FAURISSON TO GO ON TRIAL AGAIN

WE ARE reliably informed that the next trial of Robert Faurisson, the university professor stripped of his academic titles and subjected to crippling criminal penalties by the French courts for expressing inappropriate views about modern history, is a case brought by the Public Prosecutor over an article entitled "Les Visions cornues" (Visions with Horns), published on January 16, 1997.

The trial is to begin (and end) on October 9. Like most revisionist trials in France nowadays, it will not last more than one hour, since the court refuses to heed what defendants have to say. The judges have become mere rubber stamps, the "trial" itself a farce and formality. Faurisson himself will not attend; his case will be pleaded by hi attorney, Maitre Eric Delcroix.

We shall report.

Le Monde

Friday 25 September 1998, page 11.

LA FRANCE CONDAMNEE POUR ATTEINTE A LA LIBERTE D'EXPRESSION

LA COUR européenne des Droits de l'homme de Strasbourg a condamné, mercredi 23 septembre, la France à verser 100 000 francs aux héritiers de Jacques Isorni et François Lehideux, morts respectivement en 1995 et 1998.

Le défenseur de Pétain à la Libération et le secrétaire d'Etat à la production industrielle du régime de Vichy avaient saisi les juges de Strasbourg après que la cour d'appel de Paris eut jugé, le 26 janvier 1990, qu'un encart publicitaire défendant la mémoire du maréchal Pétain, paru dans Le Monde du 13 juillet 1984, était une "apologie des crimes ou délits de collaboration".

L'arrêt de la Cour de Strasbourg considère qu'il y a violation de la liberté d'expression car "il ne convient pas, quarante ans après, d'appliquer la même sévérité à l'évocation d'événements que dix ans ou vingt ans auparavant".

"Cela participe des efforts que tout pays est appelé à fournir pour débattre ouvertement et sereinement de sa propre histoire", précise le texte. 

Le Monde

Friday 25 September 1998, page 11.

FRANCE SENTENCED FOR VIOLATION OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH

THE EUROPEAN Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg sentenced France, on Wednesday 23rd September, to pay 100,000 Francs (approx. US$17,800) to the heirs of Jacques Isorni and François Lehideux, who died in 1995 and 1998 respectively.

Pétain's lawyer after the Liberation, and the State Secretary for Industrial Production of the Vichy regime, had petitioned the Strasbourg judges after the Paris Court of Appeals had ruled, on January 26th, 1990, that an advertisement published in memory of Marshal Pétain in Le Monde on July 13th, 1984 constituted an "apologia for collaborationists' crimes and misdemeanours".

The Strasbourg Court holds that this was a violation of freedom of speech because "it is not appropriate, after forty years, to be as severe with the discussion of events as it was ten or twenty years ago".

"This is part and parcel of the efforts that every country is called upon to make in discussing openly and serenely about its own history", the Court explained.