The conviction in April of the former French treasury minister, Maurice Papon, for complicity in crimes against humanity has been welcomed across the world. That the former secretary-general of the Prefecture of Gironde (the department of which Bordeaux is the capital) was found guilty of helping to organize roundups of Jews, and of arranging train convoys to deport them, has been widely interpreted as a sign that France is finally "facing up to her past", and that worthy legal principles are being consolidated by which to establish individual responsibility for crimes committed by anonymous organizations like state bureaucracies.
The truth, however, is more complicated, and in many respects directly the opposite of this. One French law professor has called the trial "a legal disaster", and its political ramifications may prove disastrous as well.
To begin at the end: Maurice Papon was sentenced to ten years in prison. While the prosecution may be relieved that he was not acquitted, this sentence was a slap in the face for it. The public prosecutor had demanded twenty years, while many of the civil parties who were also prosecuting Papon in the same trial were calling for life imprisonment. The punishment meted out to Papon for complicity in the most heinous crime this century, if not in the whole history of mankind, is less than you get for armed robbery.
