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'Devil's Advocate' Lawyer Jacques Verges Dies

'Devil's Advocate' Lawyer Jacques Verges Dies

Jacques Verges, the provocative French lawyer who earned the nickname "Devil's advocate" by defending a series of high-profile criminals, has died at the age of 88.

The lawyer died of a heart attack in the house where the 18th century philosopher Voltaire once lived.

It was an appropriate setting for an iconoclast who devoted his life to defending unpopular causes, said his publisher, Pierre-Guillaume de Roux.

"The ideal place for the last theatrical act that was the death of this born actor who, like Voltaire, cultivated the art of permanent revolt and volte-face," said the publisher in a statement.

Born in Thailand to a father from Reunion island and a Vietnamese mother, Verges was a communist as a student and later supported the Algerian National Liberation Front in its fight for independence from France.

After securing the release of Algerian anti-colonialist militant Djamila Bouhired, the pair married.

Verges went on to become a high-flying lawyer, making headlines around the world thanks to a client list that includes some of the most infamous names of modern times: Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, Venezuelan revolutionary Carlos the Jackal, former Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz and ex-Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic.

Most of his clients lost their cases but Verges' flair was in courtroom provocation, attacking the prosecution and maximising the publicity of his defendants' cause.

Asked by France Soir in 2004 how he could defend Saddam Hussein, after he said he was prepared to represent the Iraqi dictator, Verges replied: "Defending Saddam is not a lost cause. It's defending (then US president George W.) Bush that is the lost cause."

He also caused a storm when he said he would have defended Hitler.

"Defending doesn't mean excusing," he said, explaining his comment. "A lawyer doesn't judge, doesn't condemn, doesn't acquit. He tries to understand."

One of his last high-profile cases was the defence in 2011 of his long-time friend, Cambodia's former communist head of state Khieu Samphan, who faced charges of crimes against humanity over the 1975-1979 Khmer rule during which up to two million people died.

The prosecution's version of events "sounded like a novel written by Alexandre Dumas about what happened in Cambodia," said Verges in a 10-minute speech.

Attacking prosecutors' "fantastical view of reality", he told the court: "Remember what monsieur de Talleyrand, Napoleon's foreign minister, another bandit, said: 'Everything that is excessive is vain'."

"Everything you said was excessive and therefore vain. May the tribunal remember that. I hope I haven't wasted your time, thank you very much," concluded Verges in a trademark summing-up.

There was one mystery in his personal life which was never publicly resolved when, in 1970, he disappeared.

For nine years, there was no trace of him, despite appeals from his wife, family and friends. He reappeared in Paris in 1979, never offering an explanation and seemingly delighting in confounding people.

In a 2005 interview, he would say only that he had been "very much to the east of France".