Terror's Advocate (12A)

It is often the case in politics that the extreme left completes the circle and ends up extolling the right. Was this the case of Jacques Verges, the radical French lawyer who went from being the advocate of the Algerian resistance to defending nazis like Klaus Barbie?

Certainly, Barbet Schroeder's film Terror's Advocate doesn't appear to take sides. The director claims that he's providing the testimony for us to consider the facts and come to our own conclusion.

Schroeder has previous. He also produced and directed a film which featured General Idi Amin Dada, largely allowing the former dictator of Uganda to convict himself in his own words.

As the publicity blurb used by the promoters claim, it's "jaw-dropping," from the opening moment when Verges claims that Pol Pot wasn't the only criminal involved in Cambodia, since the US initiated the infamous killing fields.

Throughout his interview, Verges makes the same dialectical interconnection between the imperial power and those they oppress, often to the point of practising terrorism of the victors.

Sitting in his plush Paris apartment, Verges recounts his origins as a colonial cousin springing from a French father and a Vietnamese mother and having personal experience of racial prejudice.

He first came to prominence in 1957 when he was called on to defend some FLN resistance fighters, notably Djamila Bouhired, who had been dubbed the La Pasionaria of Algeria for planting bombs in French cafes.

Verges, using Georgi Dimitrov's strategy of putting the prosecution on trial, didn't challenge the charges against the fighters. He simply insisted that they had employed the same tactics as the French Resistance.

Central to his defence was the fact that, on the last day of the war in Europe, France had massacred thousands of Algerians in Setif, an act that he abhorred as a member of the French Communist Party.

After Bouhired's release, Verges married her and they had two children, with Verges going on to build an international reputation in the anti-colonial movement, meeting Mao and defending the first fedayin hijacking of an El Al plane, before mysteriously disappearing in 1970 for eight years.

Where was he? There are a number of suggestions, including Cambodia, the GDR or simply residing incognito in Paris. It remains a mystery, but there's no question that he had international links, including in the socialist world.

But it also transpires that he knew noted nazi Francois Genoud, a man who had financed many a cause for his Fuhrer, including financing the grand mufti in the 1930s, and anti-zionist organisations such as George Habbash's PFLP.

Thus the suspicion of political shenanigans, especially when, after lengthy periods of ultra-leftist actions by the Red Army Faction and Carlos the Jackal, Verges reappeared to act in his defence, then represented and fell for Magdalena Kopp.

However, it was his defence of notorious nazi Barbie that would strain his credibility. He later defended the likes of Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy, Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein.

As fascinating as it may appear fantastic, the world of international intrigue has always proved a rich source of scandal, especially when an advocate has to sup with the devil, as almost every advocate does.

When asked if he would have defended Hitler, Verges replies: "I would defend Bush, if he pleaded guilty." Seems that he does have some scruples.

Apparently, he considers Schroeder "treacherous." He can't say that he wasn't given his day in the cinema court.