In Paris, Justice Triumphs Over the ‘Reasons of State’

The French are still in a self-congratulatory mood these days, filled with pride over their judicial system. By meting out a life sentence to Georges Ibrahim Abdallah a week ago, not only did seven judges stand up to terrorism, but they also delivered a severe blow to one of the most persistent anti-democratic ideas in France: the traditional belief that the interests of the French state are always more important than the interests of anyone and anything else.

In the long run, the Abdallah trial may be far more significant for this shattering of an old idea than for any strengthening of the usually weak-kneed French stand on terrorism. All the evidence indicates that the French government of Premier Jacques Chirac, for what the French call “reasons of state,” wanted the judges to hand out a light sentence to Abdallah, making him eligible for a quick parole.

The government hoped that his mild treatment would avert a renewal of bombings in Paris by Abdallah’s terrorist brothers, cousins and friends.

Instead, the judges defied the government and found Abdallah, a Lebanese Christian who calls himself “an Arab combatant,” guilty of complicity in the murder of an American military attache and an Israeli diplomat in 1982 and in the attempted murder of an American consul in 1984.

While French journalists goggled in astonishment, Chief Judge Maurice Colomb pronounced the maximum life sentence and led the six other judges of his special terrorist court swiftly out of the courtroom.

The scene brimmed with symbolism. In this same ornate courtroom in 1898, the novelist Emile Zola had been found guilty of libel for accusing the army staff of falsifying evidence to wrongfully convict Capt. Alfred Dreyfus of treason. The jury found Zola guilty on the strength of testimony by the generals that they had absolute proof of Dreyfus’s guilt but could not produce it because of “reasons of state.”

The invocation of “reasons of state” probably reached its height in France in this infamous era of the Dreyfus affair. Now, 89 years later, in the same courtroom, the concept of “reasons of state” may have received its most telling blow.

A foreigner may wonder why the concept was not discarded long ago. Under the Nazi occupation during World War II, the collaborationist government of Marshal Philippe Petain invoked “reasons of state” for setting up special courts known as “special sections” to try--and to execute--French Resistance fighters. Petain’s minister of justice said he wanted the special sections to have judges “known for the firmness of their character and for their total devotion to the state.” These special sections are now viewed as a stain on the honor of France.

Despite such a discredited past, there is little doubt that many French, especially in the government, still believe in the idea of “reasons of state.”

In a television interview during the week of the Abdallah trial, Minister of Interior Charles Pasqua, whose ministry supervises the French police, expressed the philosophy in the starkest of terms.

“Democracy ends,” he said, as if the dictum were obvious, “where the interest of the state begins.”

Pasqua made his assertion not to rationalize the government’s policy in the Abdallah trial but to justify his refusal to explain some of the machinations of the police in a growing political scandal. The journalists, Pasqua said, had no democratic right to ask him anything about the secrets of the police.

The minister’s definition of the limits of democracy sounded self-serving, but it probably still made sense to many French, who have seen their territory serve as a battleground for three terrible wars in less than 120 years. The president or prime minister never shows up in a French town these days without devoting a minute of silence before the local monument honoring the fallen soldiers of World War I.

Invoking the glory and sanctity of the state has a strong emotional appeal in France. Many people still believe that the French state has a grandeur that is greater than the sum of the individuals within it.

This attitude was obvious, for example, during the Greenpeace affair of 1985. Most French were far less upset by the high-handedness of their government in sinking the anti-nuclear protest ship than about government clumsiness in botching the job and getting caught. In a similar way, French journalists, trying to find out who was responsible, lost heart when they discovered that the trail led directly to the president. Most dropped the investigation, for the honor of the presidency of the French republic was more important than the truth about the affair.

All the arguments for and against the supremacy of the state were laid bare in the Abdallah trial. The government obviously wanted a light sentence--prosecutor Pierre Baechlin barely prosecuted, and a leading police officer belittled the importance of Abdallah. In the end, the prosecutor even begged the panel of seven judges to impose a light sentence. Otherwise, he insisted, France would become a hostage to vengeful terrorists.

Baechlin said he made this plea with “death in his soul”--a French expression that means something like “with a heavy heart.” But the interests of the state forced him to ask for a light sentence. After he finished, he muttered, loud enough for reporters to jot the words down, “What one has to do for the interests of France.”

A far different point of view came in an eloquent speech from Georges Keijman, the lawyer who represented the interests of the U.S. government and the American victims in the case.

“It is not your place to agree to serve the interests of the state,” he told the judges. “If you do, you will declare the guilty innocent just the way the special sections of Vichy during the occupation were asked to declare the innocent guilty. That is the insidious character of ‘reasons of state.’ ”

Throughout the trial, Jacques Verges, the same defense attorney who will defend Nazi Gestapo officer Klaus Barbie in Lyon this May, smiled and said little. An iconoclast with unconcealed contempt for the French system, he was obviously confident that “reasons of state” would prevail and that the judges would hand out a sentence so light that his client would be free before the end of the year.

Most French shared Verges’s cynicism. On the morning of the verdict, French newspapers published long analyses on the impending victory once more of “reasons of state” over justice. The articles were written without pride but with a sense of inevitability about the corruption in the French system.

The surprisingly severe verdict of the judges was followed by silence in the courtroom. The judges had chosen justice and their honor over the hoary tradition of state interest. As the reality of what had happened sank in, the French began to feel very good about themselves. A poll showed that 78% of the people approved of the judges’ decision. It seemed strangely natural for justice to triumph over “reasons of state” in France.