Terror's Advocate

Terror's Advocate is a 2007 French feature documentary film on controversial lawyer Jacques Vergès. Produced by Rita Dagher and directed by Barbet Schroeder, it explores how Vergès assisted, from the 1960s onwards, anti-imperialist terrorist cells operating in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. The film contains no narration and uses archival footage, stills and interviews to propel the plot forward. It features interviews with Vergès himself, with people involved in his life, and with people who have investigated it. Participants interviewed include Algerian nationalists Yacef Saadi, Zohra Drif, Djamila Bouhired and Abderrahmane Benhamida, Khmer Rouge members Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan, once far-left activists Hans-Joachim Klein and Magdalena Kopp, terrorist Carlos the Jackal, lawyer Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, neo-Nazi Ahmed Huber, Palestinian politician Bassam Abu Sharif, Lebanese politician Karim Pakradouni, political cartoonist Siné, former spy Claude Moniquet, novelist and ghostwriter Lionel Duroy, and investigative journalist Oliver Schröm. The film premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and won the César Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 33rd César Awards. Synopsis After a prologue which shows Vergès downplaying Khmer Rouge atrocities and emphasizing the U.S. role in the Cambodian genocide, the film flashes back to his postwar involvement as an anticolonial activist and lawyer for the National Liberation Front (FLN) of Algeria. Is depicted in particular his fight for Djamila Bouhired's liberation. The film highlights the unofficial role of lawyers as liaison agents between prisoners in the Algerian revolution and Vergès' original technique of defense, called "rupture strategy," in which the lawyer accuses the prosecution of the same offense as the defendant. It then chronicles Vergès' efforts to act in favor of the Palestinian fedayeen.