Senior readers do certainly remember Robert Badinter, a French lawyer stubbornly devoted to the abolition of death penalty all over the world. He also had travelled to Pakistan to defend Z. A. Bhutto during his trial but had failed to convince the judges.
Badinter, today 90, succeeded in having capital punishment annulled in the country of guillotine while he was justice minister under President François Mitterrand in 1981.
The first man to profit from this generosity, which not only interdicts death sentence but also allows a convict to be released following a few years behind bars, was Patrick Henry who had coldly murdered an eight-year-old boy.
Once out of jail in 2003 for ‘good behaviour’, Henry lost no time in hiring a boat and crossing the Mediterranean over to Morocco. On return he was arrested once again, his boat full of drugs. He later died in prison.
Absence of death penalty and good behaviour releases are once again subject of controversy in French media following an appeal for freedom by Jean-Claude Romand who apparently is bored with the prison routine and wants to come out.
His story, likely to raise a few hairs behind your neck, starts in the city of Lyon in 1977 when, as a medical student, he failed to pass his examination.
He would admit this neither to his parents nor to his fiancée Florence -whom he would later marry and have two children with, a daughter Caroline and a son Antoine.
To the question as to why he didn’t practice medicine like other doctors if he already had his degree as he claimed, Romand would respond that he was offered an important job by the United Nations World Health Organisation which allowed him little time for other activities.
How did he manage to earn a salary remains a mystery even today, but ‘Dr’ Romand was almost never at home and used to explain his frequent absences as travels all over the world on behalf of the United Nations. One speculation is that his half-cooked medical knowhow allowed him to treat patients, such as illegal immigrants with no social security benefits, on modest charges in cash.
He had installed his family close to Lyon where the WHO offices were placed — and still are today- while he often moved to other cities, staying in hotels for days.
As every dream has an end, the phony doctor’s deceit became too evident to the family after fifteen years. Not only his wife and children but his elderly parents who lived not too far away, advised him as well to put an end to the fraud and find a regular job.
Following a heated discussion on January 9, 1993, Jean-Claude Romand angrily hit his wife on the head with a heavy kitchen object. Then, having failed to stop his children from screaming, he shot them dead.
Romand’s frenzy wouldn’t end here and he would drive up to his parents’ house, killing them and also their dog. Then he would return home and pour kerosene oil over the bodies of his wife and children as well as over the house furniture, swallow a whole pack of sleeping pills and set everything afire.
Neighbours noticed rising smoke apparently much sooner than Romand had expected. Fire brigade was called and firemen were able to put down the flames and bring the still alive ‘doctor’ and the bodies of his family out.
Romand was later arrested and his trial began in June 1996. He was given life sentence which, following the Badinter law, came to its end this year.
His appeal for release, on the argument of good behaviour, is currently under study. Judges are deliberating whether the ‘doctor’ is serious about his promise to lead a normal life. They will announce their verdict on September 18.
The writer is a journalist based in Paris.
Published in Dawn, September 16th, 2018
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