New Halo for Rappers' Gangster Hero

To teenage suburban rebels and their rapper poets, Jacques Mesrine remains France's police-hating hero, 23 years after he was gunned down in a flying squad ambush worthy of a classic gangster movie.

Yesterday songwriters who still recall his prison escapes and legendary showdowns with les flics - the cops - were given another line for their lyrics when long-forgotten film of preparations for the ambush seemed to confirm that he was shot in cold blood.

His family have been trying since November 1979 to prove that Mesrine, who gave up architecture to become a notorious and popular bandit, was not shot in self defence, as his personal enemy Commissaire Robert Broussard claimed, but was killed without warning in a carefully prepared trap in a busy Paris street.

Because of the chance rediscovery of sequences filmed by a detective, a judge decided yesterday that his daughter Sabrina's allegation that the police did not call on Mesrine to surrender before opening fire should be investigated.

After Judge Baudoin Thouvenot saw the film in private, Martine Malinbaum, who defended Mesrine in several cases, said the courts appeared to have proof that he was "executed" because he had become a nuisance to the authorities.

Previous attempts to inquire into the police action had been repeatedly obstructed and the names of the sharpshooters kept secret, she said.

The film, seized in 1979 from the detective who shot it during two days of rehearsing the showdown, was found by an examining magistrate a few months ago.

A big, articulate ladies' man from a middle-class family, Mesrine died aged 43 after a career of murder, bank robbery and kidnappings. But he also earned the respect of leftwing intellectuals, including Jean-Paul Sartre, for his political campaign against harsh prison conditions, often giving interviews while on the run.

His taste for guns was acquired during the Algerian war, and his brilliant jail escapes, including shooting his way out of the high-security La Santé in Paris, obscured a past in which he murdered two Canadian forest rangers in an earlier bid for freedom.

The duel with the white-bearded top cop Broussard also captured the public imagination, particularly when they shared champagne after Mesrine was arrested in 1973 after a gun battle and before another spectacular escape.

Broussard's revelation that Mesrine had declared that it would be the fastest on the trigger who would survive the next encounter contributed to speculation that the police decided to take no chances.

The allegation that orders were given to shoot on sight is reinforced by the unnamed detective's film.

It shows meticulous preparations being made for a Friday afternoon ambush after Mesrine was located in a flat near the Place de Clignancourt. The police assembled about 20 camouflaged vehicles and mobilised 40 sharpshooters.

The key to the operation was a small lorry with a tarpaulin cover, hiding four police officers armed with submachine guns.

When Mesrine's BMW stopped at traffic lights, the truck pulled in front and the tarpaulin was thrown back. The car was riddled with bullets. A girlfriend beside Mesrine lost an eye and her pet dog died.

A shopkeeper who watched the ambush said detectives called on Mesrine to surrender only after firing but the police claimed that they started shooting because he tried to grab a hand grenade.

Accusations of assassination now depend on analysis of the soundtrack, which includes instructions to detectives on how to react when confronted by Mesrine.

The amateur cameraman was one of the detectives in the truck, but he is said to have stopped filming at the ambush itself to pick up an Uzi submachine gun.