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For The Record  

FTR #453 Verges for the Defense

Record­ed March 28, 2004
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NB: This stream con­tains two 30 minute broad­casts: FTRs #452 and FTR #453, in sequence.

Return­ing to a sub­ject cov­ered in sev­er­al past broad­casts, this pro­gram high­lights the enig­mat­ic career of French attor­ney Jacques Verges. Recent­ly hired to assist with the defense of Sad­dam Hus­sein in his pro­ject­ed war crimes tri­al, Verges has rep­re­sent­ed ter­ror­ists, far-left­ists and Nazi war crim­i­nal Klaus Bar­bie in the past. Much of the pro­gram cen­ters on Verges’ rela­tion­ship with Nazi oper­a­tive Fran­cois Genoud—a very impor­tant Third Reich agent in both the above-ground and under­ground phas­es of its exis­tence. In par­tic­u­lar, the far-left Verges and Genoud have col­lab­o­rat­ed in the defense of Mid­dle East­ern and far-left ter­ror­ists, as well as the Bar­bie defense.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Verges and Genoud’s work on behalf of Car­los the Jack­al; their mutu­al efforts on behalf of the Alger­ian FLN; their efforts on behalf of far-left Euro­pean ter­ror­ists in the 1980’s; Genoud’s role in assist­ing the post­war Nazi diaspora—the escape of SS war crim­i­nals in par­tic­u­lar; Genoud’s role in the post­war dis­tri­b­u­tion of Nazi monies; Genoud’s efforts on behalf of the con­sid­er­able Nazi pres­ence in the Mid­dle East after World War II; Verges’ mys­te­ri­ous eight-year dis­ap­pear­ance in the 1970’s.

1. Begin­ning with the sub­ject of the indi­vid­ual for whom the pro­gram is titled, the dis­cus­sion notes that Jacques Verges will be assist­ing in the defense of Sad­dam Hus­sein in his pro­ject­ed tri­al for war crimes. “One is an inter­na­tion­al legal leg­end nick­named ‘The Devil’s Advo­cate.’ The oth­er is a back­street Iraqi lawyer who has nev­er set foot in a crim­i­nal court in his life. Next week, how­ev­er, they will meet to con­sid­er form­ing an unlike­ly part­ner­ship for one of the biggest legal cir­cus­es in mod­ern his­to­ry: the war crimes tri­als of Sad­dam Hus­sein and his cronies.”
(“The Bar­ris­ter of Bagh­dad” by Col­in Free­man; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 3/27/2004; p. A1.)

2. “Badie Izzat Izzat, a Bagh­dad lawyer who rep­re­sents near­ly half of the ‘Deck of 55’ most-want­ed peo­ple from the Hus­sein era, will fly to Paris this week­end to con­fer with Jacques Verges, the cel­e­brat­ed French defend­er of ter­ror­ist Car­los the Jack­al and Gestapo chief Klaus Bar­bie. The pair, who will be meet­ing for the first time, will dis­cuss pos­si­ble legal strate­gies for what is like­ly to be a tough case even for Verges: how to excuse more than three decades of state-sanc­tioned killings involv­ing up to a mil­lion peo­ple.” (Idem.)

3. “But while Verges, who is serv­ing as a con­sul­tant on the war crimes tri­al of for­mer Yugoslav Pres­i­dent Slo­bo­dan Milo­se­vic, will be on famil­iar ter­ri­to­ry, Izzat is on a near­ly ver­ti­cal learn­ing curve. Oper­at­ing out of cramped offices in a scruffy Bagh­dad side street, he is by trade a civ­il lit­i­ga­tor who has nev­er defend­ed any­one on crim­i­nal charges. The sum total of his knowl­edge of inter­na­tion­al war crimes law, he admits, is what he has picked up from a human rights law text­book he bought only a few months ago.” (Idem.)

4. “ ‘It is true, I have nev­er done any kind of crim­i­nal defense work in the past, and under Sad­dam, we had no such thing as war crimes law,’ said Izzat. ‘But I hope that by link­ing up with Verges and tak­ing his advice and help, he can put togeth­er a prop­er legal defense.’” (Ibid.; pp. A1-A8.)

5. “Mean­while, Verges, a for­mer com­man­der in the French resis­tance, has indi­cat­ed he may focus on the tac­it involve­ment of West­ern pow­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Unit­ed States, in many of Hussein’s acts of aggres­sion. ‘West­ern coun­tries encour­aged the war against Iran,’ he said in a recent inter­view. ‘West­ern coun­tries were present in Iraq through diplo­mat­ic del­e­ga­tions. They weren’t blind. In the course of a tri­al, the fun­da­men­tal ele­ment will be: ‘You treat me like a pari­ah, but I was your friend. What we did, we did togeth­er. I fired the bul­let, but you’re the one who gave me the gun. You even point­ed out the ene­my.’” (Ibid.; p. A8.)

6. “If Izzat does even­tu­al­ly rep­re­sent Hus­sein, he plans to sub­poe­na numer­ous world lead­ers and states­men to ask them why they turned a blind eye to the for­mer Iraqi leader’s crimes for so long. ‘This tri­bunal will embar­rass Bush the father, and that will be bad for Bush the son,’ he told reporters. ‘Sad­dam will talk, and the whole world will be able to lis­ten.’” (Idem.)

7. “Before going to Paris, Izzat was sched­uled to stop in Amman, Jor­dan, where many of his clients’ fam­i­lies live as fugi­tives after flee­ing Iraq last April. ‘I will be see­ing at least eight fam­i­lies, includ­ing pos­si­bly Saddam’s daugh­ters,’ he said. ‘It is not clear yet whether they want me to rep­re­sent them, but I will be able to rep­re­sent them, but I will be able to pass any mes­sages on to Verges if need be.’” (Idem.)

8. The bal­ance of the pro­gram deals with Fran­cois Genoud, a piv­otal­ly impor­tant (though lit­tle rec­og­nized) fig­ure in 20th cen­tu­ry fas­cism and ter­ror­ism. (For more about Genoud, see—among oth­er programs—FTR#’s 333, 343, 352, 354, 357, 371, 377, 378, 447, 450. In addi­tion see the fol­low­ing arti­cles by Kevin Coogan: “The Mys­te­ri­ous Achmed Huber: Friend to Hitler, Allah and Ibn Ladin?”; “Report on Islamists, The Far Right, and Al Taqwa”, as well as “The Swasti­ka and the Cres­cent” by Mar­tin A. Lee; South­ern Pover­ty Law Center’s Intel­li­gence Report.) “On May 30, 1996 an obscure Swiss banker named Fran­cois Genoud com­mit­ted sui­cide in Gene­va, Switzer­land. From the brief men­tion of his death in the New York Times, one would not know that one of the most impor­tant fig­ures in the his­to­ry of 20th-cen­tu­ry ter­ror­ism had died. And how many men can say that they were friends with both Adolf Hitler and Car­los the Jack­al?”

(Dream­er of the Day: Fran­cis Park­er Yock­ey and the Post­war Fas­cist Inter­na­tion­al; by Kevin Coogan; Autono­me­dia Inc.; Copy­right 1999 [SC]; ISBN 1–57027-039–2; p. 584.)

9. Genoud became infat­u­at­ed with the Third Reich as a young man—an event that deter­mined the course of the rest of his life. (Note that the SD was the SS intel­li­gence ser­vice. For more about Dick­opf, see RFA#2—avail­able from Spit­fire.) In addi­tion to his work as a Nazi spy before and dur­ing World War II, Genoud became a very impor­tant agent for the post­war under­ground activ­i­ties of the SS and relat­ed ele­ments of the Under­ground Reich. “A Swiss cit­i­zen born in Lusanne in 1915, Genoud became rabid­ly pro-Nazi in the ear­ly 1930’s. After a trip to Ger­many as a teenag­er, he nev­er for­got the thrill he felt shak­ing Adolf Hitler’s hand. Dur­ing World War II, Genoud became extreme­ly close to an SD lieu­tenant named Paul Dick­opf, who would lat­er head the Ger­man fed­er­al police (the Bun­deskrim­i­nalamt, or BKA) before being elect­ed pres­i­dent of Inter­pol in 1968. The two men trav­eled togeth­er across occu­pied Europe. Dick­opf would lat­er claim that he had defect­ed from the Ger­man army in August 1942 and lived clan­des­tine­ly in Bel­gium, where he embraced the anti-Nazi cause. Curi­ous­ly, the ‘traitor’s’ salary con­tin­ued to be sent to his wife until Jan­u­ary 1944.” (Idem.)

10. Genoud was involved with the Third Reich’s (suc­cess­ful) approach­es to Allen Dulles and relat­ed ele­ments of the OSS (the US intel­li­gence agency dur­ing World War II.) These approach­es were to result in the incor­po­ra­tion of the Gehlen spy out­fit into US intel­li­gence in the post­war peri­od. (For more about the Gehlen orga­ni­za­tion, see—among oth­er pro­grams–RFA#’s 1–3, 11, 15, 22, 36, 37—avail­able from Spitfire—as well as FTR#’s 29, 44, 71, 72, 94, 95, 113, 120, 180, 332.) “Dick­opf even­tu­al­ly end­ed up in Switzer­land, where he received sup­port from Genoud. Dick­opf went there to approach Allen Dulles, head of the local OSS, pre­tend­ing to be an anti-Nazi. At the time, his boss, RSHA head Ernst Kaltenbrun­ner, was also sanc­tion­ing the ‘Free Aus­tria Move­ment,’ yet anoth­er group of ‘anti-Nazi’ Nazis intent on befriend­ing Dulles. Dick­opf quick­ly estab­lished a work­ing rela­tion­ship with one of the most mys­te­ri­ous Amer­i­can spies of World War II, the Japan­ese-born and Yale-edu­cat­ed Paul Blum, a top Dulles lieu­tenant who would lat­er vouch for Dickopf’s anti-Nazi cre­den­tials.” (Ibid.; pp. 584–585.)

11. Genoud helped in the Nazi dias­po­ra after World War II. Genoud was espe­cial­ly close to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. His (Genoud’s) links with the Grand Mufti were the foun­da­tion of a pro­found rela­tion­ship with the very impor­tant Nazi émi­gré com­mu­ni­ty in the Mid­dle East. “Genoud, too, was in the thick of things, hav­ing estab­lished a friend­ship with SS Gen­er­al Karl Wolff, leader of the Ger­man team in Italy that nego­ti­at­ed Oper­a­tion Sun­rise with Dulles. Short­ly after the war, Genoud acquired the pub­lish­ing rights to the works of Adolf Hitler, Mar­tin Bor­mann, and Joseph Goebbels. He also played a major, if murky, role in aid­ing fugi­tive Nazi war crim­i­nals. Anoth­er key play­er in the post­war Nazi under­ground res­i­dent in Switzer­land was SD Colonel Eugen Doll­mann, Gen­er­al Wolff’s chief lieu­tenant in the talks with Dulles. Besides Wolff, Doll­man and Genoud had anoth­er friend in com­mon: Haj Amin el-Hus­sein, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Genoud first met the Grand Mufti in Jerusalem in 1936, and again in Berlin dur­ing the war. Doll­man also main­tained links to the Grand Mufti.” (Ibid.; p. 585.)

12. “After the July 23, 1952 Free Offi­cers coup, Genoud estab­lished ties with an Egypt­ian intel­li­gence oper­a­tive named major Fathi al-Dib. In post-coup Egypt he expe­ri­enced first­hand the strange mix­ture of left and right, when half of Cairo’s most influ­en­tial week­ly Rose al Yussef was filled with ref­er­ences to fig­ures like the Sovi­et writer Ilya Ehren­burg and the oth­er half car­ried reprints from anti-Semit­ic hate sheets like the Amer­i­can jour­nal Com­mon Sense.” (Idem.)

13. Genoud’s polit­i­cal pres­ence in the Mid­dle East led to his rela­tion­ship with the Alger­ian inde­pen­dence gueril­la orga­ni­za­tion the FLN. As was the case with many nation­al lib­er­a­tion move­ments in the Mid­dle East, Genoud and his fel­low Nazis assist­ed the FLN with mon­ey, arms and polit­i­cal sup­port. This sup­port was in keep­ing with the Nazi geopo­lit­i­cal strat­e­gy of gain­ing con­trol of the “Earth Island” by forg­ing polit­i­cal rela­tion­ships with the Mus­lim pop­u­la­tions that dom­i­nate the cen­ter of that piv­otal­ly impor­tant land­mass. (To learn more about the con­cept of the Earth Island, see FTR#391 and the pro­grams not­ed there about the sub­ject.) “In 1955, with the Grand Mufti’s friend Johann von Leers help­ing to run Egypt’s Pro­pa­gan­da Min­istry and its all-impor­tant ‘Insti­tute for the Study of Zion­ism,’ Genoud began to see Egypt as a base for the anti-French FLN inde­pen­dence move­ment in Alge­ria. He worked in Tang­i­er with an ex-SS offi­cer named Hans Reichen­berg to cre­ate the Arabo-Afri­ka import-export com­pa­ny, which sup­plied the FLN with weapons. Arabo-Afri­ka was actu­al­ly a cov­er enter­prise estab­lished by Wern­er Nau­man­n’s net­work, and includ­ed Genoud’s friend Dr. Hjal­mar Schacht. In Dam­as­cus, Gen­er­al Otto Remer, Ernst-William Springer, and an ex-SS cap­tain and RSHA oper­a­tive named Alois Brun­ner cre­at­ed anoth­er gun-run­ning oper­a­tion, the Ori­ent Trad­ing Com­pa­ny (OTRACO), to ship arms to the FLN mil­i­tants.” (Idem.)

14. Genoud’s impor­tance with­in the FLN increased when he became the group’s banker. In 1952 Ahmed Ben Bel­la, one of the founders of the Alger­ian Organ­i­sa­tion Speciale(OS) inde­pen­dence move­ment, escaped from a French jail. After spend­ing sev­er­al months under­ground, he resur­faced in Cairo to be per­son­al­ly blessed by Nass­er. In the spring of 1954 Ben Bel­la left Cairo and trav­eled to Gene­va, where he and three of his OS com­rades cre­at­ed the orga­ni­za­tion­al basis for the FLN. In 1958 Genoud and a Syr­i­an named Zouheir Nar­dam co-found­ed the Banque Com­mer­ciale Arabe in Gene­va to man­age the FLN’s war chest. One of Genoud’s clos­est col­lab­o­ra­tors, Mohammed Khider, was sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the FLN’s Polit­i­cal Bureau. Born in 1912, Khider had been the dri­ving force behind the Egypt­ian sec­tion of Mou­ve­ment pour le Tri­om­phe des Lib­ertes Democ­ra­tiques (MTLD), which helped launch the Alger­ian armed rebel­lion on 1 Novem­ber 1954.” (Idem.)

15. “After Alge­ria won its inde­pen­dence, Genoud became head of the Banque Pop­u­laire Arabe in Algiers. In Octo­ber 1964 (dur­ing a time of intense polit­i­cal infight­ing inside the FLN) Genoud was arrest­ed and charged with trans­fer­ring $15 mil­lion of FLN mon­ey to his Swiss bank in Khider’s name. He only escaped an Alger­ian jail thanks to the inter­ven­tion of Egypt’s Pres­i­dent Nass­er. The Alger­ian gov­ern­ment then spent years fight­ing with Genoud over the FLN trea­sury. Khider was assas­si­nat­ed in Madrid in 1967 by Alger­ian intel­li­gence. Only in 1979 was the FLN ‘war chest,’ final­ly returned to Alge­ria. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 586.)

16. It was through his rela­tion­ship with the FLN that Genoud came in con­tact with Verges and began to col­lab­o­rate with him. “ . . . Dur­ing the war in Alge­ria, Genoud met an ultra-left French lawyer named Jacques Verges, who rep­re­sent­ed a num­ber of FLN mil­i­tants accused of ter­ror­ist bomb­ings in Algiers’ French sec­tion. Born in Thai­land in 1925 to a French doc­tor and a Viet­namese woman, Verges fought against the Nazis as a French Com­mu­nist Par­ty mem­ber in World War II. While a law stu­dent after the war, he con­tin­ued his anti-colo­nial­ist agi­ta­tion and became a good friend of Saloth Sar, a young Cam­bo­di­an stu­dent bet­ter known today as Pol Pot. Verges then spent 1951 to 1954 in Prague, where he became the direc­tor of the world Com­mu­nist stu­dent group the Inter­na­tion­al Union of Stu­dents. (One of his col­leagues, the Stal­in­ist youth leader Alexan­der Shelepin, would become had of the KGB in the late 1950’s.) Verges split with the French Com­mu­nist Par­ty because of its reluc­tance to sup­port Alger­ian inde­pen­dence. He became a Maoist of sorts in the ear­ly 1960’s, as well as a strong sup­port­er of Cuba and the Tri-Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress because the Cubans stressed the need for world­wide anti-colo­nial revolts.” (Idem.)

17. The Verges/Genoud rela­tion­ship devel­oped through the years and result­ed in their mutu­al efforts on behalf of Arab ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions, the Pales­tini­ans in par­tic­u­lar. “After the 1967 war Genoud and Verges would reunite to sup­port the Arab strug­gle against Israel. On 18 Feb­ru­ary 1969, mem­bers of the Pop­u­lar Front for the Lib­er­a­tion of Pales­tine (PFLP) attacked an El Al plane on the tar­mac of Zurich’s Kloten air­port. When the tri­al of three of the PFLP mil­i­tants began in Novem­ber 1969 in Win­terthur, Switzer­land, both Genoud and Verges were in the court­room serv­ing as advi­sors to the defen­dants.” (Idem.)

18. “Genoud’s clos­est rad­i­cal Arab friend was PFLP co-founder Dr. Wad­di Had­dad. A Greek Ortho­dox Chris­t­ian, Had­dad fled Pales­tine in 1948. He then stud­ied med­i­cine with his fel­low Greek Ortho­dox col­league George Habash at the Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty in Beirut. In the ear­ly 1950’s, Had­dad and Habash found­ed the Arab Nation­al­ist Move­ment (ANM), which pub­lished a small jour­nal called Vengeance. Although their views were con­sid­ered right-wing, they received encour­age­ment from Amer­i­can diplo­mats for their oppo­si­tion to the con­tin­ued British and French colo­nial dom­i­na­tion of the region. In 1955, when Egypt turned to the East Bloc, the ANM fol­lowed. By 1958 the group, which by now had estab­lished small branch­es in Egypt, Kuwait, Yemen, Syr­ia, and oth­er Arab nations, ws call­ing itself social­ist and demand­ing a unit­ed Arab response against Israel. The ANM’s embrace of social­ism even­tu­al­ly led to an inter­nal fac­tion­al strug­gle in which Had­dad and Habash rep­re­sent­ed the right while Nayef Hawat­meh stood for the more ide­o­log­i­cal­ly ortho­dox left.” (Ibid.; pp. 586–587.)

19. “After the 1967 war the ANM was reor­ga­nized and became the PFLP. Now the group praised Mao, Lin Piao, Che Gue­vara, and the Tri-Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress. Habash and Had­dad declared them­selves left­ists and embraced the Viet­namese Rev­o­lu­tion because of U.S. sup­port for Israel. Hawatmeh’s more ortho­dox Marx­ist fac­tion, how­ev­er, believed their ‘left turn’ was inspired less by ide­ol­o­gy than by oppor­tunism, and split with the PFLP to become the Pop­u­lar Demo­c­ra­t­ic Front for the Lib­er­a­tion of Pales­tine (PDFLP).” (Ibid.; p. 587.)

20. “Wad­di Had­dad, who was far more a man of action than a the­o­rist like Habash, took com­mand of the PFLP’s over­seas oper­a­tions. He soon attract­ed sup­port from a vari­ety of allies includ­ing the Japan­ese Red Army, the Baad­er-Mein­hof Group/Red Army Fac­tion, the Irish Nation­al Lib­er­a­tion Army (an IRA splin­ter group), and indi­vid­ual vol­un­teers like Ilich Sanchez Ramirez, bet­ter known as ‘Car­los the Jack­al.’ Anoth­er PFLP vol­un­teer was a young Swiss man named Bruno Breguet. On 23 June 1970 Breguet was arrest­ed in Haifa, Israel, while on a PFLP bomb­ing mis­sion. After his arrest, Genoud orga­nized a cam­paign for his release from prison. Although he had been sen­tenced to 15 years, Breguet was allowed to leave Israel in 1977. By the ear­ly 1980’s he was an impor­tant mem­ber of the Car­los net­work in Europe. As for Had­dad, he adored the Swiss banker and dubbed him ‘Sheik Fran­cois.’ After Haddad’s death from can­cer in an East Berlin hos­pi­tal on 27 March 1978, Genoud con­tin­ued to main­tain close ties with his ter­ror­ist net­work.” (Idem.)

21. “Genoud also worked with the Pales­tin­ian Lib­er­a­tion Orga­ni­za­tion (PLO), in par­tic­u­lar its ‘Black Sep­tem­ber’ ter­ror­ist net­work head­ed by Ali Has­san Salameh (the ‘Red Prince’), who was assas­si­nat­ed by the Israeli secret ser­vice on 22 Novem­ber 1979. One of Genoud’s inter­me­di­aries to the PLO was Fouad el-She­mali, a for­mer stu­dent leader with the Syr­i­an Nation­al-Social Par­ty that had been destroyed after a failed coup attempt in Lebanon. Genoud also devel­oped excel­lent ties to Libya through his Egypt­ian friend Fathi el-Dib, who intro­duced him to Abdel Moumen el-Honi, the direc­tor of the Libyan secret ser­vice. He han­dled Libyan con­tri­bu­tions to the PLO and helped medi­ate rela­tions between the Libyans and the IRA through Jean (Yann) L’Hostellier, a Bre­ton nation­al­ist and for­mer Waf­fen SS vol­un­teer.” (Idem.)

22. “On 5 Sep­tem­ber 1972 Black Sep­tem­ber ter­ror­ists mur­dered 11 Israeli ath­letes at the Olympic games in Munich. The head of Inter­pol at the time of the attack was Genoud’s old friend Paul Dick­opf; Genoud had lob­bied the secret ser­vices of the Mid­dle East to sup­port Dickopf’s bid to become Inter­pol pres­i­dent. Dickopf’s Inter­pol spokesman argued, the Arab-Israeli con­flict was a polit­i­cal ques­tion and Inter­pol spokesman argued, the Arab-Israeli con­flict was a polit­i­cal ques­tion and Inter­pol was an agency designed to han­dle crim­i­nal, not polit­i­cal, mat­ters.” (Ibid.; p. 588.)

23. Verges dis­ap­peared mys­te­ri­ous­ly for a peri­od of eight years. He only says (enig­mat­i­cal­ly) that he went “though the look­ing glass”, where he served an “appren­tice­ship.” (One should note that a mir­ror revers­es right and left—an inter­est­ing point to con­sid­er as one reflects on the far-left ori­en­ta­tion of Verges and the Nazi ori­en­ta­tion of Genoud.) “The ear­ly 1970’s saw a series of ter­ror­ist attacks through­out Europe. Genoud’s friend Jacques Verges, how­ev­er, was not involved in giv­ing legal assis­tance to cap­tured mil­i­tants. One day in Feb­ru­ary 1970 he dis­ap­peared from Paris after announc­ing that he was going on a busi­ness trip to Spain. Then, just as mys­te­ri­ous­ly, he showed up on the streets of Paris eight years lat­er, in the win­ter of 1978. Asked where he had been, he explained: ‘I stepped through the look­ing glass, where I served an appren­tice­ship.’” (Idem.)

24. Verges and Genoud renewed their col­lab­o­ra­tion in the ear­ly 1980’s, when they worked togeth­er in defense of far-left Ger­man ter­ror­ists, Car­los the Jack­al and Klaus Bar­bie. “In the ear­ly 1980’s, Genoud and Verges returned to cen­ter-stage. On 16 Feb­ru­ary 1982 Genoud’s friend Bruno Breguet and a Ger­man woman named Mag­dale­na Kopp were arrest­ed in Paris after police dis­cov­ered guns, hand grenades, and four kilos of explo­sives in their car. Kopp, it turned out, was a mem­ber of the Ger­man Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Cells cre­at­ed by Johannes Wein­rich. She was also Carlos’s com­mon-law wife. Verges took charge of their legal defense while Genoud paid the bills. Mean­while, Car­los began writ­ing threat­en­ing let­ters to French Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Gas­ton Def­ferre, while a series of bombs went off in dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try.” (Idem.)

25. Verges rep­re­sent­ed Klaus Barbie—the Butch­er of Lyons. (For more about Bar­bie, see—among oth­er pro­grams—RFA#’s 1, 3, 17, 19, 27—avail­able from Spit­fire.) “The Kopp-Breguet tri­al proved to be a warmup for anoth­er, even more spec­tac­u­lar Genoud and Verges operation—the legal defense of Klaus Bar­bie, a Nazi war crim­i­nal who had been extra­dit­ed from Bolivia to France in 1982. While engaged in his Arab adven­tures, Genoud con­tin­ued to main­tain excel­lent rela­tions with top Nazis like Gen­er­al Degrelle, Gen­er­al Wolff, and Gen­er­al Remer. He was also close to New Euro­pean Order founder Guy Amau­druz, who ran the NEO’s main branch out of Lusanne, which hap­pened to be Genoud’s home­town. Asked his opin­ion of Amau­druz, Genoud said that his ‘grande ver­tu, il est extreme­ment fidele, courageux. C’est un saint.’ [His ‘great virtue, he is extreme­ly loy­al, coura­geous. He is a saint.’]” (Idem.)

26. Verges’ rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Bar­bie is set forth: “Genoud and Verges used Barbie’s tri­al to con­demn France for its crimes against Alge­ria. Although Bar­bie was eas­i­ly con­vict­ed, many ques­tions about him remained. Dur­ing his time in Bolivia, Bar­bie reg­u­lar­ly fed the CIA infor­ma­tion on the left through­out Latin Amer­i­ca, using a con­tact in Bolivia’s Inte­ri­or Min­istry. Yet Bar­bie and Hans-Ulrich Rudel, his part­ner in the weapons busi­ness, were believed to have had Cuban ties. Bar­bie was also report­ed­ly involved in sup­ply­ing weapons to the Ital­ian ultra-left­ist mil­lion­aire Gian­gia­co­mo Fel­trinel­li. It remains an open ques­tion whether Genoud helped Bar­bie sim­ply out of abstract prin­ci­ple or because he him­self had been a play­er in Barbie’s arms and intel­li­gence oper­a­tion.” (Idem.)

27. One should note that Genoud’s name comes up in con­nec­tion with the events of 9/11 and the Al Taqwa milieu, and that Verges’ law part­ner Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, is the French coun­sel for Zac­cha­rias Moussaoui—the accused “20th hijack­er.” For more infor­ma­tion about Genoud, 9/11 and Coutant-Peyre, use the search engine on the Spit­fire web­site.

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One comment for “FTR #453 Verges for the Defense”

  1. Believe it or not, Isabelle Coutant-Peyre is back in busi­ness. Appar­ent­ly, she will rep­re­sent the coun­try of Iran in a law­suit against Hol­ly­wood and some pro­duc­ers and direc­tors. Among many, the film Argo (fea­tur­ing Ben Affleck)is cit­ed, on the basis of ‘Iranophobia’,defamation, etc. Decid­ed­ly, that woman has some pri­or­i­ties in life...

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/12/iran-sue-hollywood-distorting-image?CMP=twt_fd

    Stay well, Dave.

    Posted by Claude | March 13, 2013, 10:58 pm

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