Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 "Death is the justice that kills. I do not accept a justice that kills."
00:06 On September 17th 1981, Robert Bellante entered history with this speech.
00:12 "On behalf of the French Republic, I have the honour to ask the National Assembly to
00:18 abolish the death penalty in France."
00:23 At the time France's Justice Minister, he brought about the abolition of the country's
00:27 death penalty. It had been the fight of his life.
00:31 Bellante developed a thirst for justice whilst still a public school student in Paris, where
00:35 he was born in 1928 to a Jewish family of Moldovan origin.
00:40 His adolescence was marked by the death of his father, who was captured during the Nazi
00:44 occupation of France and killed in the Sobibor concentration camp in Poland. After studying
00:49 literature and law, he became a lawyer in Paris.
00:53 In 1972 would come a major turning point in his life, as he failed to spare his client
00:58 from the guillotine. Roger Bantam had been condemned for being an accomplice in the murder
01:03 of two hostages in a prison break.
01:09 Five years later, by then a committed activist, Bellante would succeed in saving child murderer
01:15 Patrick Henry from the death penalty.
01:17 As Justice Minister from 1981 to 1986, he was nicknamed the "murderer's lawyer" but
01:23 remained undaunted in his commitment to human rights.
01:29 While I was Justice Minister, I had very clear ideas about making the French justice system
01:34 more human and it was very unpopular.
01:40 During his mandate, he would reform France's use of solitary confinement, decriminalise
01:45 homosexuality and grant French litigants access to the European Court of Human Rights.
01:51 As Minister, he achieved the extradition of the Gestapo officer Klaus Barbie from Bolivia
01:55 to France, where he was found guilty of crimes against humanity during his time stationed
02:00 in occupied Lyon.
02:02 After leaving government in 1986, Bellante was named President of France's Constitutional
02:07 Council. With his wife, philosopher Elisabeth Bellante, he had three children.
02:13 As a senator from 1995 to 2011, he lived to see the abolition of the death penalty written
02:18 into the country's constitution, a fight for which he had committed himself to his last
02:23 breath.