FRENCH LEADER ARRESTED

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24868, 7 May 1946, Page 5

FRENCH LEADER ARRESTED

FORMER ASSOCIATE OF DE GAULLE

COUNTER-ESPIONAGE WORK

(Rec. 11p.m.) LONDON, May 6. Colonel Raoul de Wavrin, known to the Resistance Movement as Colonel Passy, one of General de Gaulle’s right-hand men as head of the General’s secret service department, was arrested last night with 50 other members of an organisation known as “D.G.E.R.” (Direction General D’Etudes et de Documentation).

“D.G.E.R.” was a secret intelligence and counter-espionage organisation which led to clashes with the British authorities in London when General de Gaulle was forming the Free French organisation after the liberation of France, and it has been the object of repeated criticism with extreme Leftist newspapers, which branded Colonel Wavrin as “De Gaulle’s Himmler.”

A Leftist newspaper also described Colonel Wavrin as the brains of an eventual Neo-Fascist putsch. It is officially stated that Colonel Wavrin and his collaborators have been placed under close arrest as a result of an administrative inquiry. Authoritative quarters assert that the arrests have no political significance. Colonel Wavrin is a 38-year-old former regular artillery officer. He joinqd General de Gaulle in London in 1940 and received a British decoration for his secret visits to France during the occupation to organise sabotage and espionage. Colonel Wavrin, replying to attacks from Leftist newspapers, denied that “D.G.E.R.” was used for political spy ins inside France or was run by men with reactionary political views. Colonel Wavrin said that France before the war had never had a properly conducted intelligence service abroad, and there was nothing abnormal about her having one now.