RALPH SCHOENMAN
DETAINED BY FRENCH POLICE
London
On Tuesday, January 10, at about’ 11 p.m., Ralph Schoenman, the secretary general of the International War Crimes Tribunal, was abducted by the. French authorities while on his way from the hotel to the restaurant at Orly Airport. With five colleagues he was in Paris en route for Phnom Penh as a member of the second investigating team collecting evidence for the Tribunal.
At first, his colleagues suspected nothing, thinking that he must have been called to the telephone, but they later discovered the police in the act of searching through the luggage,in his hotel bedroom, on the pretext of looking for his passport. This action is astonishing, as Mr. Schoenman has entered France regularly and without the slightest trouble, showing his passport both at the airport entry point (passport control), and also at any hotel where he has registered. The police refused to answer any questions as to his whereabouts. No one was allowed to see him, or even to speak with him by telephone.
The serious situation was immediately made known to Maitre Giselle Halimi and Laurent Schwartz in Paris, and Bertrand Russell in Wales. Protests and enquiries by these three throughout the night failed to elicit any cooperation. Maitre Halimi, as Ralph Schoenman's lawyer, took her enquiries to top level in the Ministry of the Interior, but without results. Schoenman was kept for a whole night incommunicado.
This abduction of an American citizen, who was in France for one night on his way to Cambodia, and who holds the position of secretary general of the International War Crimes Tribunal, is particularly hard to explain in the light of the declared foreign policy of the French government.
That Ralph Schoenman is not, in fact, persona non grata in France, and that the whole episode has been, to say the least, an embarrassment to the French government, was strongly suggested by the developments of the following morning.
At the press conference held at Orly Airport at 9 a.m. on Wednesday morning, representatives of the Tribunal in Paris were informed by the Police de l'Air that Ralph Schoenman had been "forbidden entry to France as the result of a request originating from London, perhaps from an American source." .
It was stated that the action of the police was "only in response to a particular request, and did not represent any formal decision by the French authorities." :
The police spokesman added that Schoenman would be allowed to continue his scheduled trip to Cambodia, and he accordingly left on the 11 a.m. Air France flight to = Phnom Penh.
The, presumably, official action of the American government in attempting to prevent Ralph Schoenman's entry into France constitutes a clear acknowledgment of the seriousness with which the United States administration regards the International War Crimes Tribunal. It also reflects a profound misunderstanding of the nature, scale and present development of the Tribunal's activities.
Due, in no small measure, to the groundwork done by Ralph Schoenman, the administrative work of the Tribunal is now in the hands of an established team, with offices in several countries. No conceivable action by the United States government against any individual can halt the preparations now in progress for the Tribunal.
Plans for the public sessions have been agreed and the necessary technical arrangements are in hand. Meanwhile, the investigating teams, which are collecting evidence for the Tribunal, are already operating. The first team, due back shortly from Hanoi, has spent several weeks in north Vietnam studying the effects of bombardment on the civilian population. The team consisted of Setsure Tsurushima, professor of economics at Kansai University, Japan; Leon Matarosso, French lawyer; Roger Pic, French journalist, photographer and authority on Vietnam; Dr. John Gerassi, social analyst and author from the United States; Jean-Pierre Vigier, professor of mathematics, France; and Dr. Malcolm Caldwell, authority on Southeast Asia, from Great Britain.
The second team, accompanying Ralph Schoenman, will spend the next three or four weeks investigating border violations in Cambodia, and interviewing victims and witnesses of civilian bombardment in the liberated zones of south Vietnam. The other members of the team are Lawrence Daly, general secretary of the Scottish Union of Mineworkers; Carol Brightman, editor of Viet Report and a student of chemical warfare, United States; Dr. Behar, doctor of medicine, from France; Tariq Ali, former president of the Oxford Union,
from Pakistan; and Dr. Gustavo Tolentino, a Dominican citizen from Toronto, where he is a physician specialising in radiology. He is a member of Canada's New Democratic party.
Lawrence Daly is a recent full member of the International War Crimes Tribunal. In. endorsing the appointment, his union. issued a statement that it regarded it an honour that its general secretary-had been invited to participate.
JOHNSON