Now that Touvier has been convicted

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According to the verdict, he ordered the shooting of seven Jews in retaliation for the death of a Nazi who had been slain by the Resistance. It was an emotional verdict for the victims' families. Many had fought for decades to bring Touvier to justice - not an easy task, because successive French governments had resisted the notion of prosecuting a Frenchman for crimes against humanity, the sole French offense that carries no time limit. But Henri Glaeser, 65, whose father was one of the seven victims, was far from bitter when he left the courthouse after the 12:20 a.m. verdict announcement. "What does it matter, the time it has taken?" he shrugged. ''They took my father and put him on a wall and killed him." But now, because of the verdict, "I feel that I am living in one of the best countries in the world. You can't imagine what it is to feel like, to have a judge say that these seven Jews are part of the six million" who perished in the Holocaust. Alain Jacobvitz, a lawyer for one of the plaintiff groups, the Jewish Association, said: "The verdict is not the most important thing to us. What's important is the memory of the victims of Touvier. . . . This trial is important for the French young generation. It's very important that they know the truth about these people from the blackest period of this country's history." Touvier, a onetime intelligence chief of the Milice, the French paramilitary arm of the Gestapo, was convicted of crimes against humanity as defined by the Nuremberg trials: "Murder . . . committed against an entire civilian population before or during the war, or persecution for political, racial, or religious reasons." The French adopted the statute in 1964. During the trial, prosecutors argued - and the jury agreed - that Touvier had acted in complicity with Nazi racial policies. In his summation two days ago, chief prosecutor Hubert de Touzalin declared, "I am convinced that Touvier, seeing his responsibilities, knowledgeable of his responsibilities, could not have been ignorant of the Final Solution." He could not prove that the Nazis had specifically ordered Touvier to shoot the Jews; in his words, "there is no documentation of an actual order, in the strict sense of the term." But he said the order wasn't necessary, because Touvier - a lifelong anti- Semite who spoke of "Jewish rubbish" in his private diary - already knew what to do. Early yesterday, Touvier's lawyer launched a fiery defense. With Touvier encased in glass behind him - and, as always, betraying no emotion - Jacques Tremolet de Villers declared: "It's ridiculous to make this into a major trial. . . . Touvier is the one being persecuted. The press made him a victim, and now we have victimized him again." He insisted that his client was innocent. Touvier had repeatedly denied in the trial that he had ever heard of the Final Solution, but the lawyer insisted, "Touvier is old, how can he remember what happened 50 years ago?" And for those 50 years, he said, Touvier "has been condemned to be the 'outsider,' the 'monster,' and that's enough punishment - and enough punishment for one country." If Touvier was not acquitted, he warned, "the bloody wounds of national discord would never heal." France had never staged such a trial. The Nazi occupation remains a sensitive topic, and French leaders had long decided that the prosecution of accused Nazi collaborators, on such a charge, was too divisive. Touvier was sentenced to death for war crimes while in hiding during the late 1940s, but he was pardoned in 1971 by President Georges Pompidou. This pardon was later sidestepped when the crimes-against-humanity charge was filed. And over the last decade, French Nazi-hunters, notably Serge and Beate Klarsfeld and their son Arno, have argued successfully that it was time for France to confront its past. In the end, the public pressure for a trial was too strong for the government to resist. Touvier eluded capture for 40 years, until he was seized in 1989 at a monastery in southern France. Yet in the annals of French collaboration, he was actually a minor figure. The prime target for prosecution - until he was shot dead last year by a lone assassin - was Rene Bousquet, a Paris police official who shipped 12,000 Jews to the death camps. Now that Touvier has been convicted, there are fresh calls for the prosecution of Maurice Papon, now 83, who supervised the deportation of Jews from the Bordeaux region. He is living openly in Paris, but the government has no plans to put him on trial. He is highly connected; he served as Paris police chief in the '60s and as national budget minister in the '70s. "Touvier was not highly responsible in the French administration," said Jacobvitz. "That is why it is important to have Papon. He is the next fight for us. Of course, it is very difficult for us to get him." Still, the drama of the Touvier verdict lingered. Touvier was brought to the courtroom, to await the jurors. The muscles in his jaw were clenched. Five tense minutes passed. Finally, a distant bell sounded, and the audience rose. The judges filed in. They were met with silence. When the verdict was read, the silence held and the tears fell. Outside, in the chill of the wee hours, Touvier's lawyer vowed: "We're going to appeal. We're going to find reasons." He was bundled into a police car, which was besieged by demonstrators yelling, "Prosecute Papon!" The car pulled away and vanished into the night.