Witness at Nazi War crimes trial to take part in Bloody Sunday Event

international | rights, freedoms and repression | news report Thursday January 28, 2010 13:24 by Shane OCurry

Key witness at trial of Nazi war criminal Maurice Papon to take part in a discussion on French state massacre, this Saturday, as part of the Bloody Sunday week end events.

Historian Jean-Luc Einaudi will be a key speaker at “Losing Their Memory, State killings in Derry, Belfast and Paris”, in Seomra 2 at the Culturlann, Great James’ Street, an event, including the premiere of “Octobre a Paris”, which runs from 10 am until 2pm. Jean-Luc Einaudi is an expert on the 17 October 1961 massacre of several hundred Algerian peaceful demonstrators at the hands of French police in Paris.

Maurice Papon: Ordered transportation of jews in 40s and killings of Algerians in 60s

In 1999 Einaudi was able to prove in court that Maurice Papon, who was the Paris Prefect of Police at the time, had given direct orders to the police to carry-out the killings. In 1998 Papon had attempted to sue Einaudi for libel after he had written an article in Le Monde newspaper which said “In 1961 there was a massacre in Paris perpetrated by the Police under the orders of Maurice Papon” . Einaudi had earlier made the same claims, under privilege, against the former Police chief at the ongoing trial Papon was facing for crimes against humanity, in which he would eventually be found guilty of having ordered the deportation between 1942 and 44 of over 1,600 Jews from the Bordeaux region to the Nazi concentration camps.

Einaudi won his libel case against Papon after he had been able to subpoena two senior archivists who testified that they had seen documentation proving his claims against Papon. A request for the French state to release the actual documentation about the massacre on the 17 October 1961 had been turned down.

Einaudi is involved in an ongoing campaign to have the full truth about the massacre revealed and acknowledged by the French state. He will be joined on the panel discussion by Eamonn McCann, of the Bloody Sunday Trust, and by Andree Murphy, from relatives for justice, who will be talking about the Ballymurphy Massacre in Belfast.

see link for related piece on premiere of "Octobre a Paris" and Bloody Sunday week end events