Henri Alleg born Henri Salem, is a French-Algerian journalist, director of the "Alger républicain

Alger républicain

Alger républicain is an Algerian newspaper founded in 1938, and intermittently published ever since. It is close to the Algerian communist movement, without having been an official party publication. The paper was edited by the French-Algerian communist and anti-colonial activist Henri Alleg from...

" newspaper, and a member of the French Communist Party

French Communist Party

The French Communist Party is a political party in France which advocates the principles of communism.Although its electoral support has declined in recent decades, the PCF retains a large membership, behind only that of the Union for a Popular Movement , and considerable influence in French...

. After Editions de Minuit, a French publishing house, released his memoir La Question

La Question

La Question is a book by Henri Alleg, published in 1958. It is notorious for precisely describing the methods of torture used by French paratroopers during the Algerian War from the point of view of a victim...

in 1958, Alleg gained international recognition for his stance against torture

Torture

Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...

, specifically within the context of the Algerian War (1954–1962).

Early life

Alleg was born Harry Salem in London in 1921 to assimilated Jewish parents originally from Congress Poland

Congress Poland

The Kingdom of Poland , informally known as Congress Poland , created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna, was a personal union of the Russian parcel of Poland with the Russian Empire...

 who moved to Paris shortly after he was born. He set off on his own for Algeria

Algeria

Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...

 in 1939, and the then 18-year-old became intimately involved with the Algerian Communist Party

Algerian Communist Party

The Algerian Communist Party was a communist party in Algeria. The PCA emerged in 1920 as an extension the French Communist Party and eventually became a separate entity in 1936 ....

. He worked as editor-in-chief of the Alger Républicain, a daily paper sympathetic to Algerian nationalism, from 1950 to 1955. In 1951, Alleg became director of the publication, which alone in Algeria advocated a free democratic press for Algerian grievances against France. The newspaper was banned in September 1955 by the French authorities due to its communist and anti-colonial perspective. In November 1956, after many of his colleagues at the newspaper were arrested by French colonial authorities, Alleg went into hiding, maintaining his journalistic connections by continuing to submit pro-independence articles to the French Communist journal l'Humanité

L'Humanité

L'Humanité , formerly the daily newspaper linked to the French Communist Party , was founded in 1904 by Jean Jaurès, a leader of the French Section of the Workers' International...

. Many of his articles never saw publication due to government censorship

Censorship

thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...

 of writing that advocated Algerian independence.

Arrest

On June 12, 1957 Alleg was arrested on suspicion of undermining the power of the state by France's 10th Paratrooper Division in the home of his friend, mathematics professor Maurice Audin

Maurice Audin

Maurice Audin was a French mathematics assistant at the University of Algiers, a member of the Algerian Communist Party and an activist in the anticolonialist cause, who was one of the "disappeared" during the Battle of Algiers.In the centre of Algiers, beside the university, the intersection of...

, who was arrested the day before and would later die under questionable circumstances while imprisoned. Alleg underwent one month of torture in El-Biar, a suburb of Algiers

Algiers

' is the capital and largest city of Algeria. According to the 1998 census, the population of the city proper was 1,519,570 and that of the urban agglomeration was 2,135,630. In 2009, the population was about 3,500,000...

, despite the fact that no charges had been laid against him. While in French custody, Alleg was submitted to many kinds of cruel tortures, both physical and mental, in an effort to get him to reveal the names of those who had sheltered him for the past several months. His “treatment” consisted of electric shocks, burning, forced swallowing and inhaling of water to simulate drowning (now known as water boarding), and being hung from various devices. He was also injected with an experimental dose of the barbiturate

Barbiturate

Barbiturates are drugs that act as central nervous system depressants, and can therefore produce a wide spectrum of effects, from mild sedation to total anesthesia. They are also effective as anxiolytics, as hypnotics, and as anticonvulsants...

 sodium pentothal, which was thought to be a kind of truth serum

Truth Serum

Truth Serum is an independent comic book series created, written and drawn by author Jon Adams.-Overview:Originally published as a mini comic in 2001 and given away for free, it appeared as a three-issue mini series published by Slave Labor Graphics in 2002...

. Despite the intensity of his torture and the relentless pursuit of answers by the French “paras,” Alleg never talked or revealed the names of anyone who aided or abetted him in his undercover life. While imprisoned, French soldiers visited Henri’s wife and questioned her about his activities and whereabouts. She was not subjected to any use of force, but was considered under arrest for the five days of her questioning.

As his French torturers realized that Alleg would rather die than betray those who hid him, they transferred him to Lodi

Lodi

-Places:In Canada:* Lodi, Ontario, a community in North Stormont, OntarioIn Italy:* Lodi, Lombardy, in the Province of Lodi of the Lombardy region** The Treaty of Lodi, 1454 between Italian city-states** The Battle of Lodi, 1796 in Lodi...

camp in Algiers, where he recovered at the Barberousse

Barberousse

Barberousse is a 1917 silent French film directed by Abel Gance.-Cast:* Léon Mathot - Trively* Émile Keppens - Gesmus* Maud Richard - Odette Trively* Germaine Pelisse - Pauline* Yvonne Briey* Henri Maillard* Doriani* Paul Vermoyal...

 military hospital and prison. He wrote a letter to his wife confirming his presence at the Lodi camp and saying that he “hoped to regain his health, given rest and time.” It was here that Alleg wrote and smuggled out an account of his ordeal, entitled La Question

La Question

La Question is a book by Henri Alleg, published in 1958. It is notorious for precisely describing the methods of torture used by French paratroopers during the Algerian War from the point of view of a victim...

, to the French literary and journalistic connections he had made during his tenure at the Algier républicain. His declarations of maltreatment were printed in L’Humanité in late July; however, the public remained in the dark about the situation as the French police promptly seized the whole of the issue in which Alleg’s claims were to be made public. Shortly after, in August 1957, Henri sent a similar account of his torture from the civil prison in Algiers to both lawyers and judicial authorities in Algeria. At this point in Algiers, rumors were flying in the Algerian press about his disappearance or even death. It was only with Alleg’s complaint and after a broad press campaign that Alleg was presented before an examining magistrate, two full months after his arrest.

The officers accused by M. Alleg publicly denied the charges levied against them. Robert Lacoste

Robert Lacoste

Robert Lacoste was French politician. He was a socialist MP of the Dordogne from 1945 to 1958 and from 1962 to 1967, then senator from 1971 to 1980.- Biography :...

, then Minister of Algeria, claimed that an investigation was proceeding to determine the truth of the “allegations.” The “trial,” which was held in November 1957, found Alleg guilty of attacking the external safety of the state and attempting to reconstitute a dissolved league. Military authorities sent in two doctors to examine Alleg; however, no one from outside the French government was allowed to see Henri after his transferral to Lodi. This raised suspicions in the public, at least to those who were paying attention. However, as a result of M. Alleg’s charges against the paratroopers, the general commanding officer in Algiers ordered an inquiry to be opened against “persons unknown” for “blows and injuries.”
The military judge traveled with Alleg to visit the buildings in which Alleg claimed to be tortured and had Alleg describe the interior from memory in order to substantiate his assertions. Indeed Alleg was able to describe with a high degree of accuracy several parts of El-Biar, especially the kitchen where torture was known to occur. This suggested that he had truly been mistreated, for, had the interrogation proceeded “normally,” Alleg would not have been able to accurately describe the torture room. Despite this evidence that Alleg and others were actually tortured by the French paratroopers at El-Biar, the French government continued to ignore Alleg’s demands for justice and put him back into an army jail.

La Question and censorship

Alleg’s memoir of his time spent in French custody was published by Éditions de Minuit  as La Question, a play on words referring to both the question of the legitimacy of torture and the fact that "la question" was the technical term for torture in the pre-Revolutionary French judicial system. Upon the initial publication on February 12, 1958, La Question met with no attempts at censorship and did not evoke an initial denial from the French government. However the Ministry of the Interior did censor French newspapers that attempted to comment on or publish excerpts of the memoir.

In one example, although at this point Alleg's book itself had been freely on sale for several weeks, the French government confiscated a March 1958 issue of France Observateur because the publication reproduced sections of Alleg’s book. At this point, the government accepted the memoir itself, but did not condone public discussion of Alleg’s claims and situation. Part of this had to do with the censorship process of the French government, which as a legal “droit de regard” that allows a local government prefecture to read newspapers but not books before they are published.

Despite the seizure of articles pertaining to or citing the book, La Question itself became a “near bestseller and a subject of lively debate” in the French nation. During this time, the French government also seized "A Victory," an article published in L’Express in which Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...

 outlined the implications of Alleg’s book for the French nation. Although censored, this essay continued to be distributed clandestinely and later became the preface to the book’s English translation.

As rumors of torture proliferated and public discussion turned increasingly critical, the French government officially banned La Question in hopes of combating France’s increasingly tense political atmosphere. Acting on a warrant from the military tribunal which recently began legal action in connection with "attempted demoralization of the Army with intent to harm the defense of the nation," French authorities seized the 7,000 remaining copies at the Éditions de Minuit publishing house on the 27th of March 1958; however, they could do nothing about the more that 60,000 copies that had already been sold. La Question continued to sell, clandestinely or otherwise, over 162,000 copies in France alone by the close of 1958.

After the initial seizure, other leftist French publishers continued production of the book, a defiance that continued well throughout the Algerian War despite the official ban. On the day La Question was seized, the French government released information that the inquiry into the alleged torture of Alleg was nearly completed. They claimed that although doctors had noted scars on M. Alleg’s wrists and groin, the officers accused by Alleg continued to deny the charges levied against them, and therefore no charges were brought against the French government.

Escape and return to France

Alleg escaped from prison and made his way to Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...

. With the passing of the Evian Accords

Évian Accords

The Évian Accords comprise a treaty which was signed in 1962 in Évian-les-Bains, France by France and the F.L.N. . The Accords put an end to the Algerian War with a formal cease-fire proclaimed for March 19, and formalized the idea of cooperative exchange between the two countries...

in 1962, Alleg returned to France and then Algeria. He helped rebuild the Alger Republicain and continued to publish numerous books and appear in several documentaries.

Works

• Mémoire algérienne: souvenirs de luttes et d'espérances (2005)
• Grande aventure d'Alger républicain (co-authored with Boualem Khalfa and Abdelhamid Benzine, 1987)
• Prisonniers de guerre (1961)
• La Question / The Question (Introd. by Jean Paul Sartre, 1958)
• Requiem pour l'Oncle Sam (1991)
• U.R.S.S. et les juifs (1989)
• Victorieuse Cuba : de la guérilla au socialisme (Preface by Boualem Khalfa, 1963)
• Red Star and Green Crescent, Progress Publishers, translated into English by Sergei Sossinsky, 1985. (Originally published by Messidor, Paris in 1983.) 230 pages. Listed on abebooks.com

Further reading

Aussaresses, General Paul, The Battle of the Casbah: Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism in Algeria, 1955-1957. (New York: Enigma Books, 2010) ISBN 978-1-929631-30-8.

Video

• Interview with Henry Alleg from Democracy Now! program, November 5, 2007