'Devil's advocate' lawyer Jacques Verges dies aged 88

Jacques Verges, the provocative French lawyer who earned the nickname "devil's advocate" by defending a series of high-profile criminals from Klaus Barbie to Carlos the Jackal, has died in Paris. He was 88.

Verges died of a heart attack in the house where 18th century enlightenment philosopher Voltaire once lived - an appropriate setting for an iconoclast who devoted his life to defending unpopular causes, according to his publishing house Pierre-Guillaume de Roux, which called it "the ideal place for the last theatrical act that was the death of this born actor who, like Voltaire, cultivated the art of permanent revolt and volte-face".

Christian Charriere-Bournazel, the head of France's main bar association, said that Verges had lost a lot of weight and mobility since a fall. "We knew the end was near but we didn't know it would come so soon," he said.

Born in Thailand in 1925 to a father from Reunion island and a Vietnamese mother, Verges was a communist as a student and later supported the Algerian National Liberation Front in its fight for independence from France.

After securing the release of Algerian anti-colonialist Djamila Bouhired, he married her.