A letter written by the famed French army captain Alfred Dreyfus, who was wrongly convicted of treason over a century ago, fetched €380,000 at an auction at Sotheby’s in Paris on Wednesday, reports FRANCE 24.
Penned by Dreyfus in 1895 during his incarceration, the letter was written to France’s interior minister.
In it, Dreyfus proclaims his innocence, saying: "I have been sentenced for the most infamous crime a soldier can commit and I am innocent... I ask you, minister, not for grace or pity, but simply for justice."
The letter’s final sale price far exceeded pre-auction estimates of between €100,000 and €150,000.
But the sale came amid controversy, with members of the Dreyfus family having previously claimed the letter should be donated to a museum or a library, rather than sold off to the highest bidder.
"We urge the seller of this letter to give up the sale," Dreyfus's grandson Charles Dreyfus and historian Vincent Duclert wrote in an open letter seen by the AFP news agency earlier this week.
Read more of this report from FRANCE 24.