Lawyer's death revives links to music's murky past


Controversial lawyer Jacques Verges who has died aged 88 was one of the lawyers who defended the convicted French war criminal Paul Touvier at his trial in 1994. That is Jacques Brel in the photo above, and in an investigative piece in 2010 I uncovered little-known links between Touvier and Brel, while later that year I reflected on a web of linkages that stretched from Paul Touvier, who was found guilty of crimes against humanity, to Decca's contender for a classical Christmas number one.

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