Lawyer and former minister Georges Kiejman died on Tuesday at the age of 90, AFP learned from his cabinet. “He was a man of total commitment, a man who lived intensely in an incandescent way, probably as revenge for his childhood. His father was deported to Auschwitz, he comes from a background of extreme destitution, and he rose by the strength of his intelligence, his culture, his elegance. He obviously shone in the courtrooms in which he achieved eloquence at the cost of hard work”, declared on Europe 1 Me Richard Malka, in reaction to the news of his death.
“He was a role model, a great man”
“He also uplifted everyone around him because he transmitted to them his energy, his intelligence, his ambition with regard to himself first. He was a model, a great man, there not that many. Those close to him are annihilated today. It is a small voice that will remain in our minds, to guide us on the path of humanity, of nuance, of commitment, passion”, added Me Richard Malka.
A man of the left and of culture close to Pierre Mendès-France and François Mitterrand, Georges Kiejman was for more than half a century a brilliant figure at the bar associated with resounding legal cases. Born in Paris on August 12, 1932, he is the son of a craftsman who died in deportation (he also called himself a “Jew of the diaspora and from Berry”). A poor young man, he completed his secondary studies in Saint-Amand-Montrond (Cher).
After graduating from higher education in public law, he became a lawyer at the Paris Court of Appeal in 1954 and became second secretary of the Internship Conference. In civilian life, where his causticity makes him formidable, he is a specialist in literary property, publishing, cinema and the press. He was notably the lawyer for Gallimard editions for many years, like that of Gaston Defferre, Simone Signoret, Eugène Ionesco or Roland Barthes.
“Atypical” customers
In criminal cases, he liked to say that his clients were “atypical”. Georges Kiejman thus defended the far-left activist Pierre Goldman, acquitted of the double murder of the pharmacists on boulevard Richard-Lenoir following his second trial in 1976. He had also represented the interests of the United States during the trial of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, the alleged leader of the Lebanese Revolutionary Armed Fractions (FARL), sentenced to life imprisonment for the Middle Eastern attacks in Paris in 1986.
He also defended the Italian autonomists, the Cahiers du cinema, the New Wave, Robert de Niro, the prefect Yves Bonnet, the family of Malik Oussekine, the student killed on the sidelines of demonstrations against the Devaquet laws in 1986, the children of General Oufkir detained in Morocco, the Aubrac couple, Charlie Hebdo…
In May 1991, this dandy became Minister Delegate for Communication, after spending six months as Minister Delegate to the Keeper of the Seals. He was Minister Delegate for International Cooperation and Development between 1992 and 1993. In 2011, this leftist defended Jacques Chirac in the trial of fictitious jobs at the Paris City Hall. Married to actress Marie-France Pisier then, since 1983, to journalist Laure de Broglie, he published in 2021 “The Man Who Wanted to Be Loved” (Grasset) with Vanessa Schneider.