French twins

Jacques_Verges

Jacques Vergès (5 March 1925 – 15 August 2013) was a Siamese-born French lawyer and anti-colonial activist. Vergès began as a fighter in the French Resistance during World War II, under Charles de Gaulle's Free French forces. After becoming a lawyer, he became well known for his defense of FLN militants during the Algerian War of Independence. He was later involved in a number of controversial and high-profile legal cases, with a series of defendants charged with terrorism, serial murder, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. This includes Nazi officer Klaus Barbie "the Butcher of Lyon" in 1987, terrorist Carlos the Jackal in 1994, and former Khmer Rouge head of state Khieu Samphan in 2008. He also defended infamous Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy in 1998 as well as members of the Baader-Meinhof gang. As a result of taking on such clients, he garnered criticism from members of the public, including intellectuals Bernard-Henri Lévy and Alain Finkielkraut, political-activist Gerry Gable as well as Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld.Vergès attracted widespread public attention in the 1950s for his use of trials as a forum for expressing views against French colonial rule in Algeria, questioning the authority of the prosecution and causing chaos in proceedings – a method he promoted as "rupture defense" in his book De la stratégie judiciaire. He was imprisoned for his activism in 1960 and temporarily lost his license to officially practice law. He was a supporter of the Palestinian fedayeen in the 1960s. He would later disappear from 1970 to 1978, without ever explaining his whereabouts during that period. An outspoken anti-imperialist, he continued his vocal political activism in the 2000s, including opposing the War on Terror. The media sensationalized his activities with the sobriquet "the Devil's advocate", and Vergès himself contributed to his "notorious" public persona by such acts as titling his autobiography The Brilliant Bastard and giving provocative replies in interviews, such as "I'd even defend Bush! But only if he agrees to plead guilty."

Jan_and_Joel_Martel

Jan Martel (5 March 1896 – 16 March 1966) and Joël Martel (5 March 1896 – 25 September 1966) were French sculptors and identical twin brothers. The twins were born in Nantes and were among the founding members of Union des Artistes Modernes (UAM). Their works include ornamental sculptures, statues, monuments and fountains displaying characteristics typical of the Art Deco and Cubist periods. Their work was part of the sculpture event in the art competition at the 1948 Summer Olympics.

Nicola_Sirkis

Nicolas Henri Didier Sirchis (French pronunciation: [nikɔla ɑ̃ʁi didje siʁkis]; born 22 June 1959), better known by his stage name Nicola Sirkis, is a French musician, primarily known for his work as the frontman and singer of the French rock band Indochine. He is the only remaining member of the original line-up of the band which he formed in 1981 with a friend, Dominique Nicolas, soon to be joined by his twin brother Stéphane and Dimitri Bodianski.The band has been active for 38 years, and Nicola Sirkis saw critical and wide appeal and success in 2002 with the release of Paradize. The group received further critical acclaim with their album 13. Upon its release in 2017, the album topped the charts in France, Belgium and Switzerland, and they are hailed as the top rock group in France.In 1992, Nicola Sirkis released a solo-album, Dans la Lune, covering a few of his favourite songs, in French or English.
Nicola Sirkis is also the author of the collection of short stories "Les Mauvaises Nouvelles", published in 1998. And "Les petites notes du Meteor Tour".In 2023, Sirkis was a guest celebrity judge in the episode of the Season 2 titled A Lé-Gen-Daire Return of the French language reality television series Drag Race France broadcast on France.tv Slash.

Paul_Verges

Paul Vergès (5 March 1925 – 11/12 November 2016) was a Réunionese politician. Born in Ubon Ratchathani, Siam to a French diplomat father and Vietnamese mother. Vergès founded the Communist Party of Réunion in 1960, a party which he led until he retired in 1994. He made a political comeback at the 2005 European Parliament elections, when he was elected as the third candidate on the list of the French Communist Party, part of the European United Left–Nordic Green Left group. Vergès sat in the European Parliament's Committee on Development.
Vergès killed the political opponent of his father, Alexis de Villeneuve, on 25 May 1946. He was condemned for the crime to a sentence of 5 years in prison.Vergès was an MP in the National Assembly of France from 1957 to 1959, from 1987 to 1988 and from 1994 to 1997. He was a Senator in the French Parliament from 1997 to 2005 and again since 2012. From 1980 to 1990 and from 2005 to 2008, he was a member of the European Parliament. He was president of the regional council of Réunion from 1999 to 2011, regional councillor since 2011, mayor of Le Port from 1972 to 1990 and general councillor of La Réunion from 1956 to 1968 and again from 1986 to 1999.
In the European Parliament, he was also a member of the Subcommittee on Human Rights, a substitute for the Committee on Regional Development, vice-chair of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly and a substitute for the delegation for relations with the countries of Central America.
Vergès died the night of 11/12 November 2016, at the age of 91. His twin brother was the lawyer Jacques Vergès.

Jacques_Attali

Jacques José Mardoché Attali (French pronunciation: [ʒak atali]; born 1 November 1943) is a French economic and social theorist, writer, political adviser and senior civil servant.
A very prolific writer, Attali published 86 books in 54 years, between 1969 and 2023.
Attali served as a counselor to President François Mitterrand from 1981 to 1991, and was the first head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development from 1991 to 1993. In 1997, upon the request of education minister Claude Allègre, he proposed a reform of the higher education degrees system. From 2008 to 2010, he led the government committee on how to ignite the growth of the French economy, under President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Attali co-founded the European program EUREKA, dedicated to the development of new technologies. He also founded the non-profit organization PlaNet Finance, now called Positive Planet, and is the head of Attali & Associates (A&A), an international consultancy firm on strategy, corporate finance and venture capital. Interested in the arts, he has been nominated to serve on the board of the Musée d’Orsay. He has published more than fifty books, including Verbatim (1981), Noise: The Political Economy of Music (1985), Labyrinth in Culture and Society: Pathways to Wisdom (1999), and A Brief History of the Future (2006).
In 2009, Foreign Policy called him as one of the top 100 "global thinkers" in the world.