1. Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry was a French Air Force lieutenant colonel, military air-weaponry engineer and the creator of the Nord SS.
14 Facts About Jean Bastien-Thiry
1. 2.
Jean Bastien-Thiry was the last person to be executed by firing squad in France.
3.
Jean Bastien-Thiry was born to a family of Catholic military officers in Luneville, Meurthe-et-Moselle.
4.
Jean Bastien-Thiry's father had known de Gaulle in the 1930s and was a member of the Gaullist RPF.
5.
Jean Bastien-Thiry attended the Ecole polytechnique, followed by the Ecole nationale superieure de l'aeronautique, then entered the French Air Force, where he specialized in the design of air-to-air missiles.
6.
Jean Bastien-Thiry was married to Genevieve Lamirand whose father, Georges Lamirand, had been General Secretary of Youth from September 1940 to March 1943 in the government of Vichy France, although the rest of the family was Free French.
7.
Until this time, Jean Bastien-Thiry had been a Gaullist, but he now became an opponent.
8.
Jean Bastien-Thiry, who was involved with the mysterious organisation Vieil Etat-Major, tried to make contact with the Organisation armee secrete, a paramilitary group opposed to de Gaulle's policy and to the National Liberation Front.
9.
Jean Bastien-Thiry led the most prominent of several assassination attempts on de Gaulle.
10.
On 22 August 1962, while Jean Bastien-Thiry functioned as a lookout, de Gaulle's car and some nearby shops were raked with machine-gun fire.
11.
Jean Bastien-Thiry was brought to trial before a military tribunal presided by general Roger Gardet that ran from 28 January to 4 March 1963.
12.
Jean Bastien-Thiry, who had been deemed fit to stand trial by psychiatrists despite a history of clinical depression, was convicted and sentenced to death, as were two of his accomplices, de la Tocnaye and Prevost.
13.
Jean Bastien-Thiry commuted the death sentences of those who fired the shots but refused to spare Bastien-Thiry, despite an appeal from Bastien-Thiry's father.
14.
Jean Bastien-Thiry, having refused a blindfold and clutching a rosary, was executed by firing squad at Fort d'Ivry on 11 March 1963 at the age of 35.