Maurice Papon was a French civil servant who led the police in major prefectures from the 1930s to the 1960s, before he became a Gaullist politician. When he was secretary general for the police in Bordeaux during World War II, he participated in the deportation of more than 1,600 Jews. He is also known for his activities in the Algerian War (1954–1962), during which he tortured insurgent prisoners as prefect of the Constantinois department, and ordered, as prefect of the Paris police, the deadly repression of a pro-National Liberation Front (FLN) demonstration against a curfew that he had "advised."
The penal colony of Cayenne, commonly known as Devil's Island, was a French penal colony that operated for more than 100 years, from 1852 to 1953, in the Salvation Islands of French Guiana.
Henri Désiré Landru was a French serial killer, nicknamed the Bluebeard of Gambais. He murdered at least seven women in the village of Gambais between December 1915 and January 1919. Landru also killed at least three other women and a young man, at a house he rented from December 1914 to August 1915 in the town of Vernouillet, 35 km northwest of Paris. The true number of Landru's victims, whose remains were never found, was almost certainly higher.
Marcel André Henri Félix Petiot was a French medical doctor and serial killer. He was convicted of multiple murders after the discovery of the remains of 23 people in the basement of his home in Paris during World War II. He is suspected of the murder of around 60 victims during his lifetime, although the true number remains unknown.
Henri Charrière was a French writer, convicted in 1931 as a murderer by the French courts and pardoned in 1970. He wrote the novel Papillon, a memoir of his incarceration in and escape from a penal colony in French Guiana. While Charrière claimed that Papillon was largely true, modern researchers believe that much of the book’s material came from other inmates, rather than Charrière himself. Charrière denied committing the murder, although he freely admitted to having committed various other petty crimes prior to his incarceration.
Michel Paul Fourniret was a French serial killer who confessed to killing 12 people in France and Belgium between 1987 and 2003. After he was arrested in June 2003 for the attempted kidnapping of a teenage girl in Ciney, Fourniret confessed to killing nine people — eight females and one male — in 2004, having been informed on by his then-wife, Monique Pierrette Olivier. Fourniret was convicted of seven of these murders on 28 May 2008 and sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole, while Olivier was given life with a minimum term of 28 years for complicity.
Papillon is an autobiographical novel written by Henri Charrière, first published in France on 30 April 1969. Papillon is Charrière's nickname. The novel details Papillon's purported incarceration and subsequent escape from the French penal colony of French Guiana, and covers a 14-year period between 1931 and 1945.
Albert Londres was a French journalist and writer. One of the inventors of investigative journalism, Londres not only reported news but created it, and reported it from a personal perspective. He criticized abuses of colonialism such as forced labour. Albert Londres gave his name to a journalism prize, the Prix Albert-Londres, for Francophone journalists.
The murder of Ilan Halimi was the kidnapping, torture, and murder of a young Frenchman of Moroccan Jewish ancestry in France in 2006. Halimi was kidnapped on 21 January 2006 by a group calling itself the Gang of Barbarians. The kidnappers, believing that all Jews are rich, repeatedly contacted the victim's modestly placed family demanding very large sums of money. Halimi was held captive and tortured for three weeks, and died of his injuries. The case drew national and international attention as an example of antisemitism in France.
Louis Dega is the name of a character in Henri Charrière's novel Papillon. In the 1973 film this character was played by Dustin Hoffman and in the 2017 film the role was played by Rami Malek. Purportedly an autobiography, few of the characters and events in Papillon could be corroborated and it is perhaps best regarded as a narrative novel, combining and embellishing the adventures of Charrière and several fellow inmates, in particular of René Belbenoît and Charles Brunier.
Lazare Ponticelli, Knight of Vittorio Veneto, was at 110, the last surviving officially recognized veteran of the First World War from France and the last poilu of its trenches to die.
This article lists events from the year 2007 in France.
Events from the year 1901 in France.
Serge Brunier is a French photographer, reporter, and writer who has specialized in popular depictions of astronomical subjects.
Émilien Amaury was a French publishing magnate whose company now organises the Tour de France. He worked with Philippe Pétain, head of the French government in the southern half of France during the second world war but used his position to find paper and other materials for the French Resistance. His links with Jacques Goddet, the organiser of the Tour de France, led to a publishing empire that included the daily sports paper, L'Équipe. Amaury died after falling from his horse; his will led to six years of legal debate.
Brunier is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
Mehdi Ben Barka was a Moroccan politician, head of the left-wing National Union of Popular Forces (UNFP) and secretary of the Tricontinental Conference. An opponent of French Imperialism and King Hassan II, he was "disappeared" in Paris in 1965. Many theories attempting to explain what happened to him were put forward over the years; but it was not until 2018 that details of his disappearance were established by Israeli journalist and author Ronen Bergman in his book Rise And Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations. Based on research and interviews with Israeli intelligence operatives involved in planning the kidnapping of Barka, Bergman concluded that he was murdered by Moroccan agents and French police, who ended up disposing of his body.
François Asselineau is a French politician and an Inspector General for finances.
Charles Enderlin is a French-Israeli journalist, specialising in the Middle East and Israel. He is the author of a number of books on the subject, including Shamir, une biographie (1991), Shattered Dreams: The Failure of the Peace Process in the Middle East, 1995–2002 (2002), and The Lost Years: Radical Islam, Intifada and Wars in the Middle East 2001–2006 (2007). He was awarded France's highest decoration, the Légion d'honneur, in August 2009.
Nadir Sedrati, known as The Canal Cutter, is a French serial killer who was convicted of killing and dismembering three people from May to July 1999, whose remains he would later dump in the Marne–Rhine Canal near Nancy. He is also suspected in at least two disappearances dating back to 1982, for which he was never charged.
