
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 16, 1991                   TAG: 9103160204
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: PARIS                                LENGTH: Short

FRENCH EX-POWS SAY TEACHER IS WAR CRIMINAL

A history professor accused of brainwashing French POWs during the Indochina war said Friday he "regrets nothing," but his critics demanded he be fired and tried for war crimes.

The professor, Georges Boudarel, 64, served as a political commissar for the Viet Minh, the Vietnamese Communist army, in 1953-54. His war role was disclosed last month in a dramatic denunciation by a former prisoner of war at a symposium on Vietnam.

Jean-Jacques Beucler, a four-year prisoner of the Viet Minh and a former secretary of state for veterans, declared Friday that he would work to have Boudarel prosecuted for crimes against humanity.

"It's the last outlet available to us," he said. Crimes against humanity have no statute of limitations, and do not fall under a general amnesty Boudarel benefitted from in 1966.

Former POWs accuse Boudarel of serving at Camp 113 in northern Vietnam. Under the assumed name Dai Dong, he broke morale with self-criticism sessions, encouraged POWs to spy on each other, and denied them food and Red Cross medication, the POWs said. - Associated Press

by CNB