French justice has lost one of its most emblematic figures. Lawyer Henri Leclerc died this Saturday, August 31, 2024, at the age of 90. His death, announced by The World was confirmed at theAgence France Presse by his daughter.
A figure of the Paris bar
“All my life I have been running to find an answer to the question of my childhood: what is justice?”explained in 2017 to West France the one who chaired the Human Rights League between 1995 and 2000, a position in which he notably denounced the conditions of detention in certain prisons.
The man who began pleading in 1955 was one of the leading figures of the Paris bar. He had notably been a member of the council of the capital’s bar association. He had stopped attending court in 2020.
Strauss-Kahn, Veronique Courjault…
In the meantime, Henri Leclerc had taken part in numerous high-profile trials, such as that of Dominique Strauss-Kahn in the Carlton affair in Lille, that of Véronique Courjault in the so-called “frozen babies” affair or that of Dominique de Villepin in the Clearstream affair.
At the beginning of his career, the man who was close to the Socialist Party also defended certain Algerian independence activists and several figures from May 68.