The French lawyer who says he will defend Saddam Hussein has a resume that reads as the Who’s Who of Scum.
Throughout his career as an attorney, VergËs primarily took political cases, and his clients included both left and right-wing terrorists. He has defended the nazi criminal Klaus Barbie (1987), Ilich Ramirez Sanchez a.k.a. Carlos the Jackal (1994), the Kekal faction (1995), the Holocaust-denier Roger Gaurady (1996) and Slobodan Milosevic (2002).
Born in Thailand and brought up on the RÈunion island, he was the son of Raymond VergËs, a French diplomat, and a Vietnamese woman. He joined the Communist party on Reunion and in 1942 he became part of the Free French Forces under Charles de Gaulle. After the war, while his brother Paul was imprisoned for murdering a political rival to their father, Jacques went to the Sorbonne to study law. In 1949 he became president of the AEC (Association for Colonial Students), where he met and befriended Pol Pot. In 1950 at the request of his Communist mentors he went to Prague to lead a youth organization for four years.
It should also be noted that he doesn’t just defend terrorists – he also marries them.
VergËs became a nationally-known figure following his defense of Djamila Bouhired, on terrorism charges. She was condemned to death but freed following public pressure and married VergËs.
And if you hadn’t already guessed it, he hates Israel with a passion.
Just as soon as his old enemy, colonialism, had fallen in Algeria, Jacques VergËs had acquired a new enemy, Israel. In the aftermath of the Algerian war, VergËs began to grow closer to radicals in the Third-World who opposed the remnants of imperialism in their region. These radicals represented all parts of the political spectrum and came from dozens of ethnic groups, but one thing almost all of them agreed on was that Israel was a growing bastion of imperialism in a world where imperialism was supposed to be collapsing. In order to stop imperialism, the Third-World radicals believed they had to stop Israel because they feared its “the real ambition…was to annex the entire Middle East.” With Israel around, imperialism would never die, and when many Third-World leaders began to oppose Israel, Jacques VergËs, anti-colonialist extraordinaire joined them. …it is absolutely true that he opposed Israel’s existence body and soul, and like others who opposed Israel, he often blurred the distinction between “Zionist” and “Jew.” …. Thus, it should have been no surprise that when PFLP terrorists were being tried for hijacking El Al planes in 1969, VergËs appeared as their attorney. Again, VergËs employed his strategy of disruption by claiming the terrorists’ acts were political, not criminal, and that Israel was to be blamed for the El Al passengers’ deaths, not the Palestinians.
I am sure VergËs’ only regret in life is that he never had the opportunity to defend Adolph Hitler.
