How do French author Georges Theil’s court cases stand?

French author Georges Theil

click here for a March 2008 update

As is known, our friend Georges Theil has received some heavy sentences – in Limoges (2005) and in Lyon (2006) – in two cases of “overt revisionism”. A resident of Grenoble, he is a retired senior executive of a large state corporation; from 1998 to 2004 he served as an elected official in Rhöne-Alpes Regional Council.

A first trial, in Limoges, concerned the circulation (from the autumn of 2002) of a few dozen copies of his autobiographical work Un cas d’insoumission – Comment on devient révisionniste, written under the pseudonym Gilbert Dubreuil and prefaced by Robert Faurisson. (The book has since been published in English translation, under his real name, as Heresy in 21st Century France: a case of insubmission to the “Holocaust” dogma.) In the book he’d especially described his intellectual path in life, marked as it was by the discovery first of his grandfather’s death during the First World War in Indochina – the French officer had been sent there to train Tonkinese riflemen, his avowed assignment being to make good “Boche-killers” of them – then of the death of his father, an engineer slain in unclear circumstances in 1944. He told how what at the start was for him intellectual curiosity (others might say filial devotion as well) quickly changed into a well-grounded conviction that a gigantic lie was bringing itself to bear on our world as concerned the relation of historical facts, mainly those having to do with the Second World War, the consequences of which are, still today, so very grave. Indeed, the whole Western world, crushed by the slanderous and criminal allegation of inexact “facts”, has fallen to such a degree of thraldom that the rightful seeking out of historical truth and the public expression thereof have become illegal – subject to criminal proceedings – as has been the case in France since July 14, 1990 (in some neighbouring countries, like enslaved Germany, it’s worse still).

This book earned Georges Theil a prison sentence

In 2005 the Limoges court of appeal, for that book, sentenced Theil to six months’ imprisonment without remission and a €30,000 fine, ordering him as well to pay an individual plaintiff (a wartime communist) and two “remembrance” associations some €12,000 in damages all told. In December 2006 France’s highest court, the Cour de cassation (“superior appeal board”), quashed that conviction, ruling that the case must be retried by another appeal court because the statute of limitations for publications, albeit obvious here (three months at the time of the facts, though afterwards brought to a year by a new law known as “Perben II”), had not been applied, it having been established as early as in 2003 – notably by the contents of an article in the weekly Rivarol of January 16 of that year – that the book was effectively in circulation. Thus the case must be heard again by the court of appeal of Bordeaux (date not yet set).

The Lyon case is closely linked to the former. In October 2004, in a private exchange, off to one side in the hall of the regional council in the town of Charbonnières, two journalists from a local television station (TV8-MontBlanc) questioned Theil about the Limoges trial and asked what he thought of local Front National head Bruno Gollnisch’s recent statement (where, in substance, Gollnisch had said that the estimated number of victims of the deportation from France was a matter for specialists, historians and researchers).

Bruno Gollnisch MEP
- also accused for his historical opinions

That non-public interview of Theil with the two reporters, in fact an informal talk about this and that, was also to touch on the presumed “crime weapon” for the mass-murder as invoked by the official history, i.e. the gas chambers. There Theil was to explain the radical impossibility – for physical, chemical, logistical and architectural reasons – of carrying out such a slaughter in the places and ways alleged. To conclude he remarked that if intelligent people endowed with a fair sense of judgment believed the official version all the same, then there was but a single possible explanation, namely the belief – a preposterous one – in the diabolical capacity (propensity?) of the Germans, natural born “technical wizards”, to achieve the impossible. In short: “It’s unrealisable, but the German Nazis were able to do it”! A bit like Martians possessed of unimaginable technical abilities…

Hauled into court in Lyon for those remarks after they’d been broadcast on TV8 MontBlanc a few days later (a fine setup), Theil was once more to be hit with a harsh sentence that was made still harsher after appeal, to wit: another six months’ imprisonment without remission, a fine of €10,000, an order to pay €4,500 in damages to each of nine “remembrance” associations that had joined their suits to the prosecution, and the obligation to pay for the decision’s publication in two newspapers at an estimated cost of over €8,000. No more than his colleague in Limoges had the presiding judge at any time assented to a discussion of the basic substance of the case! An important and significant observation: the TV station’s director was not even charged, whereas he had given the green light to the broadcast! And, during the appeal hearing, it proved impossible to find and listen to the tape recording of the incriminated remarks, although it was being held under seal in the clerk’s office!

The petition lodged against this ruling from the court of appeal of Lyon has now been dismissed by the Cour de cassation. The six months’ imprisonment and the fines thus stand, awaiting implementation.

If prison doesn’t scare Georges Theil overmuch, especially when he thinks of Ernst Zündel and Germar Rudolf, the appalling sums to pay in damages and fines (more than €100,000 or $135,000 all together, not including legal fees) spell ruin for him and his family, who are without any personal wealth. It must indeed be acknowledged that, amongst our inquisitors, a deep contempt for historical exactitude holds sway, along with a desire to put the unsubdued to death.

George Theil has also spoken out against injustice and war crimes in Palestine, such as this Israeli attack on Qana

Georges Theil has done nothing more than dare to write and speak out about the sufferings of our nations in the West and of the Palestinian people, which he deems intolerable in a civilised world. He has dared to do it, for an internal force, his own courage, bids him not to give in, not to resign himself, and to bear witness. It is a matter, in effect, of life or death for us. His sacrifice is that of us all, whether we like it or not.

Readers may express their sympathy and, henceforth, come to his aid by writing to the following address:

M. Georges Theil
BP 50 38
F-38037 Grenoble Cedex 2
France

E-mail : gmtheva@yahoo.fr

His book in French is available from the above address for €13 per copy, including postage to all European Union countries (+ Switzerland and Norway). Likewise the English version: price €20 (or 25 USD), postage outside Europe included.