He called his memoir “The Shining Bastard” and likened himself to the great men of fiction “who stand alone against the establishment.”
Jacques Verges, the French lawyer known for his defense of the world’s most despised criminals, including the infamous Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie and Venezuelan-born terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez (better known as Carlos the Jackal), died Aug. 15 in Paris. He was reported to be 88.
Verges died of a heart attack in the house where 18th century philosopher Voltaire once lived, said his publisher Pierre-Guillaume de Roux, Reuters news agency reported.
In a career spanning more than five decades, Verges was one of the most enigmatic and provocative legal personalities in the world. He cultivated an air of mystery by vanishing for most of the 1970s, an absence that to this day — and despite the best efforts of investigative journalists — has never been explained.
Defending Barbie, dubbed the “Butcher of Lyons” for his role in the deaths of thousands of Jews and French Resistance fighters during World War II, Verges said he found him “a respectable man … unjustly condemned.”
In Carlos, the Marxist-inspired radical who orchestrated a series of bombings and kidnappings in the 1970s and 1980s — Verges saw “a man of taste … who feels at home in a dinner jacket.”
“I would have defended Hitler,” he told the German news magazine Der Spiegel in 2008. “Defending doesn’t mean excusing.”
For all his swagger, Verges was seldom vindicated at the bar. Barbie, for example, was sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity and died in prison in 1991.
Jacques Verges was born in Siam (now Thailand) on April 20, 1924, or March 5, 1925 — he said he was not sure of the date.
During World War II, Verges joined Charles de Gaulle’s Free French Forces and served as an artilleryman in North Africa, Italy and France. He later studied law in Paris, where his fellow students included future Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot.
