Defending the indefensible

Yes, he says with a smile in Barbet Schroeder’s fascinating documentary about the man and his times, he would even defend George Bush — but only if he pleaded guilty.

Yet this advocate of the "rupture defence", during which he accused the prosecution of "capitalist crimes" as bad as any of those of the men and women he defended, was not always the kind of lawyer we love to hate.

A communist in his student days, he was the advocate for Djamila Bouhired, known as "La Pasionaria", who bore Algeria’s fight for independence on her shoulders and was sentenced to death for planting bombs in cafés. Having brilliantly obtained her release, Vergès married her and had two children. Then suddenly, at the height of his career in 1970, he disappeared without trace, emerging eight years later to become the well-known "devil’s advocate".

Interviewing the cigar-smoking Vergès, Schroeder attempts to discover what happened during those fallow years and, when he can get no answer except that Vergès grew bored with the first independent government of Algeria, goes to other witnesses for their opinion.

Some associates claim they met him in Paris during that time, while others suggest that he went to a KGB school before acting as an agent for Moscow in East Germany. There is also the theory that he acted as an adviser to Pol Pot and met Mao Tse Tung, Fidel Castro and Nelson Mandela, all of whom might have concealed him.

Whatever the facts, his return was far more controversial than anything he had previously achieved and Schroeder forces the bland, self-justifying mask to slip on several notable occasions. Everyone, says Vergès, deserves to be defended and some of the West’s favourite hate figures were essentially on the right side, even if they committed terrible crimes.

This is an astonishing portrait of an astonishing man who somehow convinced himself that he has forged a unique path in law and politics.

No fiction could equal it without being accused of gilding several lilies. And no film-maker could have done better than Schroeder. He does not prompt us to approve of or like the man, but he does cause us to see the history of terrorism more clearly.

Terror's Advocate (L'Avocat De La Terreur)
Cert: 12A