## Facts

- Klaus Barbie was the highest-ranking Gestapo official in Lyon, France during the German occupation (1942–44).
- During that period, Barbie was alleged to have been responsible for arrests, torture, deportations, and killings affecting thousands of people, including Jews and members of the French Resistance.
- After the war, Barbie avoided French prosecution for decades and was arrested in 1983, after being brought under French control from abroad.
- French prosecutors pursued charges framed as **crimes against humanity**, which under French law were treated as not subject to a limitation period.
- Barbie argued that the alleged conduct should instead be treated as **war crimes**, which were subject to a limitation period and thus time-barred.
- An examining magistrate distinguished between categories of victims: acts against Jews connected to the Nazi “Final Solution” were treated as crimes against humanity, while acts against non-Jewish victims (including Resistance members) were treated as war crimes.
- Civil parties—including individuals and associations linked to deportees, internees, and Resistance victims—challenged this narrower approach and sought recognition that atrocities committed against Resistance members could also be crimes against humanity.
- The Chambre d’accusation of the Lyon Court of Appeal agreed with the examining magistrate that the torture, deportation, and murder of Resistance members could only be classified as war crimes and were therefore time-barred.
- The civil parties appealed to the Cour de cassation (Criminal Chamber).

## Issues

1. Whether acts of arrest, torture, deportation, and killing committed against members of the French Resistance could be legally characterized as crimes against humanity (and therefore not time-barred), rather than only as war crimes.
2. Whether crimes against humanity, as received into French law by reference to the Nuremberg Charter concept, are subject to any statute of limitations, and how that differs from the limitation regime for war crimes.
3. Whether the civil-party associations and other civil parties were entitled to participate and pursue appellate review of the legal characterization that controlled prescription.

## Decision

- The Court of Cassation reaffirmed that **crimes against humanity are not subject to statutory limitation** in French law.
- The Court confirmed that **war crimes remain subject to the applicable limitation period**; conduct that is only a war crime cannot be prosecuted once that period has expired.
- The Court rejected an interpretation that would restrict crimes against humanity solely to acts committed against Jews in direct implementation of the “Final Solution,” and stated that crimes against humanity rest on inhuman acts and persecutions committed as part of a State-driven policy of ideological domination, directed against civilians on political, racial, or religious grounds.
- On the classification adopted by the lower court for the matters under review, the Court maintained that acts linked to the persecution of Jews under Nazi policy could proceed as crimes against humanity and thus were not time-barred.
- The Court did not accept, on the posture presented, that the violence directed solely at Resistance members (treated by the lower courts as acts against combatants/opponents in the conflict) had to be reclassified as crimes against humanity; to that extent the limitation bar applicable to war crimes stood.
- The Court allowed the appeal brought by the civil parties and associations and **partly reversed** the decision below, **remanding** for further proceedings consistent with its definition of crimes against humanity and the distinction between imprescriptible crimes against humanity and time-barred war crimes.

## Legal Principles

- Crimes against humanity, derived from international criminal law concepts reflected in the Nuremberg Charter, are **imprescriptible** in French law.
- War crimes remain governed by ordinary limitation rules; **prescription applies** unless the conduct is properly qualified as a crime against humanity.
- Crimes against humanity require a contextual element: inhuman acts or persecutions carried out in execution of a State policy, directed against civilian populations on political, racial, or religious grounds.
- Qualification determines the availability of prosecution decades later: the same historical events must be assessed through the legal criteria separating time-barred war crimes from imprescriptible crimes against humanity.
- Civil-party participation may include appellate challenges to legal qualification when the parties claim a direct connection to the harms alleged and the classification determines whether proceedings may continue.

## Conclusion

The Court of Cassation held that crimes against humanity are not time-barred and clarified a Nuremberg-based definition tied to State policy and persecution of civilians, while confirming that war crimes remain subject to limitation periods; it partly reversed and remanded the Lyon decision so the Barbie prosecution could continue on properly characterized crimes against humanity, while leaving time-barred war-crime-only allegations excluded.


Federation Nationale des Deportes et Internes Resistants et Patriotes and Others v. Barbie, 78 ILR 25 (1985)