PARIS (AP) - Frail but now a free man, wartime collaborator Maurice Papon walked out of prison yesterday and into a storm of public outrage after judges ruled him too old and sick to finish his 10-year sentence for helping send Jews to Nazi death camps.

To victims of France's wartime regime and their families, the decision by appeals court judges to release the 92-year-old Papon after serving less than three years of his sentence erased the huge moral victory they won with his conviction in 1998.

After the longest trial in French history, Papon was convicted for complicity in crimes against humanity for his role in deporting 1,690 Jews to Germany as second-in-command of Bordeaux area police. Most were sent to Auschwitz death camp and only a few survived.

Papon fled to Switzerland after his conviction, but was arrested and began serving his sentence in October 1999.

"I can't believe this is happening," said Colette Guttman, as she watched Papon shuffle out of Paris' La Sante prison into a waiting car. "My father, my mother and my uncle were killed at Auschwitz because of people like Papon, who now have the right to rest in their old age."

Papon's lawyers hailed his release as "a great victory."

Papon had triple coronary bypass surgery several years ago and has a pacemaker. His imprisonment set off a debate about the ethics of jailing the elderly.

Jewish groups accused France of turning its back on Holocaust victims.