2023-08-03 22:28:00
The writer Gilles Perrault, who had weighed heavily in the 1970s in favor of the abolition of the death penalty by publishing “Le Pull-over rouge”, died at 92, AFP learned Thursday from from his family.
The author died “last night” of cardiac arrest, his family told AFP, confirming information from Ouest-France.
Jacques Peyroles, his real name, had started a career as a lawyer before branching off into journalism and then literature. Under his pseudonym, he notably signed in 1969 a successful spy novel, “Le Dossier 51”, adapted into a film with Michel Deville.
He was “not only a wonderful storyteller, but also a committed man”, greeted journalist Edwy Plenel on Thursday evening in a message on Twitter, renamed X.
The name of this former member of the Communist Party comes up in many forums committed against racism, for the legalization of euthanasia, or in 2007 in favor of the former Italian activist Cesare Battisti.
In 1978, the publication of the book-investigation “Le Pull-over rouge”, which fuels doubts about the guilt of Christian Ranucci, guillotined two years earlier for the murder of a little girl, will give rise to a lively controversy, feeding the pages of the newspapers for more than thirty years.
Marathon
Later books on the affair, and his repeated remarks about him (he had called the investigation into the murder of little Marie-Dolores Rambla a “forfaith”), would lead to his conviction, in particular for defamation of police officers in the criminal brigade of Marseilles.
The death penalty was abolished in France in 1981, but the three requests for revision of the trial were never successful.
“A search for review is not a sprint, it’s a marathon,” the writer told AFP in 2006, still hoping to see the case reviewed one day.
“There are authors and works that know how to spark debate, and sometimes even vocations. If I became a lawyer, it was partly thanks to the + red sweater +”, reacted Thursday the President of the National Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet.
In 1990, Gilles Perrault had been at the origin of one of the most serious crises in the history of Franco-Moroccan relations by publishing the resounding “Our friend the king”, which made a damning assessment of 30 years of the reign of Hassan II.
“Gilles Perrault’s books are markers for my generation. There is a before and after + Our friend the king + in Hassan II’s view of Morocco”, supported Pierre Haski, journalist and president of Reporters Without Borders. .
The work also wondered about the complacency of certain French elites with regard to the monarch.
Perrault had prefaced in 2014 a book very critical of the current king of Morocco, son of Hassan II, written by a former Moroccan journalist for AFP Omar Brouksy. Entitled “Mohammed VI behind the masks”, it was subtitled “our friend’s son”, in reference to his famous work.
03/08/2023 23:24:05 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
#Death #writer #Gilles #Perrault #author #Red #sweater