Maurice Papon, a former Cabinet minister who became a symbol of France's collaboration with the Nazis for his role in deporting Jews during the Second World War, has died. He was 96.

Diplomats, activists and political leaders were among hundreds who gathered today to bid farewell to Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal and to honour his decades-long pursuit of the Second World War’s most heinous criminals.

WARTIME collaborator Maurice Papon, convicted of sending French Jews to Nazi death camps, was jeered as he walked out of a Paris prison yesterday after an appeal court ordered his release.