Maurice Papon

Maurice Papon (French: [mɔʁis papɔ̃, moʁ-]; 3 September 1910 – 17 February 2007) was a French civil servant and Nazi collaborator who was convicted of crimes against humanity committed during the occupation of France. Papon led the police in major prefectures from the 1930s to the 1960s, before he became a Gaullist politician. When he was secretary general for the police in Bordeaux during World War II, he participated in the deportation of more than 1,600 Jews. He is also known for his activities in the Algerian War (1954–1962), during which he tortured insurgent prisoners as prefect of the Constantinois department, and ordered, as prefect of the Paris police, the 1961 massacre of pro-National Liberation Front (FLN) demonstrators for violating a curfew that he had "advised".

In 1961, Maurice Papon was personally awarded the Legion of Honour by French President Charles de Gaulle, whose government had been struggling with the FLN insurgency. Papon also commanded the Paris police in the Charonne subway massacre and the 1961 Paris massacre, during which between 200 and 300 Algerian demonstrators were deliberately killed by the Paris police. Forced to resign in 1967 after the suspicious forced disappearance of the Moroccan Marxist Mehdi Ben Barka, with de Gaulle's support he was named as president of Sud Aviation, the company which co-developed Concorde.

After May 1968, Papon was elected as a member of the French National Assembly and served several terms. From 1978 to 1981, he served in the cabinet of Prime Minister Raymond Barre under President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. Between the two rounds of the May 1981 presidential election, where Giscard d'Estaing was running for a second term, details about Papon's past were leaked in Le Canard enchaîné newspaper. Documents signed by Papon were made public that showed his responsibility in the deportation of 1,690 Bordeaux Jews to Drancy internment camp from 1942–44. After a long investigation and protracted legal wranglings, he was eventually tried.

In 1998, Papon was convicted of crimes against humanity. He was released from prison early, in 2002, for ill health. He died in 2007.

Papon was born in Gretz-Armainvilliers, Seine-et-Marne, the son of a solicitor who became an industrialist. In 1919, when Papon was nine years old, his father was elected mayor in the commune and held that office until 1937. His father was also local representative (conseiller général) of Tournan-en-Brie and president of the canton's council in 1937.

Papon studied at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, in Paris. Fellow students at the elite school were Georges Pompidou, later President of France, and René Brouillet, who would join Charles de Gaulle's cabinet after the war. Papon entered Sciences-Po, the specialty university for future civil servants and politicians, and he studied law, psychology and sociology.

After entering public service at the age of 20, Papon was quickly promoted. During the second Cartel des gauches, in February 1931, he worked in the cabinet of the Minister of Air, Jean-Louis Dumesnil. He was named in the Ministry of Interior in July 1935 before he became chief of staff of the deputy director of departmental and communal affairs, in January 1936, under Maurice Sabatier.^{[citation needed]}

In June 1936, during the Popular Front government, he was attached to the cabinet of Radical-Socialist François de Tessan, the vice-state secretary to the presidency of the council as well as a friend of his father. He became a member of the Ligue d'action universitaire républicaine et socialiste, a Radical-Socialist youth group; Pierre Mendès France was also a member.