Word: mornet
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...untidy Sunday clothes. But he was a peasant of genius. He took the measure of the High Court of Justice in Paris with a shrewd and baleful eye. As his treasonable acts were recited, the arch-collaborator of Vichyfrance calculatingly sized up the opposition: white-haired André Mornet, prosecutor of Mata Hari and Pétain; red-robed Judge Pierre Mongibeaux, who had sentenced the Marshal two months ago; the jury of resistance leaders and parliamentarians...
...under heavy escort, came two of France's most hated men : suave Count Fernand de Brinon, former Vichy ambassador to Ger man-occupied Paris, and defiant Joseph Darnand, once head of Vichy's hated militia. The court had called them despite the refusal of Prosecutor Andrá Mornet to hear the evidence of "a crook and a gunman...
...defense followed with a letter written to Pétain by U.S. Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy. Marshal Pétain, said the former U.S. Ambassador to Vichy France, had often "expressed to me the fervent hope that the Nazi invaders would be destroyed. . . ." Suddenly Prosecutor André Mornet declared that he would no longer press the charge that the Marshal had plotted to defeat France. Hereafter, he would emphasize Pétain's record of collaboration after the Armistice...
Before him ranged the red-robed High Court of Justice, a three-man tribunal headed by stern Pierre Mongibeaux, 65, (in 1941 he had sworn loyalty to Pétain's Vichy Government). The public prosecutor was André Mornet, 75 (in World War I he sent Spy Mata Hari to the firing squad). The 24-man jury had been chosen half from the Resistance movement, half from non-collaborationist ex-parliamentarians. Behind the prisoner sat his counsel, his doctors and nurses, the witnesses (there would be about 50), the tightly packed reporters and spectators...
Judges hurriedly consulted. Spectators burst into jeers and catcalls-some aimed at the bench and the prosecution for "political" bias. Said Prosecutor Mornet: "There are too many Germans in this room." The hubbub grew to a tumult of protests and shrieks, scuffling bodies, overturned chairs and tables. In the prisoner's dock the old man sat stoically until he was led away for safety. At Tommy-gun point, gendarmes restored order...