A controversial lawyer who defended Nazis, Holocaust deniers and Palestinian terrorists has died.

French barrister Jacques Vergès, widely known as the ‘Devil’s Advocate’, defended pro-Palestinian terrorist Carlos the Jackal and Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie.

Mr Vergès, an anti-colonialist and former member of the French Communist Party, was widely criticised by members of the Jewish community and anti-Fascist campaigners for his defence of Lyon Gestapo head Klaus Barbie and pro-Palestinian terrorist Carlos the Jackal. He was financed by Francois Genoud, a Swiss Nazi who was the executor of Joseph Goebbels's will.

He married his former client, Djamila Bouhired, who received the death sentence in 1957 for planting bombs in Algerian cafes.

The Thailand-born lawyer, who was born to a French diplomat father and Vietnamese mother, died aged 88 in Paris after a heart attack.