France: Sympathy for Salan

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The outcome of the trial stunned France. In the dimly lit courtroom of the Palais de Justice, ex-General Raoul Salan had openly accepted responsibility for armed rebellion against De Gaulle's government and for more than 400 documented killings committed by his Secret Army Organization in Algeria. His deputy in the S.A.O., ex-General Edmond Jouhaud, had already been condemned to death. Two days before the Salan trial ended, an official asked newly appointed Justice Minister Jean Foyer where Salan should be imprisoned if his life were spared; Foyer dismissed the question as an "idiotic assumption." But last week, after deliberating 2½ hours, the nine-man military tribunal found "extenuating circumstances" and sentenced Salan not to death but to life imprisonment.

A joint labor union communique called the verdict "scandalous," and the influential Paris newspaper Le Monde described it as "a trial for nothing, climaxing a war for nothing." In Algeria, the Moslem F.L.N. was enraged, and asserted that in the light of the verdict S.A.O. gunmen will conclude that they have nothing to fear from French justice. Apparently just as furious, De Gaulle met with his Cabinet. Algerian Affairs Minister Louis Joxe saw the verdict as a "blow at the morale of the forces of order, particularly the gendarmerie," which has done most of the fighting against the S.A.O. De Gaulle cried angrily: "There's no more state. There's no more democracy. It can't go on like this!" He bitterly contrasted his popular support among the mass of Frenchmen with the "resistance" on the part of the army and the judiciary.

Unpursued Lead. Despite De Gaulle's indignation, Paris was alive with the rumor that a deal had been made in which Salan's silence was the price of clemency. The weekly Canard Enchainé hinted at such a bargain in an issue published 18 hours before the verdict was handed down. In his statement to the court, Salan made the flat charge that in May 1958, when he was military commander in Algeria and led the army's pro-De Gaulle revolt against the Fourth Republic, he was also prepared to conduct a military operation against the French mainland and Paris on orders of De Gaulle himself. For some reason, Salan's lawyers failed to pursue this lead.

What Salan's chief attorney, showboating, right-wing Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour, did try to prove in court was that his client was continuously duped by De Gaulle. He produced in court a previously unpublished letter, dated Oct. 24, 1958, in which De Gaulle flatly promised Salan that his government would never deal politically with the Algerian F.L.N. Yet fully two months before the letter was written, Tixier-Vignancour cried sarcastically, De Gaulle's agent and present Premier, Georges Pompidou, "had already made contact" with the F.L.N. on political questions and had reported to De Gaulle that "the result was encouraging." Tixier-Vignancour made another persuasive point: that an amnesty movement was being organized in the National Assembly proposing forgiveness of all S.A.O.

crimes committed up to April 22, 1962.