Bordeaux - A French historian who uncovered Maurice Papon's past as a Nazi collaborator will tell the former budget minister's war crimes trial today that the state's charges are flawed.
Prof Michel Berges of Bordeaux University could turn out to be a crucial witness in the trial, now three months old, in which Papon (87), is accused of deporting 1,560 Jews to wartime death camps during the rule of the collaborationist Vichy regime. Prof Berges said last October that later research showed the bureaucrat had done what he could to help the Jews.