The lawyers for the convicted war criminal, Maurice Papon, are suing the French authorities for what they call the inhuman and degrading treatment of their client.

They say they have filed a lawsuit at the European Court of Human Rights claiming compensation of more than one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars for the moral and physical damage which they say Mr Papon has suffered.

Mr Papon, who is eighty-nine, is serving a ten-year prison sentence for deporting hundreds of French Jews to Germany during the Second World War. The French president, Jacques Chirac, has turned down a request to release him on grounds of ill health.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service