IAN BAILEY'S legal team intend to call as an expert witness France's best-known defence lawyer who has extensive experience in fighting extradition warrants, the Sunday Tribune understands.

Papers that were filed in the High Court last week by Bailey's legal team cite lawyer Dominique Tricaud as an expert witness in support of opposition to Bailey's attempted extradition to France.

The state is attempting to endorse a European arrest warrant for Bailey to face questioning over the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier in 1996.

The papers lodged to the High Court include an affidavit by Tricaud about the French criminal process and why he believes the extradition of Bailey is problematic.

It is now expected that the Frenchman will be called as an expert witness by Bailey's defence team.

A lengthy legal battle to determine whether the former journalist should be extradited to France to face questioning about the murder of the French filmmaker will begin in October.

Tricaud is one of France's most high-profile human rights lawyers and is also well known in the US. He represented Ira Einhorn, a famous environmentalist, and fought a lengthy legal battle to halt his extradition from France to the US to answer murder charges.

At the time, Tricaud claimed he had never lost an extradition case and that "the French will not send a man back to a barbaric country where he was tried without being present to defend himself". Tricaud eventually lost the case.

Einhorn was convicted in absentia of the murder of his girlfriend Holly
Maddux and was eventually extradited to the US where he is serving a life sentence. The Einhorn case was the basis for the TV film The Hunt for
the Unicorn Killer in 1999.

Since then, Tricaud has been the defence attorney, in a high-profile legal case in France, for singer Hamé of French rap group La Rumeur, who was acquitted on charges of libelling the police. He also represents French politician Julien Dray, who is accused of corruption.

Film producer Sophie Toscan du Plantier was murdered at her holiday home at Toormore, near Schull in west Cork, in December 1996.

Bailey was arrested and questioned twice by gardaí in 1997 and 1998 and released without charge in both instances.

Bailey has always denied any involvement in Du Plantier's death and is contesting the French extradition request.

The 54-year-old was once the chief suspect in the killing and has launched proceedings to sue An Garda Síochána and the state for allegedly conspiring to wrongfully convict him of the Frenchwoman's murder.