THE INNOCENT TRAITOR
IT WAS A SET-UP Captain Alfred Dreyfus was accused of passing French military secrets to the Germans, fueling the rise of anti-Semitism
ALAMY X1, GETTY X2
The evidence was flimsy. But, no matter how many times he protested his innocence, the jury were decided. In January 1895, Captain Alfred Dreyfus was found guilty of communicating French military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris. The sentence was brutal – life imprisonment on Devil’s Island, a hellish penal colony off the coast of French Guiana. But why was this man – later shown to be innocent of all charges – targeted as a traitor?