The First Warm Day

Police with submachine guns were on the roof of the Palais de Justice, at the doors, and inside the dim-lit gilt and paneled courtroom. On the dais sat a nine-man tribunal consisting of three French generals, three magistrates, two civilians and an admiral. In the dock last week appeared bullnecked, tough Edmond Jouhaud. 57. a former general who served as air force chief of staff, most recently No. 2 chieftain of the Secret Army Organization in Algeria, where last month he was ignominiously arrested without a fight.

No Regrets. Jouhaud was already condemned to death in absentia for his leading role in last April's "generals' putsch" in Algiers. But under French law such a sentence cannot be carried out without retrial. Additionally, last week, Jouhaud faced the tribunal accused of being a leader and member of the S.A.O., a "revolutionary organization aimed at overthrowing the government."

Making his opening declaration. Jouhaud spoke for nearly two hours in an unexpectedly high-pitched voice. He appealed to sentiment, dwelling on his Algerian birth, and saying that all he owned was "a few square meters" of cemetery containing the bodies of his grandparents and parents. His one regret was that he did not "die on Algerian soil. Apart from that. I regret nothing."

In defense of his role in the April putsch, Jouhaud tried to implicate De Gaulle's own supporters. Six days before the uprising, he said, a member of the staff of recently resigned Premier Michel Debre told him: "Debre thinks exactly as you think and as I think, but he dare not say so." Jouhaud astonishingly described the S.A.O.. not as a close-knit terror group, but as a vast, popular movement with unspecified "social aims." comprising all the Europeans of Algeria and "many more Moslems than one thinks." He conceded there had been excesses, particularly in the indiscriminate slaughter of Moslems, but blamed them on "difficulties" in the chain of command. Maintaining a straight face. Jouhaud announced: "We deplore everything that opposes the two communities" of Europeans and Moslems, and insisted that the S.A.O. played the part of "moderator" between them. Cross-examined by the president of the court. Jouhaud tried to egg-walk his way between support of the S.A.O. in general and denial of any knowledge of serious S.A.O. crimes.

Luckily Alive. Testimony against Jouhaud came from five prosecution witnesses, all lucky to be alive. Two spoke in husky voices because of face and throat wounds from recent S.A.O. attacks; a third had barely lived through five assassination attempts in a single year--including a grenade thrown into his hospital room while he was recovering from an earlier wounding. General Jean Arthus, chief of the gendarmerie in Oran, said that eleven of his own men had been killed by the S.A.O., and 50 wounded. "For us," he said grimly, "the man responsible was Jouhaud.'

A long string of character witnesses testified for the defense, ranging from old comrades who eloquently recalled Jouhaud's record as a loyal, hardbitten fighting man, to the pretty, blonde widow of Algerian-born Author Albert Camus, who broke into tears as she described Jouhaud and his family as "passionately attached to their land and not at all racist."From war-torn Algeria came a letter written by the S.A.O.'s No. 1 chief, Raoul Salan, that was not likely to help Jouhaud. even though it called him "faithful to France and to Western civilization." Other news from Algeria must have seemed even more depressing last week: 1) in Jouhaud's old bailiwick of Oran. the S.A.O. launched and then lost a five-hour battle with French police and soldiers, and 2) in the rugged Ouarsenis Mountains, west of Algiers, Sa-lan's dream of establishing a base in the countryside went glimmering in the first armed clash between detachments of the S.A.O. and the Moslem F.L.N.--the S.A.O. were routed with 30 dead, and the frightened remnants surrendered to French troops to escape being hunted down and butchered by Moslem villagers.

In the Palais de Justice, the French prosecutor asked the tribunal to hand down against Jouhaud a "sentence without weakness." On the first really warm day of spring last week, after deliberating for two hours and five minutes, the tribunal condemned the defendant to death. Standing at attention. Jouhaud heard the sentence. He went white. He looked over at his small, plump wife Odette, who met his gaze, calm and unflinching. The only appeal from the verdict is to President Charles de Gaulle. The defendant's attorneys said that Jouhaud's "honor" would not allow him to beg for mercy. After this play to the gallery, the lawyers promptly asked De Gaulle to commute Jouhaud's death sentence.

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