January 24, 2008:
Professor Faurisson in police
custody for questioning and a
search of his house
Retired
university professor
Robert
Faurisson
lives in the central French town
of Vichy. At 9 AM on January 24,
2008 he answered a summons to
appear at the local police
station. No sooner had he arrived
there than he was notified by
three senior officers, sent from
Paris the day before, that he was
now in their custody for
questioning and that a search of
his house would also be carried
out.
In December 2006
then French President Jacques
Chirac had publicly called for an
investigation into
Faurisson’s participation in
the conference in Tehran on the
Holocaust (December 11th
and 12th
of that year). That conference
was open to all, including
revisionists. A British subject
before being a French citizen, it
was in English that the
Professor, a specialist of
“the appraisal of texts and
documents (literature, history,
media)”, briefly spelled out
the results of his research on
“the Holocaust”. His
paper bore the title
“The
Victories of
Revisionism”.
In it he didn’t hide his
belief that the more revisionism
gained ground, particularly on
the Internet, the more
revisionists would face
repression, first in the media,
then at the hands of the police
and the law courts.
The Minister of
Justice then put a Paris
prosecutor in charge of the
investigation demanded by one
who, dubbed “Superliar”
by French television, was now
anxious to come to the aid of an
imperilled “Superlie”.
On April 16, 2007 police
lieutenant Séverine Besse
and a colleague of hers were sent
to Vichy to question the
professor. But to each of their
queries he was to reply
stubbornly: “No
answer”, and he had them put
down the following statement in
their official record: “I
refuse to collaborate with the
French police and justice system
in the repression of historical
revisionism”.
Nine months
later, on January 24, 2008, the
thought police re-offended. In
the meantime an examining
magistrate, Marc Sommerer, was
assigned to the case. And he sent
the same Séverine Besse to
Vichy, accompanied this time by
two other officers of the Police Judiciaire
(OPJ). She made it known
to the professor that he was
henceforth in custody for
questioning and that after a
session with them in a room in
the station his house would be
searched. There then followed a
bodily search, confiscation of
wallet and change purse, pen,
watch and… belt (whereas the
chances are nil of a man of
nearly 79 hanging himself in a
police station office in the
presence of three officers). In
fact, it was all probably just
his interrogators’ way of
trying to intimidate a
notorious recalcitrant,
whose wife, as the police are
aware, is for serious medical
reasons in need of his constant
presence. However, with the
stubbornness of a Scottish
mother’s son, R. Faurisson
persisted in replying “No
answer” to every question
put. He reiterated his refusal to
collaborate with the police and
the justice system against
revisionism. Then he was told
that he was the target not of one
but of three penal actions that
had led to the issuing of as many
warrants by examining magistrate
Sommerer. The first two cited the
professor directly for his
participation in the Tehran
conference; whilst one of these,
originating both from the
prosecution service and from a
slew of pious organisations,
attacked him for “disputing
crimes against humanity”
(under the Fabius-Gayssot law of
1990), the other, from the LICRA
(Ligue internationale contre
le racisme et
l’antisémitisme),
charged him with
“defamation”. The third
action, tortuously worded, was
brought “against persons
unknown” by the daily Libération
for the
“pirating” of one of
its pieces in the review
Dubitando where, the
police officers said, twenty of
the professor’s articles had
appeared.
Faurisson was
then taken to his house. The
three “OPJ’s” and
a Vichy policewoman proceeded
with the search. They drew a
blank. They discovered neither
the coveted computer nor, in a
mountain of documents, the papers
sought. At the end, towards 3 PM,
the professor, making careful
note of the three officers’
names, affirmed to them, as
he’d had occasion to do
before judges in court: “It
may turn out that your existence
will be noted in history only
insofar as I’ll have
mentioned your names and
according to how I’ll have
mentioned you”.
The day after
this six-hour arrest for
interrogation and search, that
is, the 25th
of January, the professor would
celebrate his 79th
birthday, not without a thought
for those revisionist friends of
his who were already in prison or
who risked finding themselves
there before long. He’d have
a special thought for the heroic
Vincent Reynouard, today a father
of seven: ten years ago this
maths teacher, adored by his
pupils, was kicked out of the
state school system in France for
the crime of revisionism; at
present his living conditions are
more precarious than ever but he
nonetheless keeps on doing
copious research and producing
revisionist material regularly;
he stands up in person to the
courts where the judges, noting
his resolve, deny him the right
to make a defence grounded in the
substance of the case as he sees
it, and sentence him with
increasing severity; prison
awaits him.
Faurisson would
also be thinking of his fellow
revisionists imprisoned in either
Austria or Germany, for example
Ernst Zündel, Germar Rudolf,
Wolfgang Fröhlich, Gerd
Honsik and indeed Silvia Stolz,
“the German Joan of
Arc”.
Over the past
nearly sixty years, long has
grown the list of revisionists
who have paid with their
tranquillity, their health, their
freedom and, sometimes, their
lives for an attachment to the
freedom of thought, the freedom
of research (which, in history,
should not see itself assigned
any limits) and, finally, the
freedom of expression.
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