Defiant Barbie Taken Back Into Court to Face Accusers

LYON, France —  Klaus Barbie, the Gestapo chief of Lyon during World War II, was brought to court today for the first time in 13 days to face witnesses who accuse him of torturing and deporting them to German camps.

Handcuffed but smiling, Barbie showed no resistance as police guards led him into the courtroom at the order of the presiding judge. Earlier in the day, he had refused to enter the courtroom voluntarily.

After greeting his interpreter and his lawyer, Barbie sat in the defendant’s box. He was brought into the room near the end of the day’s session.

Asked by Presiding Judge Andre Cerdini if he had anything to say, Barbie responded in German, “I would like to make a statement.

‘Victim of Kidnaping’

“I am being held in an illegal manner and I am the victim of a kidnaping and I am hereby forced.”

Cerdini stopped Barbie before he could go any further, saying, “I did not give you authorization to make a statement. You are reading a text prepared in advance. You don’t have the right. Answer my question.”

“I will respond to nothing,” Barbie said.

The man known as the “Butcher of Lyon” arrived at the courthouse in a police van, part of a convoy that whisked him into the 19th-Century Palais de Justice on Lyon’s Saone River.

Barbie had announced May 13 that he would no longer attend sessions of his trial on charges of crimes against humanity, claiming he had been kidnaped and brought illegally to France from Bolivia, where he lived in exile for more than 30 years.

Face-to-Face Confrontation

On Monday, however, after the testimony of two witnesses who had not previously been confronted by the defendant during more than four years of judicial investigation, Cerdini indicated he would use his authority to have Barbie brought to the courtroom by force if necessary for face-to-face identification.

The 73-year-old Barbie refused today to respond to a former resistance member who faced him from the witness stand.

“I recognize him formally, completely formally,” said Lucien Margaine, 67, arrested in Lyon in May of 1944, interrogated and allegedly tortured for a week by Barbie and deported to Dachau concentration camp. “One cannot be mistaken. Look at that grin. You cannot forget it is not a sane man.”

Final Words Recalled

Cerdini then asked Margaine if Barbie was the man who told him when he was deported, “Where you are going you will not be coming back.”

Margaine responded: “Yes, and with the same air he has right now.”

“I have nothing to say,” Barbie said.

“Who can respond?” Margaine asked, staring at Barbie, who was sitting in a glass-enclosed box near the witness stand. “He reacted like an SS,” Margaine added as a burst of applause erupted in the courtroom, prompting Cerdini to call for silence.

Before today, Margaine had never had an opportunity to identify Barbie in a face-to-face confrontation.