Maurice Papon

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Maurice Papon : biography

September 3, 1910 – February 17, 2007

Maurice Papon ( September 3, 1910 – February 17, 2007) was a French civil servant, leading the police in major prefectures and in Paris during the Nazi Occupation of France and into the 1960s. Forced to resign because of allegations of abuses, he became an industrial leader and Gaullist politician. In 1998 he was convicted of crimes against humanity for his participation in the deportation of more than 1600 Jews to concentration camps during World War II when he was secretary general for police in Bordeaux.

Papon was known to have tortured insurgent prisoners (1954–62) as prefect of the Constantinois department during the Algerian War. He was named chief of the Paris police in 1958. On October 17, 1961 he ordered the severe repression of a peaceful pro-National Liberation Front (FLN) demonstration against a curfew which he had imposed. What became known as the Paris massacre of 1961 left between one hundred and three hundred dead at the hands of the police, with many more wounded.French official quoted in Drowning by Bullets (2001) documentary, directed by Philip Brooks & Alan Hayling That same year, Papon was personally awarded the Legion of Honour by French President Charles de Gaulle, whose government was struggling to retain the French colony.

Papon was in charge of the Paris police during the February 1962 massacre at the Charonne metro station, which took place during a peaceful anti-Organisation armée secrète (OAS) demonstration organized by the Communist Party (PCF).

After the 1965 disappearance of the Moroccan dissident Mehdi Ben Barka, leader of the Tricontinental Conference, in which the police were suspected of killing him, Papon was forced to resign. He was supported by Gaulle in being named as director of Sud Aviation company, which created the first Concorde plane.

After May 1968, Papon was elected as a representative (député) in the French legislature, and served several terms. From 1978 to 1981, he served as the appointed Minister of the Budget under prime minister Raymond Barre and president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.

On May 6, 1981 details about his past under Vichy emerged, when Le Canard enchaîné newspaper published documents signed by Papon that showed his responsibility in the deportation of 1,690 Bordeaux Jews to Drancy internment camp from 1942 to 1944. After a long investigation by the government, Papon was tried (1995-1998); in 1998 he was convicted of crimes against humanity. In that year he was stripped of all his decorations.

Prefect of Police of Paris (1958–1967)

In March 1958, Papon was named Prefect of Police for Paris by Félix Gaillard (Radical)’s government. He thus had an important role in the May 1958 crisis which brought de Gaulle to power and lead to the founding of the Fifth Republic. He took part in the Gaullist confidential meetings which assured the instrumentalization of the crisis, preparing de Gaulle’s nomination as President of the Council, which granted him extraordinary powers.See in particular Eric Roussel, Charles de Gaulle, op. cit., pp. 598-599 On July 3, 1958, he managed to get what, according to Le Monde, he could "never have dreamed of": a "Carte d’Ancien Combattant de la Resistance". On July 12, 1961, president Charles de Gaulle bestowed on him the French Legion of Honour for service to the state.

Papon oversaw the repression during the Paris massacre of 1961: on October 17, 1961, a peaceful march organized by the Algerian National Liberation Front contravened a curfew imposed by Papon. 11,000 persons were arrested by the police, simply because of their appearance. Jean-Luc Einaudi: "La bataille de Paris : 17 octobre 1961", 1991, ISBN 2-02-013547-7 They were mostly people from the Maghreb, but also included Spanish, Portuguese and Italians. These detainees were sent, in a tragic echo of the Vichy regime, on public buses to the Parc des Expositions, the Winter Velodrome, and other such centers which had been used under Vichy as internment centers. A massacre occurred in the courtyards of the Prefecture of Police, while the detainees were held without specific charges. In the following days at the Parc des Expositions, detainees were subject to inhumane treatments. Arrests continued during all the month of October 1961. Meanwhile bodies were found floating in the Seine River.