Henri Leclerc, famous lawyer and human rights activist, dies at the age of 90

The criminal lawyer was honorary president of the French League for the Defense of Human and Citizen Rights.

Sixty-five years of advocacy for a “giant of the bar”. Henri Leclerc, a famous lawyer and human rights defender, has died at the age of 90, his daughter, Aline Leclerc, announced to AFP on Saturday, August 31. The criminal lawyer died “Saturday at the Paul-Brousse hospital in Villejuif following a stroke”his daughter said.

Henri Leclerc had stopped the pleadings at the end of 2020. “It is in the interest of the people I defend not to take the risk of continuing for too long. We must not make too many pleas.”he defended to franceinfo in August 2021. The criminal lawyer feels that he has always pleaded with the conviction that he was defending a just cause: “I have always tried to be honest in my defense, that is to say things that you believe in. And that is very important because it shows.”

A staunch defender of public freedoms, Henri Leclerc was honorary president of the French League for the Defense of Human and Citizen Rights. During his long career, he notably defended François Besse, Florence Rey, Richard Romand, Véronique Courjault and Dominique de Villepin. “There is the truth of the facts and then there is the truth of beings: a man who has committed a horrible act, perhaps he is not himself as horrible as we believe, that can exist. (…) And the notion of truth must be established by a considerable effort of conscience and reason on the evidence”he explained to France Culture in 2020.