Jean-Louis Jeanmaire

Jean -Louis Jean Maire ( Jean Maire -dit- quarters; born March 25, 1910 in Biel, † January 29, 1992 in Bern, native entitled Les Brenets and Mont -Tramelan ) was a Swiss officer. As a Brigadier, he was the highest-ranking Swiss condemned traitors of the twentieth century.

Prehistory

Jean Maire joined in 1934 to study architecture at the ETH Zurich from. In 1940 he became an instructor at the Infantry, was added in 1943 to the General Staff, Major in 1948, Colonel in 1957, Brigadier in 1969 and head of the Federal Office for the air defense troops. From 1939 to 1976 he was a lecturer at the military schools of the ETH Zurich.

Jean Maire married Yvonne Burtscher 1943, the daughter of linguistics professor Jules Burtscher, who had been expelled from the Crimea in 1919. In 1961, he became friends with Colonel Vasily Denisenko, the military and air force attaché at the Soviet embassy in Berne from 1959 to 1964, who was also the representative of the military intelligence service GRU. He and his successors, he handed repeatedly classified information on the Swiss Army.

Jean Maire affair and process

Mid-1970s, warned a foreign intelligence service, the Swiss authorities about an information leak. Jean Maire was arrested in August 1976, provided in Lausanne before the Divisional Court 2 and sentenced to 18 years in prison on June 17, 1977 on charges of treason, demoted and expelled from the army. Its also a woman accused was acquitted. Jean Maire put an appeal, whereupon the Military Court of Cassation upheld the judgment on February 3, 1978. The very strict judgment ( the auditor had demanded 12 years) can be seen in the context of the Cold War. In addition, a limitation of Swiss imports of high technology from America, it was feared; as expected, public opinion, an exemplary sentence.

The prosecution took while Jean Maire process view, he did not act for financial or ideological reasons, but out of vanity and resentment that he had felt passed over for promotion.

According to the judgment

Jean Maire called for in 1984 and 1985 a revision of the judgment, which was denied. In 1988 he was released early from prison. He fought until his death for his rehabilitation. 1990 Jean Maire held a 1 -August speech at the Vue des Alpes.

The Jean Maire affair is the subject of Urs Widmer's play Jean Maire: A slice of Switzerland (1992) and John le Carré's reportage A good soldier (1991).