The trial

Chronologie

The trial

Justification and legal basis

of the judicial proceedings against George Boudarel

Since the creation of the ANAP (National Association of prisoners and internees in Indochina), ran a noise among the members. A man was political commissar in a prison camp of Tonkin was teaching in Paris VII (Jussieu).

A certain Colonel Mitjaville, himself a former prisoner of the Viet-Minh, remembered him, and before his death, had promised to his peers to seek, find and prosecute the French who, in his view, was an accomplice, if not responsible for the deaths of many prisoners in a camp of Tonkin.

But no one had managed to trace him until the fateful day of 13 February 1991, which itself had come to light displayed by participating in a symposium in the Senate open to the public the whereabouts of many former prisoners of the Viet Minh. It was an opportunity to follow the oath of Mitjaville.

Despite the amnesty which he bénécié in 1966, there was a legal basis for prosecutions that would be incurred, since the action led by the camp transfuge 113 was a crime against humanity as defined by the International Tribunal at Nuremberg. For the latter, it is "a systematic crime arising directly from a monstrous doctrine, applied by a State practicing a policy of ideological hegemony and intolerance active.

In camps where Viets took place systematic indoctrination of prisoners, euphemistically called "political education", were assembled all the elements constituting the crime against humanity under the UN Convention of 9 December 1948: "causing serious physical and mental integrity of the group, inflicting on it to conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part ".

Mortality exceeded 59%, exceeding that of the Nazi concentration camps.
In France, the law of 26-12-1964 said imprescriptible crimes against humanity, referring to international instruments based on the Charter of the Nuremberg International Tribunal which defines such crimes as murder and extermination, enslavement ... or persecution on political, racial or religious group ".

On 20-12-1985, the Supreme Court had defined in a decision as "inhumane acts and persecution which, in the name of a State practicing a policy of ideological hegemony, were committed in a systematic way, not only against people because of their belonging to a racial or religious community, but also against the opponents of that policy whatever the form of their opposition. "

The atrocities committed in the prison camps of the Viet Minh, especially at Camp 113, in all respects met the criteria defined at international and national levels, and France itself had declared imprescriptible crimes.

Boudarel recognized himself in his writings that he present at Camp-113, 50% of the captives were dead!

As for Mao Tse Tung, "big brother", he had, through its advisers Chinese, Viet Minh indicated the way forward by saying that he was "gradually to convince a population using a mixture of selective terrorism, intimidation, persuasion and mass unrest. "

The initiation of legal proceedings against G. Boudarel appeared justified.