 30 or 40 lawyers like you, singing the same song,
"feigning emotion that you don't feel."
"No!
"It's for human dignity!"
I say to him: "The first three, if they're good actors,
"will be a hit."
But by the fourth orfifth, people will be fed up with it.
But he took it on.
I ask you, and you don't have to answer,
tell me the name of one of those legal eagles?
A trial is magical, full of surprises.
"Never again", we've heard that a hundred times.
But opposite me they were saying:
"What ploy will the bastard come up with today?"
They couldn't wait to hear the bastard's ploy.
And, being imaginative, he found one every day.
I said: "Shit! You can't defend Barbie, that's outrageous.
"You're baiting everyone."
He said: "Yes, but...", then explained at length,
though I understood quite fast what his aim was.
He converted me because he's pretty smart.
He said: "I'll put the French on trial, the use of torture in France,
"I'll relate it to the Algerian war.
"Follow the trial, you'll see."
There's not much difference
between the methods used in Algeria
and the methods used by the Gestapo in Lyon.
People died under torture in Algeria.
I know it, I've researched that myself.
I think Vergès is deeply anti-colonial and always will be.
He can't stand it.
He won't let up on them, he'll claw at them...
until France recognizes
that some of its officers behaved like Nazi officers.
I can't stand a man being humiliated,
even an enemy.
For a lone man to be insulted by a lynch mob.
I was asked: "Would you defend Hitler?"
"I said I'd even defend Bush!
"But only if he agrees to plead guilty."
When Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in 1978,
he got a lot of help
from the Palestinians.
The Palestinians played an important role
in his takeover.
During the Iranian Revolution,
Ohapour Bakhtiar, the Shah's last Prime Minister
fled Iran and settled in Paris.
Khomeini decided
that Bakhtiar had to be killed, executed.
It was probably
a "confidential" task
that Ayatollah Khomeini gave this fellow Naccache,
who had no talent at all for dirty deeds.
Our attempt was a total failure:
I was wounded and all my commandos arrested.
In a gunfight in front of Bakhtiar's apartment,
a neighborwas killed, a cop badly wounded.
Naccache, was acting on Khomeini's fatwa.
Khomeini can't let him end up in jail.
Anti-French riots in Teheran to free "The 5 Fighters"
The Naccache affair is yet another
problem between France and Iran.
Iran is at warwith Iraq, that is backed by France,
supplying arms, planes, training Iraqi pilots.
France had received from the Shah of Iran
at the end of his reign,
a huge sum of around a billion dollars
to set up a nuclear industrial project.
Iran wants that money back.
France says: "The Shah lent it to us, we won't repay Khomeini."
But Iran needs this money to fund the war.
In a way,
our diplomacy had declared war on Iran
and didn't know it.
But Iran was very aware of it,
and was the victim of these operations.
It wanted to get a message across.
Eiffel Tower bomb!
Champs Elysées bomb! Bookstore bomb!
"The bookstore was us, too."
Bomb in FNAC store! 4 blasts in 3 days
"Free Naccache and Garbidjian fast."
Bullet Train bomb!
"The Bullet Train will be the first of a new series."
Starting in February, March,
there was a big wave of attacks,
committed and claimed by a new organization
supporting Arab political prisoners,
demanding the liberation of 3 people
with very different profiles, at least for 2 of them:
Anis Naccache, Iranian-backed.
Garbidjian, formerly with Waddi Haddad.
And Georges lbrahim Abdallah,
a former Waddi Haddad
commando member,
who created the Lebanese Revolutionary Army,
and killed U.S. And Israeli diplomats.
We, in Govemment Security, couldn't believe a single organization
had been formed to demand these liberations.
I realized that these 3 characters,
whose liberation the organizations demanded,
and who were all serving life sentences,
hadn't been in contact with anyone.
Judge Marsaud tried, I say, to use extreme measures,
threatening Abdallah
with being sent on a "wood chore", ie executed.
Without waming me, he was moved from the Fleury prison
to the Santé prison.
But...
prisons have leaks.
A guard phoned me to say:
"Your client is in the Santé prison."
Abdallah was negotiating with us,
orwe were negotiating with him,
so he could phone Beirut
and tell his brothers,
who were suspected of perpetrating the attacks,
and tell his brothers,
that he opposed being freed by this kind of action.
Things were going quite well,
except that there was a leak,
most probably by a guard in the Santé prison,
who let him know that Vergès was on his case,
and concemed about his treatment.
From then on, it's true
that Abdallah's attitude changed completely
and he clammed up, as he had for years,
knowing that Vergès was on his case.
Why was the last attack on Sept 17?
Because they'd run out of explosives.
They had no more explosives.
Arrested terrorists linked to Iran
If we'd known that, we'd have told Naccache:
"Get on the phone to Hezbollah or the mullahs."
But we didn't know Iran was behind it.
So to us Naccache was just in it,
almost by accident.
I started making political statements,
like backing Khomeini's fatwa on Salman Rushdie.
I had ideas
about the position of Muslims in Europe.
All we wanted
was to get Naccache out of France fast.
But that point of view
wasn't shared by...
President Mitterrand was against it.
During those ten years, much had changed,
there were new Islamic movements, resistance movements.
They all felt
that I was a symbol, and had to be freed from jail.
He wrote me asking me to go see him.
I went, and he said then:
"Attorney, I'm serving a life sentence.
"So far I haven't been on a hunger strike.
"But now, it looks like France and Iran
"will settle their nuclear differences.
"If they reach an agreement, I'll be forgotten.
"I'll be a minor item.
"I want to be part of that agreement.
"So I'm going on a hunger strike
"and need you as my lawyer."
When he visited me the first time in jail,
he asked me about my childhood, why I was a militant, etc.
I told him:
"I went on my first demonstration aged 7. It was for Djamila Bouhired."
He smiled, and said:
"I was Djamila's lawyer and husband for a while."
We became friends
and I saw we were on the same political wavelength,
that he could make the needed statements
to the media on my behalf
on why I'd taken this step.
He lost 27 kilos, he now weighs 48 kilos.
Tomorrow he'll be put on a drip feed for 4 days.
So his state is alarming.
We waited and when...
we saw it was legally feasible,
Roland Dumas and I went to see the President.
"Now's the time to do it,
"and immediately! We can't lose...
"We should expel this guy."
So President Mitterrand pardoned us,
though all 5 of us had life sentences,
and we got out after 10 years.
It was a political solution.
Naccache was the first prisoner
who clearly said he was part of a revolutionary Islamism.
It was the first step
of Islam-inspired terrorism in a western country.
We were the first to have to deal with it,
long before the Americans, British or Spaniards.
Oarlos' error in France
was killing 3 undercover cops. They neverforget that.
Oarlos was kidnapped in Sudan.
We know Oarlos and Vergès knew each otherwell,
for a long time, and when he was arrested,
Oarlos said he was his lawyer.
When the judge tried to reach Vergès,
he couldn't reach him all day.
So Oarlos then appointed Oussedik.
Oussedik filed a kidnapping complaint.
Oarlos agreed to it, and signed the complaint.
But later he told us that he withdrew it,
claiming it was too soon.
It would irk Pasqua, the Interior Minister.
Vergès said he'd negotiate with Pasqua,
and to drop the complaint.
He's a traitor.
I always thought he was on our side,
that he was a Communist at heart.
That's a betrayal.
And as a lawyer, he can't do that.
Oussedik was furious.
At Vergès,
who advised...
Oarlos to drop the kidnapping complaint against France,
and its secret service, for kidnapping him in Sudan.
He's furious, doesn't understand Vergès' position.
So he starts asking questions, looking around...
Oussedik starts to inquire...
Vergès. His real links to Carlos.
Vergès was Carlos' link to France in 1982
A new visit yesterday for Carlos.
Jacques Vergès told him
that he, Vergès, has been accused of complicity.
He laughs a lot. He said: "Soon you'll be inside."
"I'll get out, and bring you oranges."
Judge Bruguière has new evidence on Vergès and Carlos
Judge Bruguière wants you off the case,
then to charge you, to indict you.
They're trying,
with documents they say they got from the STASI,
to throw me off balance. I await that very calmly.
If they hope to get rid of me on this case by indicting me,
they won't succeed. I'll be in the dock, with Oarlos,
and I'll certainly talk.
- Are you part of Oarlos' network? - Of course not.
- You'd swear to it? - Of course I would.
You'd swear it in a law court?
Of course.
You spoke to Oarlos before he came back?
- No. - Never?
- You had no news? - No.
- Never? - Never.
Even on trips you made. Nothing at all?
- Since how long? - Since forever.
Since forever?
You weren't in Eastern bloc countries to see Oarlos' deputy?
Never. The STASI claim that, but it's a lie.
Even if I saw Carlos, it's my right.
Oarlos was my client for a few months. He isn't anymore.
Professional rules forbid me to talk of him.
"Omar killed me"
We lawyers
have a big advantage over doctors.
We can tell someone: "I don't want to defend you."
But if we agree to do it, this trust compels us
to fight tooth and nail to defend him,
and use all every legal device there is.
But we must never cross that white line,
or else...
we become vulnerable.
Translation: Sandy Whitelaw
Subtitles: ONST, Montreal