The Archives of Maître Paturel

Part 4

The Horus case and the conscientious objectors

Extract from his interview, during which he recounts two of the key events in the history of spiritual minorities in which he was involved: the Horus case and that of the conscientious objectors from among the Jehovah’s Witnesses. An account at once gripping and instructive about the machinery of the repression of minorities.

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You were also Horus’s lawyer?

I was not Horus’s lawyer. A woman came to see me about a child-custody matter. She had taken refuge in the Horus community, which was an agrarian community. They had bought 40 hectares, and the local farmers were glad to sell to them — at a good price, moreover — with 3 farms. Each of them was fulfilling a dream: living in nature, making one’s own products… Nobody had enough money to be able to set up individually, so they came together — notably some retired schoolteachers. They pooled all their funds and created an SCI (property company). They made their dairy products, their craft products…. It resembled the New Age — that is, a mixture of a return to nature with certain aspects of the Egyptian religion. They made a cocktail of it, and there was nothing shocking in that. They went to the markets, they sold their products, they were competition. That is where the troubles began, notably with the mayor. Their children were, I would say, persecuted at school, so much so that, with former schoolteachers among their members, they decided to create their own school. They were schoolteachers, not lawyers. They created a school, but there are rules to be respected. They were convicted for the illegal opening of a school. That was the problem. Then, afterwards, they were harassed over vaccinations. Some considered that vaccines were good, others not. Between us, that is a second-class petty offence, not a crime. In England, parents are free to vaccinate their children or not; it is a question of conscience, and on that point the debate can be very wide. To come back to the first case I handled: a woman had joined this community — it interested her — with her two daughters. She was divorced and had custody of her children. Then one of the girls — who did not like agrarian life; she was rather for the city and its glitter — asked to go back and live with her father. I asked the mother: “Is there any opposition?” “No, there is no problem at all.” It was simply necessary to regularise the matter before the family-affairs judge. Later, that woman sent me a second client, who belonged to the community and who had been the object of a discriminatory measure by the Caisse d’Allocations Familiales (the family-benefits office). We went to court, we won, with a good magistrate who took no account of the word cult, who rendered his justice — a secular justice, clean, sharp, clear. Finally a third person, who was in divorce proceedings, also came to see me. So there I had these three people as clients. As for the second, it was in the CAF’s file that I discovered she belonged to this Horus community. One day, there were rumours that the children were being mistreated, raped — so the investigating judge of Valence, by rogatory commission, asked the gendarmerie to carry out a raid on the three farms. It is rather amusing, because people always wonder how far back the association between the RG and the ADFI goes. It came about locally; it was not uniform. Some departmental structures of the RG refused all collaboration with the ADFIs; others went to them for information. Still others took the information generously supplied by the ADFI as the truth and transcribed it. It was left somewhat to the free judgement of each departmental director of the RG.

That day, I was in discussion with the director of the RG, who wanted to inform himself about the beliefs of various minorities; he was informing himself, free of any prejudice. And it was at that moment that I received a phone call from a warrant officer (adjudant) of the gendarmerie, who said: “I am a gendarmerie warrant officer, we are carrying out a search at the Horus community and the people want to speak to you.” “Oh really?” The people of the community were asking for me, saying that what was happening to them was illegal; they had been offered a lawyer, and the only name the three people knew was mine. That is how the warrant officer came to call me: “Could you speak to them?”

I therefore contacted Mme Castano, who was there, and made her acquaintance by telephone. I told her: “There is a rogatory commission; ask him to read it.” The warrant officer read it. The subject-matter was very broad. I said: “Listen, let them proceed. You are accused of mistreatment of children.” I added: “You have nothing to reproach yourselves with?” She said “No”. “In that case, let them proceed. The gendarmes will take away the computer diskettes and carry out searches, and that way you will be cleared definitively and in an official manner.” So the members of the Horus community let it proceed.

I hang up, and I resume my discussion with the director of the Renseignements Généraux. Ten minutes later the telephone rings; this time it was the gendarmerie colonel, who says to me: “Well, I have learned from warrant officer So-and-so that you have settled the question. Now I have another problem: the warrant officer was calling you from the first farm, where the telephone is. We are encircling the two other farms, where they have barricaded themselves, and there is no telephone to communicate. We are obliged to have the rogatory commission executed, and I would not want there to be a clash, shots fired. You don’t know whether they are armed?” I replied: “They are not armed. They are so pacific…” He says to me: “Could you come?” I agreed to bring my help. I explained to the director of the RG — who had in fact followed the conversation and understood the situation very well — that we would have to meet later. “Yes, I quite understand,” he told me. “Listen,” he says, “I ask you only one thing: could you make me a report?” I made him a report. That day, as a small aside, the report reached the Ministry of the Interior before the gendarmerie communicated its own to the Minister for the Armed Forces.

I arrive on the scene; the whole circle of the forces of order was there. The gendarmes let me through. I move forward and I see the colonel. Another anecdote: I say to him, “Good day, mon colonel,” and he says: “Ah! At last someone who knows the ranks. Since this morning I have been called adjudant, captain, major… It is the first time anyone has called me colonel.” And he explains the situation to me. I go to the first farm, I knock. One of the women I had as clients was there. I say: “It’s Paturel.” She answers: “We can let him in.” So they open up for me. I advise them to let it proceed. Same reasoning, same dialogue. So the gendarmes were able to search the two farms, and everything went well.

The objective was to take the children and bring them to Montélimar, to a medico-social centre, in order to have them examined and to see whether they had been subjected to sexual or physical mistreatment, etc. The children came back. I stayed the whole day at the central farm so that everything would go well. In the afternoon, the members of the community offered me a little snack, tea or coffee, and I pointed out to them that it would be a pleasure — but that the gendarmes might perhaps appreciate some too. So they offered the gendarmes tea, coffee, bread, cheese… The latter accepted; there was a complete distribution.

The radio was there — Radio France Drôme — and many journalists were outside. At one moment, the van was bringing the children back. The RPF journalist, in a tone of anxiety: “We see the children returning; we are entirely ignorant of what is happening inside this farm…” Truly, deep anxiety! And at that precise instant, I can still see the gendarmerie warrant officer, opposite me — the one who had called me — with a big moustache à la Jean Ferrat, full of goat’s cheese, saying: “Oh yes, but we are not worried. We are not worried.”

That is how things happened — really amiably. They discovered that this community was in no way dangerous, and this community discovered that the gendarmes were obliged to execute orders, but they had done so with all the professional ethics and all the humanity one could wish. The children were not mistreated; everything really happened gently.

As for me, on the way out I was set upon by the journalists; my photo appeared in all the newspapers: “Mme Castano with Horus’s lawyer”. Since that day, I have been “the lawyer of Horus” — which was never the case. I defended, in a personal capacity, individuals from that community, but I was never the lawyer of Horus. Horus was never put on trial as a community, I mean. Now, I know that Horus was later troubled over a story about a child who allegedly was not given medical care; that case I followed closely.

Mme Castano no longer seems to want to talk about this episode?

No, they no longer want to talk; they have had enough. That is persecution — they have been the object of persecutions, and it continues. When I left, they were in the thick of it. Mme Castano was reproached, among other things, for having cabalistic signs in their garden, and she had burst out laughing, saying: “What we do is exactly what the Aztecs did — that is, at the foot of each tomato plant we put stones that are very hot when the sun sets, which allows the plant to still have warmth once the sun has gone down.” Which allowed her to have tomatoes twice as big as the tomatoes of the local farmers — hence a very great jealousy. Competition at the market is very hard; it is not an open market, the vegetable market.

What made things go wrong afterwards (after this first intervention by the gendarmes, which went well)?

It went wrong for two reasons. There was a child who fell ill, and it was considered that this was due to the refusal of this community to vaccinate the child — which is totally false because, I repeat, there were some forty people, and some were for vaccines, others against; there was never a position of principle on the matter. It was claimed that this child got tetanus from not having been injected with a tetanus vaccine. But what is curious is that this child was hospitalised and had all the symptoms of a child bitten by a tick. And, above all, he was treated not with the medicines proper to curing tetanus but with those proper to curing piroplasmosis and Mediterranean fever. But for the authorities, it was counted as a case of tetanus. On that score too, there is much to be said.

The second reason concerns an elderly person. I had had occasion to meet her — a person who lived in her own individual house; she was over 70, in my opinion. She found the way of life and the well-being of this community interesting. She must certainly have been solitary; she went regularly to visit them, spent the day with them and left again with goat’s cheese. And one day, in the course of a visit, she died — within the Horus community. There you are: something that can happen anywhere; but given all the troubles that were being made for them, they said to themselves: “If we declare the death here, we are going to have plenty of other troubles.” So they committed the error — which is totally forbidden — of transporting her to her home, that is, of transporting a corpse. That was a monumental error. That is the story as several people of the community told it to me. It deserves all due credit, because this person came regularly, two or three times a month, to visit them, make a few purchases of natural products and spend a day with them. She was happy to be surrounded by people who looked after her.

How did the media behave?

They literally assassinated them. From the outset, the media fed the prejudices. I never saw an article in the media — there was notably a newspaper called Le Dauphiné Libéré Drôme-Ardèche — with appeasing words, words saying that things should nevertheless be kept in proportion. The media always strike in the same direction. When people speak of adversarial debate, of free discussion, of the freedom of the press… I do not know where it is to be found, the freedom of the press. But if there had been a single journalist who was even slightly free, we would all the same have had some discordant notes in the press — which was never the case.

How did you come to defend the conscientious objectors?

It came about in a rather curious way. A young lad who was my neighbour had been enlisted in the paratroopers, at Pau. A kid who had never done any sport. A catastrophe for the poor kid… So, at his first leave, he goes home: the family cocoon, the little fiancée… He does not return to the barracks. After five days, he is posted as a “deserter” and the gendarmes come to fetch him. His parents say to me: “Can you defend him in Marseille?” I answer: “No problem.” I defend him; he came out of it well — he was transferred to another, calmer unit.

As I was about to leave, the prosecutor calls me back and says: “Paturel, may we ask you a favour?” I say “Yes”. It was past half-past twelve. He says to me: “We have some thirty case files, and the court-appointed lawyer is not here.” I answer: “Wait! Thirty files… I shall be staying here for the week!” He retorts: “No, you will see, they are not troublesome.” I say to him: “If they are here, it must be that…” He adds: “They are little conscientious objectors.” “Oh, I see!” “Can you defend them? Otherwise, we are obliged to keep the escort. So: thirty defendants — the escort is forty gendarmes and police officers.” “Fine,” I say, “no problem. May I confer with them?” “Yes, of course, take your time.”

I talk with them. The bulk of the group was made up of Jehovah’s Witnesses; some were there for philosophical reasons — in short, I had a bit of everything. So I make up “little bundles”, in order to have pleadings suited to each; then, after a quarter of an hour, I say to the presiding judge: “I am ready.” I plead. What interests me above all is not criminal law; it is public liberties. Public liberties and constitutional law. So I plead at the level of public liberties — that is to say, I attack the army not at all; I attack only the French legal system, which turns an offence of opinion into a very heavy conviction. I finish, then I say: “I know that many judges are shocked by this type of approach. You can only apply the law, namely: one year of imprisonment. But can this sentence be accompanied by non-entry in the criminal record?” And there I see the presiding judge turn to his two assessors; they discuss, deliberate, then they say to me: “One year’s imprisonment — and, for all of them, exclusion from the criminal record.” There it is; the prosecutor thanks me.

Then, on the way out, four men come to see me and say: “We belong to conscientious-objection associations. We heard you, and we liked the way you pleaded at the level of liberties, to show that this is really not sordid criminality. These are indeed public liberties. You carried the debate to where it belonged — to the level of liberties. Would you agree to defend our young men?” I say: “No problem.” And that is how I came to defend a little more than three thousand of them in the space of a few years.

What I tried to do was to move the case forward. At the level of my Church, I passed the information up, saying that for a strict, hard-line objector’s status, serving a year in prison is completely aberrant. He could do a civilian service; I do not see what could shock anyone’s conscience in that. In the Bible it is said: “If someone requires you to go one mile, go two with him.” I do not see what is shocking there. So on that point too, things evolved.

One day, I am called by the presiding judge of Marseille. He says to me: “I have an Open Day — could you come? I have the army’s entire General Staff here.” “Yes, no problem.” Then he says to me: “Could you make them a complete pleading?” “What do you mean by ‘complete’?” “Explain everything, to make things move forward. Let me explain why. It was requested by the Ministry of Defence.”

I had, precisely, just sent a letter to Mr François Léotard, who was Minister of Defence, to explain the problem to him. I reminded him of a good memory from the time when we had run a marathon together, at the 2nd RIMA, in circumstances I could tell you about if that interests you. He remembered it very well. He said: “It takes little for things to tip over,” and that is what he did by way of a circular. It was he who had asked for a complete report on this kind of case.

So the presiding judge says to me: “Explain everything. There will be the equivalent of the Renseignements Généraux present, and they will make the report.” And he adds: “I have listed only four cases” — whereas usually there were between seventy and a hundred. “I have taken four cases: a drug trafficker within the army; a deserter, so that they will see the difference; someone who struck an officer, hence brutality; and a Jehovah’s Witness, who is fairly representative of objection.” I answered: “Right — I can do something complete for you.” I arrive there. The General Staff: I was expecting to see fifteen people! I discover two hundred and fifty caps and kepis! There were the admiralty (the navy), the army, the air force and the national gendarmerie.

My case comes last. I remember, I was at the far end of the room, contrary to the usual practice where one stands right in front of the court. They had set up a microphone for me so that it would carry well, and I had the two hundred and fifty senior officers there. I tried to interest them by telling them that there are many prejudices to combat, notably concerning the objectors. The timing was good: it was June 1994; we had just marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Landings. “You know, there are many prejudices about conscientious objectors or about religious minorities.” I explain to them: “We have just commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the Landings, and you have been told about certain beaches — notably a beach where there were many dead, ‘Bloody Omaha’. And do you know the unit that suffered the most losses at Omaha?” I see heads lift. “You should know that it was the stretcher-bearers who suffered most. Because a Marine who landed, once he was at the foot of the cliff, was at least under cover. The stretcher-bearers made continuous return trips across the beach to fetch the wounded; some stretcher-bearers even stayed on the spot because the person could not be transported. They suffered enormous losses. And you know that there are a very great many conscientious objectors among the stretcher-bearers. So you see — the prejudices: conscientious objector, coward; Jehovah’s Witness; all the prejudices there can be about minorities — it is open to discussion.” Then I went on: “In a few days it will be the fiftieth anniversary of the Liberation of Paris by General Leclerc… Do you know that General Leclerc had a third medical company? He who was a Catholic, a military man — even Patton said of him: ‘That impatient lion’. Well, his third medical company was composed of what today would be called ‘a cult’ — though no one will say so: Quakers. British Quakers, American Quakers. And when the Quakers left — they are, after all, a religious minority that is not Catholic, that is pacific; they were quite willing to give aid, but they would not carry a rifle — Leclerc made a speech that fits on one page, which I obtained at the Maréchal Leclerc museum in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. One feels that he speaks from the heart, from the gut; one feels that it tears him apart to see these men leave — and yet they did not at all share his allegiance. You see: prejudices must be fought.”

I did something complete, legally, and the whole thing lasted not far off an hour. At the end I concluded: “To put an end to all the prejudices about the cults that regiment children, that lead children astray, that programme them, and so on — everyone knows the general who led the Allied forces in Europe?” I hear someone murmur: “Eisenhower.” So I say: “I have just heard the name, there. You are right: it is Eisenhower. Do you know that his father was a Mennonite and his mother a Jehovah’s Witness? Two groups that could be called ‘cults’. So when people say ‘the cults regiment children’, you have the very example of a person who was not regimented. And when the occasion arises — it is a pity I do not have it here — I shall read you the letter of his mother, who was a Jehovah’s Witness, Ida Eisenhower, so that you may hear how she speaks of her son, with great respect and esteem. You see, his upbringing did not prevent him from being a soldier, from making a military career. And the upbringing he received from his parents — ‘cult followers’ (sectateurs) — made of him the finest general on the human level.”

The court went off to deliberate, and the presiding judge made me laugh, because four cases can be deliberated in four minutes. He took an hour to reach his decisions. Why? Because when they went out to deliberate, I was surrounded by the admiral and by three-, four-, five-star generals, and all of them said to me: “But what on earth is this conscientious-objector business? It is not over yet?” I said: “No.” “But that is unbelievable!” We talked for about an hour, and at regular intervals I saw the door leading to the courtroom open — the presiding judge would look out, see me talking, and discreetly close it again. The usher responsible for bringing in the files, a former soldier, came to see me afterwards and said to me: “I was looking over the rapporteurs’ shoulders — they have written you an exceptional report! If nothing moves after that, then I shall be astonished.”

Read the earlier parts of the dossier: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

The archives of Maître Paturel

The Horus case and the conscientious objectors

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