Europe 1 11:42 a.m., February 9, 2024
Robert Badinter, former Minister of Justice and architect of the abolition of the death penalty in France, died at the age of 95, we learned on February 9. In March 2020, the man who had made the end of capital punishment his hobby horse spoke to Christophe Hondelatte about this fight.
Robert Badinter spoke at length to Christophe Hondelatte and told him about the crusade he led against the death penalty. In the first episode, available as a podcast (and below), the former Minister of Justice recounts his failure during the Roger Bontems trial. This former soldier, convicted after a deadly hostage-taking in the Clairvaux power plant in 1972, was executed. “I have the feeling that it was a foregone conclusion,” he remembers. “I admire this kind of blind confidence that I had in an outcome which, I thought, could be favorable, that is to say avoiding the death penalty,” declares Robert Badinter. The lawyer recognizes a form of naivety: “I was young and I didn’t understand anything.”
Listen again to the first of four episodes:
An “exceptional story”
Not speaking much today about legal cases, Robert Badinter nevertheless agreed to return to the two major trials which forged his fight against the death penalty: those of Roger Bontems and Patrick Henry. An “exceptional story”, according to Christophe Hondelatte.
Robert Badinter fails to save Roger Bontems, executed at La Santé prison. “As chance would have it, a few years later, in the same criminal court where he saw Bontems sentenced to death, he was able to save the head of Patrick Henry, facing the same attorney general,” recalls Christophe Hondelatte.