French Nazi collaborator Papon disappears from home

According to French law, Papon, found guilty last year by a Bordeaux court of involvement in deporting Jews, is required to surrender to police and spend the night before his Supreme Court hearing in jail.

If he had failed to surrender by Wednesday night, his appeal would be automatically rejected -- without a hearing -- and the Bordeaux prosecutor could order police to hunt him down.

Papon, 89, was found guilty in April 1998 of helping deport some 1,500 Jews from the southwestern Bordeaux area to Nazi death camps when he was the secretary-general of the regional prefect's office and supervisor of its Office for Jewish Questions.

His lawyer, Jean-Marc Varaut, made it clear last week that he knew exactly where his client was.

"Maybe he doesn't want to be filmed by television cameras, maybe he's at a museum exhibit, maybe he's in Bordeaux watching the wine harvest. Maybe he's even gone into retreat in a Tibetan monastery," Varaut said. "He'll show up when we think he should."

But Gerard Boulanger, a lawyer for the civil plaintiffs, fears that Papon will not come, thus creating a pretext to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights.

He suspects that Papon is planning to file charges with the European court on the grounds that France's law stipulating the automatic rejection of an appeal in the defendant's absence violates his right to a fair trial under the European Human Rights Convention.

"One thing is sure. Papon will not turn up. If the European court finds France guilty of violating Article 6 [of the European Convention], it will not reverse Papon's conviction, but it will discredit his trial," Boulanger said.

"I don't want Papon to die in his cell at the age of 95, happy that he has had France condemned by the European Court of Human Rights."