Delicto, but not Flagrante

One morning last week a small grey limousine drove out of Paris' Sante Prison, bearing to freedom the chubby onetime pastry cook who is acting secretary general of France's Communist Party, the second largest in Western Europe. Jacques Duclos, who had been in the pokey for nearly five weeks on a conspiracy charge, listened happily to the cheers of some 50 friends, admirers and fellow troublemakers gathered outside. The car stopped; Mme. Duclos rushed up, bussed her husband soundly on both cheeks, handed him a bunch of red gladiolas and got in beside him. Then the grey limousine drove away.

A French court had just decided that, although Duclos had been arrested during the Communist Ridgway riots on May 28 in a car fitted out with blackjack, loaded pistol and those two famous eating squabs (TIME, June 16), he was not in flagrante delicto (caught in the act), and was therefore entitled to parliamentary immunity as a member of the National Assembly. The five-man Paris appeals court (from whose decision there is no appeal) is headed by President Paul Didier, member of the Communist-backed "Peace Partisans."

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