Outcry over early release of Papon, ex-minister and Nazi collaborator

In his long career as a servant of the French state, Maurice Papon was always punctilious – even enthusiastic – in his application of the letter of the law.

Whether in drawing up budgets for Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in the 1970s or rounding up Jews for the Vichy regime and the Nazis in the 1940s, Papon zealously served his masters, whoever they were.

Yesterday, the letter of the French law – one only six months old – came to the rescue of Papon, 92, who had served three years of a 10-year sentence for "complicity in crimes against humanity".

France's most celebrated, living war criminal was freed from his cell in the Santé prison in Paris on health grounds and allowed to return to his villa in the countryside east of Paris. The decision drew howls of protest from the Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld, who pronounced it to be an injustice. "We had fought so he would stay in prison," he said.

His lawyers had pleaded the "Pinochet defence" last month. They said Papon's health – he is suffering from acute cardio-vascular problems – was incompatible with life in prison. Under a new law on the protection of the elderly, the Paris appeal court decided that it had no choice but to order Papon's release to spend the rest of his days, under police and medical surveillance, in his own home.

Within hours Papon walked out of prison – to cries of "assassin" from bystanders – and was driven by his lawyer to his villa at Gretz-Armainvilliers, 40 miles from the capital.

The decision by the appeal judges was unexpected, even though the terms of the new law are clear. Exceptions can only be made if a sick and elderly prisoner is a "grave risk to public order". The public prosecutor had argued that the monstrosity of the crimes for which Papon was found guilty in 1998 (55 years after the event) would make his release a threat to public order, whatever his physical frailty. The appeal court disagreed.

Nobody was more surprised than Papon himself, who embraced his lawyer when informed he could walk free. "How did it happen?" Papon asked, before he picked up the framed photos of his dead wife and of Charles de Gaulle, and walked out of his prison cell.

Human rights groups and associations for relatives of Holocaust victims were appalled by the decision. They said Papon had forfeited all right to mercy and the consideration due to the old and sick when he was a senior Vichy official in charge of "Jewish affairs" in Bordeaux from 1941 to 1943.

"Papon is being freed for health reasons," said Michel Slitinsky, who uncovered in 1981 Papon's role in the capture and deportation of Jews. "He did not show the same sympathy in October 1942 for six Jews who were gravely ill, but instead of being taken to hospital, were thrown on to a [deportation] convoy."

In one sense, there was nothing scandalous about yesterday's decision. The appeal court judges interpreted the new law logically. Papon's release does not represent a new willingness by France to forgive, or obliterate the memory of, the round-up of Jews by the Vichy regime. France, led by example by President Jacques Chirac, has come a long way in recent years to recognise and atone for the persecution of Jews by the collaborationist French state between 1940 and 1944.

The real scandals occurred years ago. There was the conspiracy of silence throughout the 1950s and 1960s, approved by De Gaulle himself, which allowed scores of senior Vichy officials to survive and thrive in post-war administrations. Papon, who switched his support to the Resistance in 1943-44, when he saw which way the war was going, was a classic beneficiary of this policy. De Gaulle, determined to avoid endless, post-war recriminations and to make France "a great power" again, willingly took on many Vichy officials. A number of high-profile officials and politicians were prosecuted and jailed or executed (although none for taking part in the Holocaust). Many minor collaborationists – especially women – were persecuted. But scores of middle-ranking officials passed seamlessly from one regime to another.

As a result, Papon rose after the war to be Paris police chief (where he was responsible for the bloody repression of an Algerian demonstration in October 1961 in which about 200 protesters were massacred) and then to be Finance Minister under Mr Giscard's presidency from 1978 to 1981.

The second great scandal was the political and judicial obstacle course built to help Papon after his wartime activities were uncovered by Mr Slitinsky and the satirical newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné in May 1981. It took 17 years to bring Papon to trial, because of a rearguard action fought on his behalf by, among others, the former president François Mitterrand. Mitterrand, who had also served Vichy before turning to the other side, was viscerally opposed to the "witch-hunting" of Vichy officials, which he thought might tear France apart.

As human rights activists pointed out yesterday, the 55-year delay in bringing Papon to justice – a delay fought every inch of the way in recent years by Papon himself – threw him into a prison cell in his 90s. If the legal process had been completed in a reasonable period, his 10-year term would have been served years ago.

His six month-long trial in Bordeaux in 1997 and 1998 – the longest post-war trial in France – was an agonising affair. Papon, a tall, patrician figure, managed a rather cold apology towards the end of the trial but he was mostly unbending in his chosen line of defence.

He claimed that he had had no choice but to obey the Vichy government; that he did what he could to save as many Jews as possible, and that he had no idea that the trainloads of detainees, initially bound for northern France, were ultimately destined for the death camps. On this last point, the court accepted his word and he was cleared of murder. But the court found him guilty of "complicity in crimes against humanity".

Documentary evidence showed that Papon, as the Under-Prefect for the Bordeaux region, did little to help Jews. Apart from one reference to a willingness to assist "interesting Jews", he was revealed as a man who zealously attempted to speed up the deportation convoys (so that fewer Jews could escape) and to send the bill for deportations to Jewish organisations.

He appealed against conviction, delaying his imprisonment. Just before he was supposed to surrender himself to jail before an appeal hearing in October 1999, Papon fled to Switzerland. He was recaptured a few days later.

Under a former French law, he forfeited his right to an appeal by fleeing. France has been condemned for this ruling by the European Court of Human Rights. If he lives long enough, the French state may yet have to give Papon another day in court. Relatives of Papon's victims have, until now, prayed that he would live through his entire sentence. Some said yesterday that they were now praying that he would die before they went through the torturous process of an appeal.

Others gave another reason for hoping Papon did not stage a Pinochet-like recovery. "If Papon is really as sick as the judges say, that is one thing," said Michel Zaoui, of the Federation of French Jewish Societies. "We assume that means we won't see him on the television, claiming once again that he was the victim of a Jewish-Masonic plot. That would be a real threat to public order."

France's worst war criminals

René Bousquet

The French secretary general of police under the wartime Vichy regime and a friend of François Mitterrand, he was charged with ordering the deportation of 40,000 Jews from France and was said to have shown more zeal than even Adolf Eichmann. He was killed by a gunman in 1993 before his case came to trial.

Paul Touvier

The only Frenchman convicted of war crimes against humanity died in prison in 1996, two years after being sentenced to life for ordering the execution of seven Jews while in a pro-Nazi Vichy militia. A presidential pardon from Georges Pompidou caused outrage, as did evidence that he had been sheltered for years by Catholic clerics.

Klaus Barbie

Touvier's SS patron, he was known as the "Butcher of Lyon" for his persecution of Jews and Resistance members, including the arrest, torture and death of Jean Moulin, the most senior résistant captured by the Germans. He fled to Bolivia after the war but was returned to France in 1983, charged with crimes against humanity and died in jail in 1991.