1. Maurice Papon is known for his activities in the Algerian War, during which he tortured insurgent prisoners as prefect of the Constantinois department, and ordered, as prefect of the Paris police, the 1961 massacre of pro-National Liberation Front demonstrators for violating a curfew that he had "advised".
In 1961, Maurice Papon was personally awarded the Legion of Honour by French President Charles de Gaulle, whose government had been struggling with the FLN insurgency.
Maurice Papon commanded the Paris police in the Charonne subway massacre and the Paris massacre of 1961, during which between 200 and 300 Algerian demonstrators were deliberately killed by the Paris police.
Between the two rounds of the May 1981 presidential election, where Giscard d'Estaing was running for a second term, details about Maurice Papon's past were leaked in newspaper.
Maurice Papon was released from prison early, in 2002, for ill health.
Maurice Papon was born in Gretz-Armainvilliers, Seine-et-Marne, the son of a solicitor who became an industrialist.
In 1919, when Maurice Papon was nine years old, his father was elected mayor in the commune and held that office until 1937.
Maurice Papon's father was local representative of Tournan-en-Brie and president of the canton's council in 1937.
Maurice Papon entered Sciences-Po, the specialty university for future civil servants and politicians, and he studied law, psychology and sociology.
Maurice Papon was named in the Ministry of Interior in July 1935 before he became chief of staff of the deputy director of departmental and communal affairs, in January 1936, under Maurice Sabatier.
Maurice Papon became a member of the Ligue d'action universitaire republicaine et socialiste, a Radical-Socialist youth group; Pierre Mendes France was a member.
Maurice Papon was assigned to direct the French secret services in Ras-el-Ain, in the north of French Syria.
Papon opted to serve the Vichy government, his mentors, Jean-Louis Dumesnil and Maurice Sabatier, having voted on 10 July 1940 to grant all power to Philippe Petain.
Maurice Papon was appointed as the vice-chief of bureau to the central administration of the Ministry of Interior, before he was named, in February 1941, as vice-prefect, 1st class.
Maurice Papon was appointed as general secretary of the prefecture of Gironde in charge of Jewish Affairs.
Maurice Papon later claimed he had Gaullist tendencies during the war.
Maurice Papon was the second official in the Bordeaux region and the supervisor of its Service for Jewish Questions.
Maurice Papon implemented the anti-Semitic laws voted by the Vichy government.
Some resistants questioned his activities, but Maurice Papon avoided being judged by the Comite departemental de liberation of Bordeaux for his role during Vichy, as he was protected by Gaston Cusin.
Maurice Papon presented a certificate attesting that he had taken part in the Resistance, although its authenticity was later rejected.
Maurice Papon became chief of staff of the commissaire de la Republique, a high civil servant that replaced Vichy's prefects.
Maurice Papon effectively retained the same functions as during the war.
Maurice Papon was first named prefect of the Landes department in August 1944 and then chief of staff of the commissaire of the Republic of Aquitaine, under Gaston Cusin.
In October 1945, Maurice Papon was appointed as vice-director of Algeria at the Minister of Interior.
Maurice Papon was named prefect of Corsica in January 1947 by Leon Blum's government and, in October 1949, prefect of Constantine in Algeria by Radical Henri Queuille's government.
Maurice Papon went to Morocco in 1954 as general secretary of the protectorate, where he helped repress Moroccan nationalists.
Maurice Papon returned to Constantine in 1956 during the Algerian War, where he actively participated in the repression, including the use of torture against the civilian population.
In March 1958, Maurice Papon was appointed Prefect of Police for Paris by the government of Radical Felix Gaillard.
Maurice Papon thus had an important role in the May 1958 crisis, which brought de Gaulle to power and led to the founding of the Fifth Republic.
Maurice Papon took part in the secret Gaullist meetings that assured the use of the crisis to prepare de Gaulle's nomination as President of the council and to grant him special powers.
Maurice Papon oversaw the repression during the Paris massacre of 1961: on 17 October 1961, a large peaceful march, organised by the Algerian National Liberation Front, broke a curfew that had been "advised" by Maurice Papon because of ostensible "concerns" on the group's sponsoring of a series of bombings throughout France.
Maurice Papon was forced to leave his functions after the October 1965 kidnapping, in Paris, of Mehdi Ben Barka, a Moroccan dissident and leader of the Tricontinental Conference, in October 1965.
De Gaulle helped Maurice Papon become president of the company Sud Aviation.
Maurice Papon was elected deputy of Cher as candidate of the Gaullist Union of Democrats for the Republic in May 1968.
Maurice Papon was re-elected in 1973 and again in 1978, now for the neo-Gaullist Rally for the Republic.
Maurice Papon was elected mayor of Saint-Amand-Montrond in 1971 and 1977.
Maurice Papon was director of the Verreries mecaniques champenoises, a glass art firm in Reims.
Maurice Papon became President of the Finance Commission of the National Assembly in 1972 and was the deputy presenting the budget from 1973 to 1978.
Maurice Papon served as Budget Minister under Prime Minister Raymond Barre and President Valery Giscard d'Estaing from 1978 to 1981, before finishing his mayoral term in 1983 and renouncing further political activity.
The documents had been provided to the newspaper by one of the survivors of Maurice Papon's raid, Michel Slitinsky.
Maurice Papon had begun writing his memoirs before his death; he criticised Chirac's official recognition of the involvement of the French state in the Holocaust.
Three months later, Maurice Papon sued the families of the victims for defamation but eventually lost.
In December 1995, Maurice Papon was sent to the Cour d'Assises and was accused of organising four deportation trains.
Maurice Papon finally went to trial on 8 October 1997, after 14 years of bitter legal wrangling.
Maurice Papon was accused of ordering the arrest and deportation of 1,560 Jews, some children or elderly, between 1942 and 1944.
Maurice Papon's lawyers argued that he was a mid-level official, not the person making decisions about whom to deport.
Maurice Papon's lawyers argued that he had done the most good he could in the circumstances and had ensured that those to be deported were treated well while in his custody.
Maurice Papon was convicted in 1998 as having been complicit with the Nazis in crimes against humanity.
Maurice Papon was given a ten-year sentence but served less than three years.
Maurice Papon's lawyers filed an appeal in the Court of Cassation, but Papon fled to Switzerland under the name of Robert de La Rochefoucauld, in violation of a French law that requires one to report to prison before the beginning of the appeal hearing.
Maurice Papon was recaptured in 1999, but was required to serve little time because of his advanced age and medical problems.
The real Robert de La Rochefoucauld, a hero of the French Resistance who maintained that Maurice Papon had worked with the Resistance, had given Maurice Papon his passport to enable him to escape.
Maurice Papon's appeal, scheduled for 21 October 1999, was automatically denied by the Court because of his flight.
France issued an international arrest warrant, and Maurice Papon was quickly apprehended by the Swiss police and extradited.
On 22 October 1999, Maurice Papon began serving his sentence at La Sante Prison in Paris.
Maurice Papon applied for release on the grounds of poor health in March 2000, but President Jacques Chirac denied the petition three times.
Maurice Papon continued to fight legal battles while he was in prison.
Maurice Papon's lawyers appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, where they argued that the French court's denial of his appeal on a technicality, rather than on the merits of the case, constituted a violation of Papon's right to appeal his conviction.
Meanwhile, Maurice Papon's lawyers pursued a separate action in France and petitioned for his release under the terms of a March 2002 law, which provided for the release of ill and elderly prisoners to receive outside medical care.
Maurice Papon's doctors affirmed that Papon, now 92 years old, was essentially incapacitated.
Maurice Papon became the second person released under the terms of the law and left jail on 18 September 2002, less than three years into his sentence.
The Ligue des droits de l'homme criticised the inequality before the law, as Maurice Papon was freed but not other prisoners.
In February 2007, Maurice Papon had heart surgery for congestive heart failure.
Maurice Papon was buried, with the insignia, on 21 February 2007.