Jean Bastien-Thiry

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Portrait drawing by Jean Bastien-Thiry

Jean Bastien-Thiry (born October 19, 1927 in Lunéville , † March 11, 1963 in Fort d'Ivry , Département Seine , today Département Val-de-Marne ) was an engineer, lieutenant colonel in the French Air Force and organizer of the assassination attempt at Petit- Clamart to French President Charles de Gaulle in 1962.

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Military career

Jean Bastien-Thiry came from a family of officers. He completed studies at the École polytechnique and the École nationale supérieure de l'Aéronautique and graduated as a defense engineer. He then joined the French Air Force . There he was mainly involved in the construction of surface-to-surface missiles . He was the developer of the anti-tank guided missile SS.10 . In this role Bastien-Thiry was personally promoted by de Gaulle.

OAS

During the Algerian War , he represented the tough stance prevailing in the military in contrast to the French public, which categorically rejected Algeria's independence . After lengthy negotiations on both sides and despite several terrorist attacks by the right-wing Organization de l'armée secrète (OAS), de Gaulle gave in on March 13, 1962 and recognized the sovereignty of the Algerian state. Bastien-Thiry, who disapproved of any negotiations with the Algerian Liberation Front , joined the OAS and planned the kidnapping of de Gaulle on their behalf. The possibility of assassinating the president was not excluded from the outset.

Assassination attempt and conviction

On August 22, 1962, an assassination attempt was carried out in the Paris suburb of Petit-Clamart . Although the president's car was caught under fire by several riflemen with automatic weapons, de Gaulle and his wife escaped unharmed.

Bastien-Thiry was arrested in September 1962 after returning from a mission in Great Britain . After a brief military trial from January 28 to March 4, 1963, he was sentenced to death . He had a team of defense lawyers: Jacques Isorni , Richard Dupuy, Bernard Le Coroller and Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour, who later became politically active . His defense emphasized that Bastien-Thiry was demonstrably suffering from depression at the time the attack was planned and was therefore being treated. However, the prosecution did not recognize this as an attenuating circumstance. After the verdict was pronounced, de Gaulle converted the sentences against the other assassins into imprisonment, but he refused a pardon for Bastien-Thirys. The fact that Bastien-Thiry, as the organizer of the assassination, accepted the death of de Gaulle's wife, should also have played a role. Jean Anouilh was among those who asked de Gaulle to pardon Bastien-Thiry .

On March 11, 1963 Jean Bastien-Thiry was a firing squad in Fort d'Ivry executed . To date, he is the last person to be executed by firing squad in France and the last person to be sentenced to death by a military tribunal in France.

Jean Bastien-Thiry was married and had three daughters.

Afterlife

Bastien-Thiry grave 2009

Jean Bastien-Thiry is still considered a hero among some right-wing French people. In the summer of 2005, for example, a memorial for 113 victims of the decolonization of Algeria, including Bastien-Thiry, was erected in the Saint Laurent Imbert cemetery in the southern French city of Marignane . The inauguration ceremony was finally banned as a disturbance of public order by the regional prefect Christian Frémont, whereupon the sympathizers were only allowed to lay their wreaths individually and unaccompanied.

literature

Biographies written by family members

  • Gabriel Bastien-Thiry: Plaidoyer pour un frère fusillé. La table ronde, Paris 1966. (Gabriel Bastien-Thiry is the brother of Jean Bastien-Thiry.)
  • Agnès Bastien-Thiry: Mon père, le dernier des fusillés. Éditions Michalon, Paris 2005, ISBN 2-84186-266-6 . (Jean Bastien-Thiry's daughter defends her father's actions, arguing that the death sentence against him was illegitimate.)

Further biographies

  • Jean-Noël Jeanneney: Un assassination. Petit-Clamart, 22 août 1962 . Éditions du Seuil, Paris 2016. ISBN 978-2-02-130153-3 .
  • Jean-Pax Méfret: Bastien-Thiry. Jusqu'au bout de l'Algerie française. Pygmalion, Paris 2003, ISBN 2-85704-815-7 .
  • Gilbert Labadie: Bastien-Thiry, mon camarade. Self-published, 1989, ISBN 2-9504043-0-8 .

Fiction and film

The assassination organized by Bastien-Thiry formed the basis for the plot of Frederick Forsyth's novel The Jackal , which was made into a film by Fred Zinnemann in 1973 (see The Jackal ). Bastien-Thiery was portrayed here by Jean Sorel .

website

Website about Bastien-Thiry with various materials and his last address and reason for the attack.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Objective: De Gaulle at time.com, accessed on August 23, 2012
  2. ↑ Joe Paul Kroll: So be it always to tyrants. Only murder should be able to help against betrayal of the people: The assassination attempt on de Gaulle on August 22, 1962 as a case study of right-wing terrorist appeal to the right of resistance . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of April 5, 2017, p. N3.
  3. ^ Nostalgic meeting of the OAS in Marignane (French) at leMonde.fr, accessed on 23 August 2012
personal data
SURNAME Bastien-Thiry, Jean
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French colonel and assassin
DATE OF BIRTH October 19, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Luneville
DATE OF DEATH March 11, 1963
Place of death Fort d'Ivry