The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that French courts violated the legal rights of the convicted war criminal, Maurice Papon, after his 1998 trial.
The court said France wrongly denied 91-year-old Papon, an ex-supervisor of the pro-Nazi Vichy regime in southwest France, the right to challenge a 1998 conviction.
Papon is serving a 10-year prison term for complicity in crimes against humanity committed during World War II.
The charges relate specifically to his role in sending 1,560 Jews to death camps between 1942-1944.
A French court ruled in 1999 that Papon had forfeited his right to appeal by briefly fleeing to Switzerland shortly after his conviction, and not appearing in court.
The Strasbourg-based European court said France wrongly denied him the right to appeal against his conviction and 10-year prison sentence.
Papon is currently in prison in Paris. His lawyers said they would now take his case back before France's highest appeals court.
