Born on 5 March 1925 in
Ubon Ratchathani,
Siam, and brought up on the island of
Réunion with his twin brother
Paul Vergès, Jacques Vergès was the son of Raymond Vergès, a
French doctor from Réunion, and a
Vietnamese teacher named Pham Thi Khang. In 1942, with his father's encouragement, he sailed to
Liverpool to become part of the
Free French Forces under
Charles de Gaulle, and to participate in the anti-Nazi resistance. He went on to fight in Italy, France, and Germany. After the end of
World War II he entered the
University of Paris, where he enrolled in the
Faculté des lettres pursuing a degree in history, studying the
Hindi and
Malagasy languages. In 1945 he joined the
Young Communists movement of the
French Communist Party, while his father was helping to organize the
Reunionese Communist Party. During this time he befriended
Erich Honecker, future leader of
East Germany,
Henri Alleg and
Felix Hophouet-Boigny, future President of the
Ivory Coast. In 1949 Jacques became president of the AEC (Association for Colonial Students), where he befriended
Pol Pot and
Khieu Samphan. He returned to Paris, where he went on to study law, passing his final exams in 1955.
Algerian independence movement After returning to France, Vergès became a lawyer and quickly gained fame for his willingness to take controversial cases. During the struggle in
Algiers he defended many accused of terrorism by the French government. He was a supporter of the Algerian armed independence struggle against France, comparing it to French armed resistance to the Nazi German occupation in the 1940s. Vergès became a nationally known figure following his defence of the anti-French Algerian guerrilla
Djamila Bouhired on terrorism charges: she was convicted of blowing up a café and killing eleven people inside it. She was sentenced to death but pardoned and freed following public pressure brought on by Vergès' efforts. After some years she married Vergès, who had by then converted to Islam. In an effort to limit Vergès' success at defending Algerian clients, he was sentenced to two months in jail in 1960 and temporarily lost his licence to officially practice law for anti-state activities. After
Algeria gained its independence in 1962, Vergès obtained Algerian citizenship, going by the name of Mansour. During the
Algerian War he had become acquainted with
Ahmed Ben Bella of the FLN and the first
President of Algeria, Swiss Nazi and financier for the FLN,
François Genoud, as well as
Ahmed Huber, a Swiss
Muslim-convert and Nazi who covered the war as a journalist.
Israel and the Palestinians In 1965, Vergès arrived in
Israel, seeking to represent Mahmud Hijazi (
מחמוד חיג'אזי), a Palestinian member of the
Fatah movement who had at the time been sentenced to death by an Israeli military court on charges of terrorism, for crossing into Israel and setting a small demolition charge near the National Water Conduit in the Galilee. Israel's Justice Minister
Dov Yosef forbade Hijazi's being represented by a foreign lawyer. Vergès was detained at the airport and deported. Nevertheless, though Vergès did not succeed in getting to represent Hijazi in court, his initiative generated considerable publicity and controversy which were influential in Hijazi's death sentence being eventually commuted by an appeals court. (Hijazi was later released in a 1971
prisoner exchange.)
Missing years , in Paris, 2008. From 24 February 1970 to 1978, Vergès disappeared from public view without explanation. He refused to comment about those years, remarking in an interview with
Der Spiegel that "It's highly amusing that no one, in our modern police state, can figure out where I was for almost ten years." Vergès was last seen at an anti-colonial rally in Paris. He left his wife, Djamila, and cut off all his ties with his friends and family. Many people wondered if he had been killed, kidnapped, become a spy, or had gone into hiding. His whereabouts during these years have remained a mystery. Many of his close associates of the time assume that he was in Cambodia with the
Khmer Rouge, a rumour
Pol Pot (Brother #1),
Nuon Chea (Brother #2) and
Ieng Sary (Brother #3) have denied. There are claims that Vergès was spotted in Paris by
Mohamed Boudia, a contact from Algerian War and an old Communist associate,
Jiří Pelikán. He is also alleged to have been in Switzerland at the house of François Genoud according to Ahmed Huber. He was also thought to be in several Arab countries in the company of
Ali Hassan Salameh and Palestinian militant groups according to the Lebanese attorney
Karim Pakradouni, and exiled Algerian politician Bachir Boumaza. == High-profile defendants ==