Klaus Barbie, after having collaborated with the US secret services, had took refuge in Bolivia, where, under the name of Klaus Altman, he worked as a "consultant" for the police of the dictatorship. Spotted in 1971 by Beate and Serge Klarsfeld, Barbie was formally identified by... Raymond Aubrac! In 1983, after the fall of the Bolivian dictatorship, Barbie was extradited to France.

Klaus Barbie's trial was held in 1987 and he was condemned to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity. His counsel was Jacques Vergès, a very famous lawyer. He helped Barbie to write his "testament" in which he accused many resistance fighters to be traitors and especially Raymond and Lucie Aubrac. Knowing that, given the facts, Barbie would be condemned, Jacques Vergès wanted to bring discredit upon the Resistance.  No other document nor witness had so far mentioned this, and no one since... Interestingly, Vergès did not mention this accusation during Barbie's trial, not even when Raymond Aubrac testified at Vergès request! But he disseminated it in the press and on the TV...

FYI, Jacques Vergès started by defending very courageously the Algerian freedom fighters from the FLN during the Algerian war. However, among the people he has defended since then are dictators Omar Bongo, Denis Sassou-Nguesso, Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein,  the terrorist Carlos, the revisionist Roger Garaudy and Khieu Samphan, leader of the Red Khmers...

The so-called "jury" mentioned by the Telegraph was a "round table" organised by the French newspaper Libération, which was held with a surprising lack of rigour. It was denounced by a great number of historians.  

Here is good debunking by an historian (in French)


"Ne te courbe que pour aimer..." René Char