 January
24, 2008:
Professor
Faurisson in police custody for questioning and a
search of his house RETIRED university professor
Robert Faurisson lives in the central French
town of Vichy. At 9 AM on January 24 [2008]
he answered a summons to appear at the local police
station. No sooner had he arrived there than he was
notified by three senior officers, sent from Paris
the day before, that he was now in their custody
for questioning and that a search of his house
would also be carried out. In December 2006 then French President
Jacques Chirac had publicly called for an
investigation into Faurisson's participation in the
conference in Tehran on the Holocaust (December
11th and 12th of that year). That conference was
open to all, including revisionists. A British
subject before being a French citizen, it was in
English that the Professor, a specialist in "the
appraisal of texts and documents (literature,
history, media)", briefly spelled out the results
of his research on "the Holocaust". His paper bore
the title "The Victories of Revisionism". In it he
didn't hide his belief that the more revisionism
gained ground, particularly on the Internet, the
more revisionists would face repression, first in
the media, then at the hands of the police and the
law courts. The Minister of Justice then put a Paris
prosecutor in charge of the investigation demanded
by one who, dubbed "Superliar" by French
television, was now anxious to come to the aid of
an imperilled "Superlie". On April 16, 2007 police
lieutenant Séverine Besse and a
colleague of hers were sent to Vichy to question
the professor. But to each of their queries he was
to reply stubbornly: "No answer", and he had them
put down the following statement in their official
record: "I refuse to collaborate with the French
police and justice system in the repression of
historical revisionism". Nine months later, on January 24, 2008, the
thought police re-offended. In the meantime an
examining magistrate, Marc Sommerer, was
assigned to the case. And he sent the same
Séverine Besse to Vichy, accompanied this
time by two other officers of the Police Judiciaire
(OPJ). She made it known to the professor that he
was henceforth in custody for questioning and that
after a session with them in a room in the station
his house would be searched. There then followed a
bodily search, confiscation of wallet and change
purse, pen, watch and… belt (whereas the
chances are nil of a man of nearly 79 hanging
himself in a police station office in the presence
of three officers). In fact, it was all probably
just his interrogators' way of trying to intimidate
a notorious recalcitrant, whose wife, as the police
are aware, is for serious medical reasons in need
of his constant presence. However, with the stubbornness of a Scottish
mother's son, R. Faurisson persisted in replying
"No answer" to every question put. He reiterated
his refusal to collaborate with the police and the
justice system against revisionism. Then he was
told that he was the target not of one but of three
penal actions that had led to the issuing of as
many warrants by examining magistrate Sommerer. The
first two cited the professor directly for his
participation in the Tehran conference; whilst one
of these, originating both from the prosecution
service and from a slew of pious organisations,
attacked him for "disputing crimes against
humanity" (under the Fabius-Gayssot law of
1990), the other, from the LICRA (Ligue
internationale contre le racisme et
l'antisémitisme), charged him with
"defamation". The third action, tortuously worded,
was brought "against persons unknown" by the daily
Libération for the "pirating" of one
of its pieces in the review Dubitando where, the
police officers said, twenty of the professor's
articles had appeared. Faurisson was then taken to his house. The three
"OPJ's" and a Vichy policewoman proceeded with the
search. They drew a blank. They discovered neither
the coveted computer nor, in a mountain of
documents, the papers sought. At the end, towards 3
PM, the professor, making careful note of the three
officers' names, affirmed to them, as he'd had
occasion to do before judges in court: "It may turn
out that your existence will be noted in history
only insofar as I'll have mentioned your names and
according to how I'll have mentioned you". The day after this six-hour arrest for
interrogation and search, that is, the 25th of
January, the professor would celebrate his 79th
birthday, not without a thought for those
revisionist friends of his who were already in
prison or who risked finding themselves there
before long. He'd have a special thought for the
heroic Vincent Reynouard, today a father of
seven: ten years ago this maths teacher, adored by
his pupils, was kicked out of the state school
system in France for the crime of revisionism; at
present his living conditions are more precarious
than ever but he nonetheless keeps on doing copious
research and producing revisionist material
regularly; he stands up in person to the courts
where the judges, noting his resolve, deny him the
right to make a defence grounded in the substance
of the case as he sees it, and sentence him with
increasing severity; prison awaits him. Faurisson would also be thinking of his fellow
revisionists imprisoned in either Austria or
Germany, for example Ernst Zündel, Germar
Rudolf, Wolfgang Fröhlich, Gerd Honsik and
indeed Sylvia Stolz, "the German Joan of
Arc". Over the past nearly sixty years, long has grown
the list of revisionists who have paid with their
tranquillity, their health, their freedom and,
sometimes, their lives for an attachment to the
freedom of thought, the freedom of research (which,
in history, should not see itself assigned any
limits) and, finally, the freedom of
expression. 
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