Murder probe condemned

Press, 23 November 1981, Page 8

Murder probe condemned

NZPA-Reuter Paris “This case has become a French Watergate,” Judge Andre Giresse declared before outlining a list of possible police cover-ups and foul-ups in the investigation of the killing of Prince Jean de Broglie. He also accused the country’s former Interior Minister Michel Poniatowski, of lying “by omission,” in the messy, five-year-old case whose leads may reach as high as the formhr President

Valery Giscard d’Estaing. The Prince was shot dead in 1976 in a Paris street in what looked like a contract murder. Despite his aristocratic heritage and highplaced friends in the political world, the prince aged 55, had a reputation for shady business dealings. Newspapers suggested then that he had become a political embarassment to his powerful friends. Four people are now on trial in a case that many

Frenchman predicted would never see the light of day because of political pressure to keep it quiet. Judge Giresse had just announced that the first witnesses would be called today when he made the allusion to the case which brought down the former American President, Richard Nixon. “This case concerns a case in which the victim, a politician with a prestigious name, is slain on the sidewalk in a manner suggesting an even-

ing of the score over some questionable financial deal,” the judge said.

But police, “in the person of (National Criminal Investigator) Jean Ducret, withheld . certain information which, under the most elementary rule of law, should have been turned over to prosecutors.” Judge Giresse criticized police supervisory agencies for failing to follow up on the case