here is a great piece about Verges:
http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=518780&host=3&dir=60Shaking his hand, I tell Jacques Vergès, it's impossible not to feel a direct connection to all those other palms he's pressed. His friends have included such men as the Cambodian dictator Pol Pot, and Illich Ramirez Sanchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal, who blew up Marseille railway station and shot dead - among others - two French policemen: a soldier, as Vergès once described the Venezuelan terrorist, "in a noble cause". Then there's the Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie, who the lawyer addressed as "Mon Capitaine" and joined in a rendition of "Lili Marlene" in the German's cell during his 1987 trial, and Slobodan Milosevic, who has called on his support throughout his trial in The Hague. Many assumed that Vergès ("I like him," Carlos the Jackal once said, "because he is a bigger terrorist than I am") had exhausted his capacity to shock. Recently, however, they were proved wrong, when the French barrister announced that, at the personal request of the imprisoned dictator's family, he is preparing the defence of Saddam Hussein.
<snip>
Though Vergès is frequently referred to as the Devil's Advocate, not all of his clients have been monsters. I first met him in the early 1990s, when he was defending Omar Raddad, a Moroccan gardener charged with killing his employer, an heiress who appeared to have scrawled the words "Omar Killed Me", in her own blood, as she lay dying in the basement of her villa in Nice. It turned out to be the only convincing evidence against him. Raddad had a credible alibi; the police, having read the message, didn't trouble themselves with other scene of crime duties, such as taking fingerprints. The illiterate Moroccan got 18 years; he served seven before he was released in 1998 on the personal order of President Chirac.
Vergès's critics argue that, had Raddad's lawyer confined himself to a simple examination of the facts, his client would have been acquitted. But Vergès employed his trademark technique of what he calls rupture - challenging the legitimacy of the court, and turning the trial into a debate of the injustice that has most exercised him throughout his career - the crimes and hypocrisies of colonialism, of which he sees the United States as the most shameless perpetrator.
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And that's only a taster... its definitely a worthwhile read IMO.
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