Trial will resume without Barbie

Press, 15 May 1987, Page 6

Trial will resume without Barbie

NZPA-Reuter . Lyon The trial of a former Gestapo official, Klaus Barbie, resumes today without the stooped, white-haired figure of the accused “Butcher of Lyon” seated in the bulletproof glass-protected dock.

Barbie, aged 73, plans to remain in prison, after staging a walkout yesterday, dramatically interrupting the third day’s hearing at Lyon Assize Court where he is on trial for wartime crimes against humanity.

In a statement read in German, he said he had been kidnapped from his home in Bolivia and was being detained illegally in France.

Registered as a Bolivian citizen in 1957 under the name Klaus Altmann, Barbie was expelled for having used a false identity to obtain citizenship and handed to police in nearby French Guiana.

But Barbie and his lawyer, Jacques Verges, last month petitioned the Bolivian Supreme Court to declare the expulsion invalid and have'him returned to La Paz.

Mr Verges told reporters that Barbie’s decision to withdraw was his own and was based on advice from his lawyers in La Paz. "Barbie was not expelled to France; he was bought and kidnapped,” Mr Verges said. “I would have preferred him to appear in court.”

Although under French law the judge can force a defendant to appear in court, a decision was made to allow Barbie to stay away. No defendant has been forced against his will to attend hearings since the end of : World War 11, when Pierre Laval, head of Marshal Petain’s collaborationist Vichy Gov-

eminent under the Nazi occupation, was required to attend his trial. He was later executed. Capital punishment was abolished in France in 1981, and Barbie faces on conviction a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. His decision to boycott the proceedings changes the atmosphere of the trial where Mr. Verges had said his client would put France in the dock with revelations. of treachery among antiGerman Resistance members and disclosures on the extent of French collaboration with the German occupation troops. Charles Libmann, lawyer for a number of civil plaintiffs, told Reuters: “This shows that his threats to put France on. trial ware empty. He has nothing to say??c-'

Other reactions to Barbie’s exit varied.