“
I hope that I will be the last tortured in France
”, simply declares Claude Buffet before being executed at 5:20 a.m. in the courtyard of the prison of health in Paris on November 28, 1972. A few minutes earlier, his acolyte, Roger Bontems, suffered the same fate.
The hostage taker will not be the last to die under the ax of the guillotine - four others will meet the same fate in the following years - but the plea will be heard.
Because it is in this "
little early morning
" which he will tell the story in his book
The Execution
, that the defender of Bontems, Robert Badinter, draws the strength to lead the fight for the abolition of the death penalty.
It is for the lawyer the first case in which his client risks the death penalty.
"
I probably discovered there what it meant in terms of intensity and anxiety
", he will relate on France Culture in 2021. With his colleague Philippe Lemaire, Badinter tried, in vain, to save the head of Roger Bontems, the one who did not kill.
His…
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