Torture during the Algerian War
Encyclopedia
Elements of the French Armed Forces as well as of the opposing Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) made use of torture during the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62), creating an ongoing public controversy. Pierre Vidal-Naquet
estimates that there were "possibly hundreds of thousands of instances of torture" by the French military in Algeria http://www.ldh-toulon.net/spip.php?article2236. The Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) also engaged in extensive use of extreme violence including torture, especially against pro-French and uncommitted members of the Muslim population.
(ALN) was for self-determination
. The French state itself refused to see in the colonial conflict
a war, as that would recognize the other party (the National Liberation Front
, FLN) as a legitimate entity. Thus, until 10 August 1999, the French Republic persisted in calling the Algerian War a simple "operation of public order" against the FLN "terrorism." This was therefore a 'classic' colonial war of liberation and it is on these different viewpoints (police action vs. war) that much of the argument about these events tends to focus.
Thus, the military did not consider themselves tied by the Geneva Conventions, ratified by France in 1951. Beside prohibiting the use of torture
, the Geneva Conventions give the International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC) access to the detainees. Detainees, who included not only FLN members but also old men, women and children, were thus not granted prisoner of war
(POW) status. On the contrary, they were considered as "terrorists" and deprived of the rights which are legally entitled to belligerent
s during a war, including cases of civil war
s under Geneva Convention Protocol II.
Violence increased on both sides from 1954 to 1956. But in 1957 the Minister of Interior declared a state of emergency
in Algeria
, and the government granted extraordinary powers to General Massu
, head of the armed forces in Algeria. The Battle of Algiers
, from January to October 1957, remains to this day a textbook example of counter-insurgency
operations. General Massu, who was assisted by General Aussaresses
and then Colonel Bigeard
, of the 10th D.B. (Paratrooper
division) made widespread use of methods used during the Indochina War
(1947–54): they included a systematic use of torture, including against civilians, a block warden system (quadrillage), illegal executions and forced disappearances, in particular through what would later become known as "death flights" (at the time, victims of such methods were known as "Bigeard's shrimps", or "crevettes Bigeard"). All these methods were documented as standard counter-insurgency tactics by Colonel Trinquier
in Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency (1961), a reference in the areas of "counter-revolutionary war" and of psychological warfare
.
Although the use of torture quickly became well-known and was opposed by the left-wing opposition, the French state repeatedly denied its employment, censoring
more than 250 books, newspapers and films (in metropolitan France
alone) which dealt with the subject (and 586 in Algeria). Henri Alleg
's 1958 book, La Question, Boris Vian
's The Deserter, and Jean-Luc Godard
's 1960 film Le Petit Soldat
(released in 1963) are famous examples of such censorship. A confidential report of the ICRC leaked to Le Monde
newspaper confirmed the allegations of torture made by the opposition to the war, represented in particular by the French Communist Party
(PCF) and other anti-militarist circles. Although many left-wing activists, including famous existentialists
writers Jean-Paul Sartre
and Albert Camus
, and historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet
, denounced without exception the use of torture, the French government was itself headed in 1957 by the general secretary of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO), Guy Mollet
. In general, the SFIO supported the colonial wars during the Fourth Republic
(1947–54), starting with the crushing of the Madagascar revolt
in 1947 by the socialist government of Paul Ramadier
.
The controversy over the use of torture continues to have echoes today. Already in 1977, British historian Alistair Horne
wrote in A Savage War of Peace that torture was to become a growing canker for France, leaving behind a poison that would linger in the French system long after the war itself had ended. At the time, Horne could not confirm or deny that torture had been ordered by the highest ranks of the military and civilian hierarchy of the French state. Despite France's difficulties in looking at its past, which is made evident by the obstacles it continues to put before the historical research, and the way the Algerian War is taught (or not) in French high-schools
, the fact that torture had not only been massively employed, but also ordered by the French government, was confirmed by General Aussaresses in 2001.
These revelations followed testimony from a former tortured ALN activist, Louisette Ighilahriz, published in Le Monde
on 20 July 2000, three days after the visit to France of Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika
. Louisette Ighilahriz declared that she had been tortured for three months and accused as the responsible party General Massu as the then-commander of the French armed forces. Massu used this opportunity to publicly regret the use of torture, declaring that it could have been avoided. On the other hand, General Bigeard violently denied its use.
General Massu, Aussaresses, and then Colonel Bigeard were the military commanders during the 1957 Battle of Algiers. The following year, General Aussaresses confessed in his book "Services spéciaux, Algérie 1955–1957" (2001) to having engaged in torture and illegal executions, on direct orders from General Massu. Aussaresses declared that torture had been directly ordered by Guy Mollet's government. Paul Aussaresses was condemned for "apologism for war crimes", because he had justified the use of torture, claiming it had helped to save lives. Although Aussaresses claimed that torture was an efficient way to fight against what he saw as FLN terrorism, recent historical research demonstrate that, contrary to the popular "ticking time bomb scenario
", torture was not used for short-term intelligence purposes. Instead, the aim of torture was not to make people talk but to affect the group as a whole and to break the civilian population's morale. Torture was fully a part of the psychological warfare
methods as theorized by General Salan and others (Branche, 2004).
The 2004 Court of Cassation
judgment condemning Aussaresses stated that "freedom to inform, which is the basis of freedom of expression" does not lead to "accompany the exposure of facts ... with commentaries justifying acts contrary to human dignity and universally reproved nor to glorify its author."
, which was initiated by the July Monarchy
in 1830. Directed by Marshall Bugeaud, who became the first Governor-General of Algeria
, the conquest of Algeria was marked by the "scorched earth
" policy and the use of torture, which were legitimized by a racist
ideology. In 1841, the liberal thinker and deputy Alexis de Tocqueville
could declare:
"Whatever the case", continued Tocqueville, "we may say in a general manner that all political freedoms
must be suspended
in Algeria." Historian Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison thus wrote that "From the years 1840 to the 1962 independence, the physical body of the "Arab" has therefore been used as a terror instrument on which the colonial power has never ceased in graving the marks of its almighty power. Torture in Algeria and in the French Empire: an exception limited to wars of national liberation
conducted against the metropole? No, the rule." However, Le Cour Grandmaison's work has been criticized by Gilbert Meynier and Pierre Vidal-Naquet
in an article published in Esprit
.
Other historians also show that torture was fully a part of the colonialist system: "Torture in Algeria was engraved in the colonial act, it is the "normal" illustration of an abnormal system", wrote Nicolas Bancel, Pascal Blanchard, and Sandrine Lemaire, who have published decisive work on the phenomena of "human zoo
s." From the smokings (enfumades) of the Darha caves in 1844 by Pélissier to the 1945 riots in Sétif, Guelma
and Kherrata
", the repression in Algeria has used the same methods. Following the 9 May 1945, Sétif massacre
s, other riots against the European presence occurred in Guelma, Batna, Biskra, and Kherrata, causing 103 deaths among the colonials. The repression of these riots officially caused 1,500 deaths, but N. Bancel, P. Blanchard, and S. Lemaire estimate it to be rather between 6,000 and 8,000 deaths
Three years before the 1954 Toussaint Rouge insurrection, Claude Bourdet
, a former Resistant
wrote an article published on 6 December 1951 in L'Observateur, which was titled "Is there a Gestapo
in Algeria?"
Torture had also been used during the Indochina War (1947–54).
As soon as the war started, torture was deemed necessary to break the population's morale (and not to acquire short-term intelligence
). Historian Raphaëlle Branche, maîtresse de conférences in contemporary history at the University of Paris I - Sorbonne
, who wrote her doctoral thesis on the use of torture during the Algerian war, noted that "in metropolitan France
, torture did not attain the same height as in Algeria. It remained however, on both banks, a practice tolerated by the authorities and a form of violence to which Algerians knew they could be subjected."
in camps. Justified by the notion of "terrorism", torture was used indiscriminately against military detainees and civilian
s suspected of aiding the FLN. General Salan
, commander-in-chief of the French forces in Algeria, had developed in Indochina
a theory of "counter-revolutionary warfare" that included the use of torture.
The ICRC was authorized by Radical-Socialist prime minister Pierre Mendès France on 2 February 1955, to have access to the detainees for short missions of one month, but their report "was not to be made public." His government had to resign three days later. According to historian Raphaëlle Branche, "it was as if Mendès France was preparing for his departure by setting up as many protective barriers as possible." The French Army did not consider the detainees as POWs, but as PAM (French acronym for "taken captive while in possession of weapons", pris les armes à la main).
, from January to October 1957. Thus, Colonel Marcel Bigeard
and General Jacques Massu
, leader of the 10th D.B. (Paratrooper Division), in charge during the Battle of Algiers, were to crush the insurgency by whatever means necessary. They threw hundreds of prisoners into the sea, from the port of Algiers or by helicopter death flights. Since the corpses sometimes came back up to the surface, they began to pour concrete on their feet. These victims were known as "Bigeard's shrimps" ("crevettes Bigeard"). French military chaplain
s quieted the troubled military's consciences. One of them, Louis Delarue, wrote a text distributed to all units:
In 1958 General Salan set up special military internment centers for PAM rebels. The Minister of Interior declared a state of emergency
, while the army engaged in a "struggle against the terrorism" of the FLN. Special powers were devolved to the military and were returned to civilian powers only in September 1959, when Charles de Gaulle
made his speech on self-determination
. General Salan refused to apply the Geneva Conventions, ratified by France in 1951, because the detainees were not POWs. The civil authorities had different attitudes concerning the use of torture by the military. The IGAME (Inspecteur général en mission extraordinaire) of both Oran
and Algiers
chose to avoid the issue, whereas the IGAME of Constantinois, Maurice Papon
(who died in 2007, after having been convicted for crimes against humanity for his role under Vichy
), was actively involved in repression (Branche, 2004).
On 5 January 1960 the newspaper Le Monde
published a summary of the report on the ICRC's seventh mission to Algeria. "Numerous cases of ill-treatment and torture are still being reported", the article disclosed, giving the ICRC's legitimacy to the many previously documented cases. A colonel in the French police force had told the delegates, "The struggle against terrorism makes it necessary to resort to certain questioning techniques as the only way of saving human life and avoiding new attacks." However, in practice, torture was not used for short-term information and immediate action. The aim of torture was not to make people talk, but to affect the group as a whole. Torture was a full part of psychological warfare methods as theorized by Salan and others (Branche, 2004).
It was found much later that Gaston Gosselin, a member of the Ministry of Justice who was responsible for internment issues in metropolitan France, had leaked the report to the journalists of Le Monde. He had to resign a few months later, and the ICRC was prohibited for a year from undertaking any mission to Algeria.
, director of the Alger Républicain
newspaper and of the Algerian Communist Party
(PCA), who himself had been tortured, denounced it in La Question (Minuit, 1958), which sold 60,000 copies in one day. The title of his book referred to the Inquisition
, who was said to put people "to the question." Alleg's book detailed the various torture methods, among which the famous gégène, an electricity generator initially used for telephone purposes, but also sleep deprivation
, truth serum
s, etc. Beside torturing actual suspects, the French military also buried alive
old men.
Benoist Rey's book Les égorgeurs was also censored in April 1961. In the same year, he denounced torture as a "habitual repressive method, systematic, official, and massive."
According an article of Verité Liberté published in 1961, "In the Ameziane farm, a CRA (Centre de renseignement et d'action, Information and Action Center) of Constantine
it is practiced on "industrial scale". The suspects were arrested during raids, after having been denounced. Suspects were divided into two groups, those immediately interrogated and those who would be forced to wait a bit. The latter were deprived of food for from two to eight days in a blatant violation of the 1949 Geneva Conventions."
According to historian R. Branche, torture would begin with the systematic stripping of the victim. Beating was combined with many different techniques, among them hanging by the feet or hands, water torture
, torture by electric shock, rape. According to "Verité Liberté" 's description:
According to the article of "Vérité Liberté", the end of these torture sessions was either liberation (often the case for women and for those who could pay), internment, or "disappearance." "The capacity of this center, opened in 1957, is of 500 to 600 persons.... Since its constitution, it has "controlled" (less than 8 days of prison) 108,175 persons; filed 11,518 Algerians as nationalist activists...; kept for duration of more than 8 days 7,363 persons; interned to Hamma [an internment camp] 789 suspects."
called against the use of torture in L'Express
in an article titled Surtout, ne pas torturer ("Above all, do not torture.").
Two important officials, one civilian and another military, resigned because of the use of torture. The first was Paul Teitgen, former General Secretary of the Algiers Police, who had been himself tortured by the Gestapo
. He resigned on 12 September 1957, in protest against the massive use of torture and extrajudicial killings
ordered by generals Bigeard and Massu. Under pressure from the left-wing opposition to the war and the use of torture, including the anti-colonialist French Communist Party
(PCF), the government, then led by Guy Mollet
(SFIO), created a Commission of Safeguard of Rights and Individual Liberties, composed of various personalities named by the government, which gave the public its report in September 1957: according to it, torture was a frequent practice in Algeria. The other was General de Bollardière
, who was the only army official to denounce the use of torture. He was put in charge of military arrests and then had to resign.
Torture was denounced during the war by many French left-wing intellectuals, members or not of the PCF, which maintained an anti-colonialist line. Confronted by the left-wing opposition, prime minister Guy Mollet
, general secretary of the SFIO from 1946 to 1969, ordered in April 1957 a "Commission de sauvegarde des droits et des libertés individuels" (Commission for the protection of rights and individual freedoms), composed of personalities named by the government, to investigate the issue. However, the main aim was in fact to absolve the French army of accusations and to gain time (Raphaëlle Branche, 2004).
Henri Alleg
, director of the Alger Républicain
newspaper and of the Algerian Communist Party
(PCA), who himself had been tortured, denounced it in La Question
(Minuit, 1958). Along with La Gangrène, by Bachir Boumaza, and Italian Communist
Gillo Pontecorvo
's 1966 film on The Battle of Algiers
, Alleg's book was immediately censored in France
. Torture was also evoked during the trial of ALN activist Djamila Boupacha, defended by lawyer Gisèle Halimi
. A 1977 film by Laurent Heynemann adapted the book, and also treated of the Maurice Audin
affair. Writer Albert Camus
, a pied-noir
and famous existentialist, tried unsuccessfully to persuade both sides to at least leave civilians alone, writing editorials against the use of torture in Combat
newspaper. Other famous opponents of torture included Robert Bonnaud
, who published on counsel of his friend Pierre Vidal-Naquet
an article in 1956 in L'Esprit
, a personalist review founded by Emmanuel Mounier
(1905–1950). Bonnaud was later imprisoned, in June 1961, on a charge of support to the FLN. Pierre Vidal-Naquet, one of the many signatories to the Manifeste des 121 against torture, wrote a book, L'Affaire Audin (1957), and, as a historian, would continue to work on the Algerian War all his life. Beside Vidal-Naquet, famous signatories of the Manifeste des 121, published after the 1960 Barricades Week, included Robert Antelme
, an Auschwitz survivor and writer, Simone de Beauvoir
, Maurice Blanchot
, Pierre Boulez
, André Breton
, Hubert Damisch
, Marguerite Duras
, Daniel Guérin
, Robert Jaulin
, Claude Lanzmann
, Robert Lapoujade, Henri Lefebvre
, Michel Leiris
, Jérôme Lindon, editor of the Minuit
edition house, François Maspero
, another editor, Théodore Monod
, Maurice Nadeau
, Jean-François Revel
, Alain Robbe-Grillet
, founder of the nouveau roman
, Françoise Sagan
, Nathalie Sarraute
, Jean-Paul Sartre
, Claude Simon
, Jean Bruller
(Vercors), Jean-Pierre Vernant
, etc.
According to Henri Alleg, "in reality, the base of the problem was this unjust war itself. From the moment one starts a colonial war, i.e. a war to submit a people to one's will, one can issue all the laws one wants, but they will always be violated."
(1930–2006), one of the leaders of the Comité Audin
, had denounced the systematic use of torture by the 10e D.P. (10th Paratrooper Division), commanded by General Massu
, during the 1957 Battle of Algiers
. But he also denounced the non-systematic use of torture, mainly beatings, by the French Army on members of the Organisation de l'armée secrète (OAS), a far-right terrorist group, which engaged after the March 1962 Évian Accords
in a campaign of bombings directed against the civilian population in Algeria. He wrote a letter in L'Esprit
in May 1962:
. Little firm evidence exists about the use of torture by either side, but there are instances where French police or police auxiliaries may have engaged in torture as well as murder of FLN agents or protesters, and likewise the FLN may have used torture in eliminating opponents and in collecting funds among Algerian expatriates in France.
After being involved in early repression in Constantine, Algeria
as prefect, Maurice Papon
was named head of the Parisian police
on 14 March 1958. Tensions increased after 25 August 1958, when an FLN guerilla offensive in Paris killed three policemen on boulevard de l'Hôpital in the XIIIe arrondissement
and another in front of the cartoucherie de Vincennes, leading to arrestations and internments of Algerians suspected of supporting the FLN. In 1960 Papon created the Auxiliary Police Force (FPA - Force de police auxiliaire), which was made up of 600 Algerians by autumn 1960 and operated in areas densely populated by Algerians in Paris and its suburbs. While incompletely evidenced, the strongest presumption of torture by the FPA pertains to two locations in the XIIIe arrondissement
. Further escalation occurred from August to October 1961, as the FLN resumed bombings against the French police and killed 11 policemen and injured 17 (in Paris and its suburbs). This culminated on 17 October 1961, when the French police
repressed a demonstration
of 30,000 Algerians who were ostensibly protesting against a de facto curfew imposed on them by the prefecture of police, though the FLN had planned the demonstration as potential provocation
as well. While estimates differ, the number of dead officially acknowledged (in French government reports and statements of 1998) is 40 to 48. Some protesters may have been tortured before being killed and their bodies being thrown in the Seine
.
From 1954 onward, the FLN sought to establish a politico-military organization among the 300,000 Algerians residing in France; by 1958, it had overwhelmed Messali Hadj
's Algerian National Movement
, despite the latter's popularity with Algerian expatriates at the onset of the war. Torture was occasionally used alongside beatings and killings to eliminate opponents of the FLN, and the death toll of this internecine violence within France alone was approximately 4,000. Subsequently, the FLN used this organization to obtain a "revolutionary tax" that FLN leader Ali Haroun estimates amounted to "80% of the [financial] resources of the rebellion"; this was partly done through extortion
, in some instances by means of beatings and torture.
An important issue within metropolitan France was public opinion, given that a substantial native population held a formally anticolonialist ideology (Communists, in particular) or was debating the war. The parties fought on this front too. The Prefecture of Police denied using torture or undue violence. Conversely, informers reported an organized campaign to implicate the FPA such that FLN "leaders and carefully chosen militants from the workers' residence in Vitry
- 45, rue Rondenay - have been tasked with declaring in cafés and public places that they have suffered exactions, have been robbed of a pocketbook, a watch [...] and were victims of violence by the 'Algerian police'." A note diffused by the French arm of the FLN to its branches in September 1959 specifically focused on making claims of torture to influence the legal system:
, a young communist student arrested and tortured to death. The case had been specifically documented at the time by the "Comité Audin", to which historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet
belonged.
The first amnesty was imposed in 1962 by President Charles de Gaulle
, by decree, preempting a parliamentary discussion that might have denied immunity to men like General Paul Aussaresses
, Massu's right-hand man.
The second amnesty was enacted in 1968 by the National Assembly
, which gave blanket amnesty to all acts committed during the Algerian war.
The OAS members were given amnesty by president François Mitterrand
(PS
), and a general amnesty for all war crime
s was declared in 1982. Pierre Vidal-Naquet, among others, has qualified it as a "shame".
The archives of the war were closed to the public for thirty years, a period extendable for up to 60 years for those documents that were liable to compromise a person's privacy or state security. It was only in 1995-96 that new works began to reveal information.
, military chief of Algier, had defended the use of torture in his 1972 book, The True Battle of Algiers (La vraie bataille d'Alger). He later declared to Le Monde in 2000 that "torture was not necessary and that we could have decided not to use it".
Two days after the visit to France of Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika
, Louisette Ighilahriz, a former Armée de Libération Nationale
activist, published her testimony in Le Monde on 20 June 2000. At the age of twenty she had been captured in September 1957, during the Battle of Algiers, and raped and tortured for three months. She named General Massu as the responsible of the French military at the time. Massu, 94 years old, acknowledged Ighilahriz's testimony and declared to 'Le Monde' that "Torture isn't indispensable in times of war, and one can very well do without it. When l look back on Algeria, it saddens me... One could have done things differently." To the contrary, General Bigeard (then Colonel) called her remarks a "tissue of lies", while Aussaresses justified it
admitted in his 2001 book, "Services spéciaux, Algérie 1955–1957", to the systematic use of torture during the war. He confessed to having himself engaged in torture and having himself illegally executed 24 Algerians, under the orders of Guy Mollet
's government. He also acknowledged the assassination of lawyer Ali Boumendjel and head of FLN in Algiers, and Larbi Ben M'Hidi
, which had been covered up as "suicides." For justifying the use of torture, he was condemned in court, and stripped of his army rank and his Legion of honor
.
According to Aussaresses, Massu followed on a daily basis the list of "interrogated" prisoners and of "accidents" which occurred during these torture sessions. Aussaresses said that it had been directly ordered by Guy Mollet
's government. He notably declared:
He also wrote:
However, historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet
said, concerning Mitterrand, who was President of France from 1981 to 1995, that "when he was Justice Minister in 1956-57, during the Algerian War, he has been not as bad as had been claimed. He had under his charge only civil justice, and Reliquet (the public prosecutor in Algiers and who was a liberal [i.e. "liberal" in French usually refers to economic liberalism
] ) personally told me that he never received such strict instructions against torture as that which he had had from Mitterrand."
Following Aussaresses' revelations, which proved that torture had been ordered by the highest levels of the French state hierarchy, Human Rights Watch
sent a letter to President Jacques Chirac
(RPR
) to indict Aussaresses for war crimes, declaring that, despite past amnesties, such crimes, which may also have been crimes against humanity, may not be amnestied. The Ligue des droits de l'homme (LDH, Human Rights League) deposed a complaint against him for "apology of war crimes", as Paul Aussaresses justified the use of torture, claiming it had saved lives. He was condemned to a 7,500 Euros fine by the Tribunal de grande instance court of Paris, while Plon
and Perrin, two editing houses who had published his book in which he made an apology of the use of torture, were sentenced each to a 15,000 Euros fine. The judgement was confirmed by the Court of Appeal in April 2003. The Court of Cassation
rejected the intercession in December 2004. The Court of Cassation declared in its judgment that "freedom to inform, which is the basis of freedom of expression" does not lead to "accompany the exposure of facts ... with commentaries justifying acts contrary to human dignity and universally reproved", "nor to glorify its author." Aussaresses had written in his book: "torture became necessary when emergency imposed itself."
However, the Court of Cassation rejected the complaint which had been deposed against him on charges of torture, claiming they were amnestied.
, who had denied employing torture for forty years, finally also admitted that it had been used, although he claimed that he personally had not engaged in the practice. Bigeard, who qualified FLN activists as "savages", claimed torture was a "necessary evil." To the contrary, General Jacques Massu
denounced it, following Aussaresses' revelations, and before his death pronounced himself in favor of an official condemnation of the use of torture during the war.
Bigeard's justification of torture has been criticized by various persons, among whom Joseph Doré, archbishop of Strasbourg, and Marc Lienhard, president of the Lutheran Church of the Augsbourg confession in Alsace-Lorraine.
In June 2000, Bigeard declared that he was based in Sidi Ferruch
, known as a torture center and from which many Algerians never left alive. Bigeard qualified Louisette Ighilahriz's revelations, published in Le Monde on 20 June 2000, as "lies". An ALN activist, Louisette Ighilahriz, had been tortured by General Massu. She herself called Bigeard a "liar", and criticized him for continuing to deny the use of torture 40 years later. However, since General Massu's revelations, Bigeard has now admitted the use of torture, although he denies having personally used it. He then declared: "You are striking the heart of an 84-year-old man." Bigeard also recognized that Larbi Ben M’Hidi had been assassinated, and his death disguised as a "suicide".
, former leader of the far-right National Front party and a lieutenant during the war, attacked Le Monde
and former Prime minister Michel Rocard
on charges of defamation after the newspaper accused him of having engaged in torture. However, he lost his trial, with the French justice declaring Le Mondes investigations as legitimate and credible, though Le Pen appealed. Le Pen still denies the use of torture, claiming there had been only "interrogation sessions". Le Monde produced in May 2003 the dagger
he allegedly used to commit war crimes as court evidence. This affair ended in 2000 when the "Cour de cassation
" (French supreme jurisdiction) concluded that it was legitimate to publish these assertions. However, because of the amnesty and the prescription
, there can be no criminal proceedings against Le Pen for the crimes he is alleged to have committed in Algeria. In 1995, Le Pen unsuccessfully sued Jean Dufour, regional counselor of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
(French Communist Party
) for the same reason.
Pierre Vidal-Naquet
in "Torture; Cancer of Democracy" alleges that, after being refused a drink at an already closed bar in Algiers, Le Pen had the bartender tortured to death.
Regarding the French pathway, journalist Marie-Monique Robin
argued in her 2004 book on death squad
s how French intelligence agents had taught their Chilean and Argentine counterparts the use of torture and "disappearances" as a counter-insurgency tactic. Her argument was based on several filmed interviews of high-ranking Argentine military officers, who were themselves accused of torture at the time. French intelligence agents have long been suspected of having trained their Argentine counterparts in "counter-insurgency" techniques. In testimony in January 2007 before Argentine judges, Luis María Mendía
, Argentine Admiral and originator of the "death flights" during the "Dirty War
", referred to Marie Monique Robin's film documentary titled The Death Squads - the French School (Les escadrons de la mort - l'école française), which argued that the French intelligence services had trained Argentine counterparts in counter-insurgency techniques. Attempting to exonerate himself, Luis María Mendía used this source to ask that former French president, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing
, former French premier Pierre Messmer
, former French ambassador to Buenos Aires Françoise de la Gosse, and all officials in place in the French embassy in Buenos Aires between 1976 and 1983 be brought before the court. Robin also argued that a 1959 agreement between France and Argentina instaured a "permanent French military mission" which was located in the offices of the chief of staff of the Argentine Armed Forces. However the argument is questionable as Robin argued that the mission consisted of veterans of the Algerian War, which would have been extremely unlikely at the onset of the purported mission (since the war in Algeria was ongoing) and remains an undocumented claim even after 1962.
The French role in spreading torture to Latin America appears modest, in terms of geographic scope and seniority of the officers involved, relative to local and other foreign sources. During the 1960s, the U.S. started spreading the use of torture to its allies in Latin America, specifically torture using electrical generators, with Brazil and Andean cone countries first. The training of Latin American officers, including a number of future tortionists and leaders who ordered torture, was conducted on a large scale via the formal education programs of the School of the Americas. This U.S. pathway leads directly to SOA graduate Leopoldo Galtieri
, the Argentine dictator and commanding officer of Luis María Mendía. It is under Galtieri's regime that the use of torture became systematic in Argentina; other countries where SOA graduates were accused of involvement in torture or political murders include Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia, Panama and Haiti.
The French and U.S. pathways have a common root, as the use of electrical generators for torture was invented in America in 1908, spread in Asia during World War II, and passed to both French and U.S. forces during their respective involvement in the First Indochina War
and the Vietnam War
(or Second Indochina War).
John McGuffin's book "Beating the Terrorists" (Penguin) also alleges that French advisors were seen at Fort Morbut in Aden during the independence war. In that case, regardless of the correctness of this allegation or the mission of these advisors, their role was minute relative to that of the British forces trying to ensure a peaceful transfer of power during Aden Emergency
.
Pierre Vidal-Naquet
Pierre Emmanuel Vidal-Naquet was a French historian who began teaching at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in 1969....
estimates that there were "possibly hundreds of thousands of instances of torture" by the French military in Algeria http://www.ldh-toulon.net/spip.php?article2236. The Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) also engaged in extensive use of extreme violence including torture, especially against pro-French and uncommitted members of the Muslim population.
Overview
The armed struggle of the FLN and of its armed wing, the Armée de Libération NationaleArmée de Libération Nationale
The Armée de Libération Nationale or ALN was the armed wing of the nationalist Front de Libération National during the Algerian War of Independence...
(ALN) was for self-determination
Self-determination
Self-determination is the principle in international law that nations have the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status with no external compulsion or external interference...
. The French state itself refused to see in the colonial conflict
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
a war, as that would recognize the other party (the National Liberation Front
National Liberation Front (Algeria)
The National Liberation Front is a socialist political party in Algeria. It was set up on November 1, 1954 as a merger of other smaller groups, to obtain independence for Algeria from France.- Anticolonial struggle :...
, FLN) as a legitimate entity. Thus, until 10 August 1999, the French Republic persisted in calling the Algerian War a simple "operation of public order" against the FLN "terrorism." This was therefore a 'classic' colonial war of liberation and it is on these different viewpoints (police action vs. war) that much of the argument about these events tends to focus.
Thus, the military did not consider themselves tied by the Geneva Conventions, ratified by France in 1951. Beside prohibiting the use of 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...
, the Geneva Conventions give the International Committee of the Red Cross
International Committee of the Red Cross
The International Committee of the Red Cross is a private humanitarian institution based in Geneva, Switzerland. States parties to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977 and 2005, have given the ICRC a mandate to protect the victims of international and...
(ICRC) access to the detainees. Detainees, who included not only FLN members but also old men, women and children, were thus not granted prisoner of war
Prisoner of war
A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...
(POW) status. On the contrary, they were considered as "terrorists" and deprived of the rights which are legally entitled to belligerent
Belligerent
A belligerent is an individual, group, country or other entity which acts in a hostile manner, such as engaging in combat. Belligerent comes from Latin, literally meaning "to wage war"...
s during a war, including cases of civil war
Civil war
A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same nation state or republic, or, less commonly, between two countries created from a formerly-united nation state....
s under Geneva Convention Protocol II.
Violence increased on both sides from 1954 to 1956. But in 1957 the Minister of Interior declared a state of emergency
State of emergency
A state of emergency is a governmental declaration that may suspend some normal functions of the executive, legislative and judicial powers, alert citizens to change their normal behaviours, or order government agencies to implement emergency preparedness plans. It can also be used as a rationale...
in 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...
, and the government granted extraordinary powers to General Massu
Jacques Massu
Jacques Émile Massu was a French general who fought in World War II, the First Indochina War, the Algerian War and the Suez crisis.-Early life:Jacques Massu was born in Châlons-sur-Marne to a family of military officers; his father was an artillery officer...
, head of the armed forces in Algeria. The Battle of Algiers
Battle of Algiers (1957)
The Battle of Algiers was a campaign of guerrilla warfare carried out by the National Liberation Front against the French Algerian authorities from late 1956 to late 1957. The conflict began as a series of hit-and-run attacks by the FLN against the French Police in Algiers. Violence escalated...
, from January to October 1957, remains to this day a textbook example of counter-insurgency
Counter-insurgency
A counter-insurgency or counterinsurgency involves actions taken by the recognized government of a nation to contain or quell an insurgency taken up against it...
operations. General Massu, who was assisted by General Aussaresses
Paul Aussaresses
Paul Aussaresses is a retired French Army general, who fought during World War II, the First Indochina War and Algerian War...
and then Colonel Bigeard
Marcel Bigeard
Marcel "Bruno" Bigeard was a French military officer who fought in World War II, Indochina and Algeria. He was one of the commanders in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and is thought by many to have been a dominating influence on French 'unconventional' warfare thinking from that time onwards...
, of the 10th D.B. (Paratrooper
Paratrooper
Paratroopers are soldiers trained in parachuting and generally operate as part of an airborne force.Paratroopers are used for tactical advantage as they can be inserted into the battlefield from the air, thereby allowing them to be positioned in areas not accessible by land...
division) made widespread use of methods used during the Indochina War
First Indochina War
The First Indochina War was fought in French Indochina from December 19, 1946, until August 1, 1954, between the French Union's French Far East...
(1947–54): they included a systematic use of torture, including against civilians, a block warden system (quadrillage), illegal executions and forced disappearances, in particular through what would later become known as "death flights" (at the time, victims of such methods were known as "Bigeard's shrimps", or "crevettes Bigeard"). All these methods were documented as standard counter-insurgency tactics by Colonel Trinquier
Roger Trinquier
Roger Trinquier was a French Army officer during World War II, the First Indochina War and the Algerian War, serving mainly in airborne and Special forces units...
in Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency (1961), a reference in the areas of "counter-revolutionary war" and of psychological warfare
Psychological warfare
Psychological warfare , or the basic aspects of modern psychological operations , have been known by many other names or terms, including Psy Ops, Political Warfare, “Hearts and Minds,” and Propaganda...
.
Although the use of torture quickly became well-known and was opposed by the left-wing opposition, the French state repeatedly denied its employment, censoring
Censorship in France
France has a long history of governmental censorship, particularly in the 16th to 18th centuries, but today freedom of press is guaranteed by the French Constitution and instances of governmental censorship are relatively limited and isolated....
more than 250 books, newspapers and films (in metropolitan France
Metropolitan France
Metropolitan France is the part of France located in Europe. It can also be described as mainland France or as the French mainland and the island of Corsica...
alone) which dealt with the subject (and 586 in Algeria). Henri Alleg
Henri Alleg
Henri Alleg , born Henri Salem, is a French-Algerian journalist, director of the "Alger républicain" newspaper, and a member of the French Communist Party...
's 1958 book, La Question, Boris Vian
Boris Vian
Boris Vian was a French polymath: writer, poet, musician, singer, translator, critic, actor, inventor and engineer. He is best remembered today for his novels. Those published under the pseudonym Vernon Sullivan were bizarre parodies of criminal fiction, highly controversial at the time of their...
's The Deserter, and Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
's 1960 film Le Petit Soldat
Le Petit Soldat
The Little Soldier is a 1960 French film, written and directed by French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, but not released until 1963. It was Godard's first film with Anna Karina, who starred as Véronica Dreyer alongside Michel Subor ....
(released in 1963) are famous examples of such censorship. A confidential report of the ICRC leaked to Le Monde
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
newspaper confirmed the allegations of torture made by the opposition to the war, represented in particular by 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...
(PCF) and other anti-militarist circles. Although many left-wing activists, including famous existentialists
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
writers 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...
and Albert Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
, and historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet
Pierre Vidal-Naquet
Pierre Emmanuel Vidal-Naquet was a French historian who began teaching at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in 1969....
, denounced without exception the use of torture, the French government was itself headed in 1957 by the general secretary of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO), Guy Mollet
Guy Mollet
Guy Mollet was a French Socialist politician. He led the French Section of the Workers' International party from 1946 to 1969 and was Prime Minister in 1956–1957.-Early life and World War II:...
. In general, the SFIO supported the colonial wars during the Fourth Republic
French Fourth Republic
The French Fourth Republic was the republican government of France between 1946 and 1958, governed by the fourth republican constitution. It was in many ways a revival of the Third Republic, which was in place before World War II, and suffered many of the same problems...
(1947–54), starting with the crushing of the Madagascar revolt
Madagascar Revolt
The Malagasy Uprising was a rebellion against the colonial rule of France by nationalists on the island of Madagascar in 1947 and 1948. It was crushed by the French government, then headed by Socialist Paul Ramadier. 80,000 to 90,000 people were killed, according to certain sources...
in 1947 by the socialist government of Paul Ramadier
Paul Ramadier
Paul Ramadier was a prominent French politician of the Third and Fourth Republics. Mayor of Decazeville starting in 1919, he served as the first Prime Minister of the Fourth Republic in 1947. On 10 July 1940, he voted against the granting of the full powers to Marshal Philippe Pétain, who...
.
The controversy over the use of torture continues to have echoes today. Already in 1977, British historian Alistair Horne
Alistair Horne
Sir Alistair Allan Horne is a British historian of modern France. He is the son of Sir James Horne and Lady Auriol Horne ....
wrote in A Savage War of Peace that torture was to become a growing canker for France, leaving behind a poison that would linger in the French system long after the war itself had ended. At the time, Horne could not confirm or deny that torture had been ordered by the highest ranks of the military and civilian hierarchy of the French state. Despite France's difficulties in looking at its past, which is made evident by the obstacles it continues to put before the historical research, and the way the Algerian War is taught (or not) in French high-schools
Education in France
The French educational system is highly centralized, organized, and ramified. It is divided into three different stages:* the primary education ;* secondary education ;...
, the fact that torture had not only been massively employed, but also ordered by the French government, was confirmed by General Aussaresses in 2001.
These revelations followed testimony from a former tortured ALN activist, Louisette Ighilahriz, published in Le Monde
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
on 20 July 2000, three days after the visit to France of Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika
Abdelaziz Bouteflika
Abdelaziz Bouteflika is the ninth President of Algeria. He has been in office since 1999. He continued emergency rule until 24 February 2011, and presided over the end of the bloody Algerian Civil War in 2002...
. Louisette Ighilahriz declared that she had been tortured for three months and accused as the responsible party General Massu as the then-commander of the French armed forces. Massu used this opportunity to publicly regret the use of torture, declaring that it could have been avoided. On the other hand, General Bigeard violently denied its use.
General Massu, Aussaresses, and then Colonel Bigeard were the military commanders during the 1957 Battle of Algiers. The following year, General Aussaresses confessed in his book "Services spéciaux, Algérie 1955–1957" (2001) to having engaged in torture and illegal executions, on direct orders from General Massu. Aussaresses declared that torture had been directly ordered by Guy Mollet's government. Paul Aussaresses was condemned for "apologism for war crimes", because he had justified the use of torture, claiming it had helped to save lives. Although Aussaresses claimed that torture was an efficient way to fight against what he saw as FLN terrorism, recent historical research demonstrate that, contrary to the popular "ticking time bomb scenario
Ticking time bomb scenario
The ticking time bomb scenario is a thought experiment that has been used in the ethics debate over whether torture can ever be justified.Simply stated, the consequentialist argument is that nations, even those such as the United States that legally disallow torture, can justify its use if they...
", torture was not used for short-term intelligence purposes. Instead, the aim of torture was not to make people talk but to affect the group as a whole and to break the civilian population's morale. Torture was fully a part of the psychological warfare
Psychological warfare
Psychological warfare , or the basic aspects of modern psychological operations , have been known by many other names or terms, including Psy Ops, Political Warfare, “Hearts and Minds,” and Propaganda...
methods as theorized by General Salan and others (Branche, 2004).
The 2004 Court of Cassation
Court of Cassation (France)
The French Supreme Court of Judicature is France's court of last resort having jurisdiction over all matters triable in the judicial stream but only scope of review to determine a miscarriage of justice or certify a question of law based solely on points of law...
judgment condemning Aussaresses stated that "freedom to inform, which is the basis of freedom of expression" does not lead to "accompany the exposure of facts ... with commentaries justifying acts contrary to human dignity and universally reproved nor to glorify its author."
Colonialism
Torture was a procedure in use since the beginning of the colonization of AlgeriaFrench rule in Algeria
French Algeria lasted from 1830 to 1962, under a variety of governmental systems. From 1848 until independence, the whole Mediterranean region of Algeria was administered as an integral part of France, much like Corsica and Réunion are to this day. The vast arid interior of Algeria, like the rest...
, which was initiated by the July Monarchy
July Monarchy
The July Monarchy , officially the Kingdom of France , was a period of liberal constitutional monarchy in France under King Louis-Philippe starting with the July Revolution of 1830 and ending with the Revolution of 1848...
in 1830. Directed by Marshall Bugeaud, who became the first Governor-General of Algeria
Colonial heads of Algeria
Beylerbey: Bey of beysKalifah: Governor acting in the absence of the BeylerbeyAga : Military CommanderFor continuation after independence, see: Presidents of Algeria-Sources:* http://www.rulers.org/rula1.html#algeria...
, the conquest of Algeria was marked by the "scorched earth
Scorched earth
A scorched earth policy is a military strategy or operational method which involves destroying anything that might be useful to the enemy while advancing through or withdrawing from an area...
" policy and the use of torture, which were legitimized by a racist
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
ideology. In 1841, the liberal thinker and deputy Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville was a French political thinker and historian best known for his Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the Revolution . In both of these works, he explored the effects of the rising equality of social conditions on the individual and the state in...
could declare:
"war in Africa is a science. Everyone is familiar with its rules and everyone can apply those rules with almost complete certainty of success. One of the greatest services that Field Marshal Bugeaud has rendered his country is to have spread, perfected and made everyone aware of this new science... As far as I am concerned, I came back from Africa with the pathetic notion that at present in our way of waging war we are far more barbaric than the Arabs themselves. These days, they represent civilization, we do not. This way of waging war seems to me as stupid as it is cruel. It can only be found in the head of a coarse and brutal soldier. Indeed, it was pointless to replace the Turks only to reproduce what the world rightly found so hateful in them. This, even for the sake of interest, is more noxious than useful; for, as another officer was telling me, if our sole aim is to equal the Turks, in fact we shall be in a far lower position than theirs: barbarians for barbarians, the Turks will always outdo us because they are Muslim barbarians. In France, I have often heard men I respect, but do not approve of, deplore that crops should be burnt and granaries emptied and finally that unarmed men, women and children should be seized. In my view these are unfortunate circumstances that any people wishing to wage war against the Arabs must accept. I think that all the means available to wreck tribes must be used, barring those that the human kind and the right of nations condemn. I personally believe that the laws of war enable us to ravage the country and that we must do so either by destroying the crops at harvest time or any time by making fast forays also known as raids the aim of which it to get hold of men or flocks."
"Whatever the case", continued Tocqueville, "we may say in a general manner that all political freedoms
Freedom (political)
Political freedom is a central philosophy in Western history and political thought, and one of the most important features of democratic societies...
must be suspended
State of emergency
A state of emergency is a governmental declaration that may suspend some normal functions of the executive, legislative and judicial powers, alert citizens to change their normal behaviours, or order government agencies to implement emergency preparedness plans. It can also be used as a rationale...
in Algeria." Historian Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison thus wrote that "From the years 1840 to the 1962 independence, the physical body of the "Arab" has therefore been used as a terror instrument on which the colonial power has never ceased in graving the marks of its almighty power. Torture in Algeria and in the French Empire: an exception limited to wars of national liberation
Wars of national liberation
In Marxist terminology, wars of national liberation or national liberation revolutions are conflicts fought by oppressed nationalities against imperial powers to establish separate sovereign states for the subjugated nationality. From a Western point of view, these same wars are called insurgencies...
conducted against the metropole? No, the rule." However, Le Cour Grandmaison's work has been criticized by Gilbert Meynier and Pierre Vidal-Naquet
Pierre Vidal-Naquet
Pierre Emmanuel Vidal-Naquet was a French historian who began teaching at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in 1969....
in an article published in Esprit
Esprit (magazine)
Esprit is a French literary magazine. Founded in October 1932 by Emmanuel Mounier, it was the principal review of personalist intellectuals of the time. From 1957 to 1976, it was directed by Jean-Marie Domenach. Paul Thibaud directed it from 1977 to 1989. The philosopher Paul Ricoeur often...
.
Other historians also show that torture was fully a part of the colonialist system: "Torture in Algeria was engraved in the colonial act, it is the "normal" illustration of an abnormal system", wrote Nicolas Bancel, Pascal Blanchard, and Sandrine Lemaire, who have published decisive work on the phenomena of "human zoo
Human zoo
Human zoos were 19th- and 20th-century public exhibits of humans, usually in a so-called natural or primitive state. The displays often emphasized the cultural differences between Europeans of Western civilisation and non-European peoples...
s." From the smokings (enfumades) of the Darha caves in 1844 by Pélissier to the 1945 riots in Sétif, Guelma
Guelma
Guelma is the capital of Guelma Province and Guelma District, located in northeastern Algeria, about 65 kilometers from the Mediterranean coast...
and Kherrata
Kherrata
Kherrata is a town in northern Algeria....
", the repression in Algeria has used the same methods. Following the 9 May 1945, Sétif massacre
Setif massacre
The Sétif massacre refers to widespread disturbances and killings in and around the Algerian market town of Sétif located to the west of Constantine in 1945. Shooting by the French authorities against local demonstrators occurred on 8 May 1945. Then, riots in the town itself were followed by...
s, other riots against the European presence occurred in Guelma, Batna, Biskra, and Kherrata, causing 103 deaths among the colonials. The repression of these riots officially caused 1,500 deaths, but N. Bancel, P. Blanchard, and S. Lemaire estimate it to be rather between 6,000 and 8,000 deaths
Three years before the 1954 Toussaint Rouge insurrection, Claude Bourdet
Claude Bourdet
Claude Bourdet , son of the dramatic author Édouard Bourdet, was a writer, journalist, polemist, and a militant French politician, who was born in 1909 and died in 1996 in Paris. He was a son of the poet Catherine Pozzi....
, a former Resistant
French Resistance
The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...
wrote an article published on 6 December 1951 in L'Observateur, which was titled "Is there a Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
in Algeria?"
Torture had also been used during the Indochina War (1947–54).
As soon as the war started, torture was deemed necessary to break the population's morale (and not to acquire short-term intelligence
Intelligence
Intelligence has been defined in different ways, including the abilities for abstract thought, understanding, communication, reasoning, learning, planning, emotional intelligence and problem solving....
). Historian Raphaëlle Branche, maîtresse de conférences in contemporary history at the University of Paris I - Sorbonne
University of Paris I: Panthéon-Sorbonne
Pantheon-Sorbonne University or Paris 1 is a university in Paris, France. With eight hundred years of excellence to build on, the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, a descendant of the Sorbonne and the Faculty of Law and Economics of Paris, is one of the largest universities in France today...
, who wrote her doctoral thesis on the use of torture during the Algerian war, noted that "in metropolitan France
Metropolitan France
Metropolitan France is the part of France located in Europe. It can also be described as mainland France or as the French mainland and the island of Corsica...
, torture did not attain the same height as in Algeria. It remained however, on both banks, a practice tolerated by the authorities and a form of violence to which Algerians knew they could be subjected."
Context and descriptions of torture: scope and extent
The FLN was progressively assuming control in Algeria, through targeted acts of terrorism against French nationals and Algerians supporting the French initiative. Meanwhile, the French army targeted civilians. From 1954 to 1956, the amount of violence massively increased, accompanied by summary executions and internmentInternment
Internment is the imprisonment or confinement of people, commonly in large groups, without trial. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the meaning as: "The action of 'interning'; confinement within the limits of a country or place." Most modern usage is about individuals, and there is a distinction...
in camps. Justified by the notion of "terrorism", torture was used indiscriminately against military detainees and civilian
Civilian
A civilian under international humanitarian law is a person who is not a member of his or her country's armed forces or other militia. Civilians are distinct from combatants. They are afforded a degree of legal protection from the effects of war and military occupation...
s suspected of aiding the FLN. General Salan
Raoul Salan
Raoul Albin Louis Salan was a French Army general and the fourth French commanding general during the First Indochina War. Salan was one of four generals who organized the 1961 Algiers Putsch operation and then founded the Organisation de l'armée secrète....
, commander-in-chief of the French forces in Algeria, had developed in Indochina
First Indochina War
The First Indochina War was fought in French Indochina from December 19, 1946, until August 1, 1954, between the French Union's French Far East...
a theory of "counter-revolutionary warfare" that included the use of torture.
The ICRC was authorized by Radical-Socialist prime minister Pierre Mendès France on 2 February 1955, to have access to the detainees for short missions of one month, but their report "was not to be made public." His government had to resign three days later. According to historian Raphaëlle Branche, "it was as if Mendès France was preparing for his departure by setting up as many protective barriers as possible." The French Army did not consider the detainees as POWs, but as PAM (French acronym for "taken captive while in possession of weapons", pris les armes à la main).
The Battle of Algiers (January–October 1957), the state of emergency and the ICRC report
The civilian authorities relinquished control to the military during the Battle of AlgiersBattle of Algiers (1957)
The Battle of Algiers was a campaign of guerrilla warfare carried out by the National Liberation Front against the French Algerian authorities from late 1956 to late 1957. The conflict began as a series of hit-and-run attacks by the FLN against the French Police in Algiers. Violence escalated...
, from January to October 1957. Thus, Colonel Marcel Bigeard
Marcel Bigeard
Marcel "Bruno" Bigeard was a French military officer who fought in World War II, Indochina and Algeria. He was one of the commanders in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and is thought by many to have been a dominating influence on French 'unconventional' warfare thinking from that time onwards...
and General Jacques Massu
Jacques Massu
Jacques Émile Massu was a French general who fought in World War II, the First Indochina War, the Algerian War and the Suez crisis.-Early life:Jacques Massu was born in Châlons-sur-Marne to a family of military officers; his father was an artillery officer...
, leader of the 10th D.B. (Paratrooper Division), in charge during the Battle of Algiers, were to crush the insurgency by whatever means necessary. They threw hundreds of prisoners into the sea, from the port of Algiers or by helicopter death flights. Since the corpses sometimes came back up to the surface, they began to pour concrete on their feet. These victims were known as "Bigeard's shrimps" ("crevettes Bigeard"). French military chaplain
Military chaplain
A military chaplain is a chaplain who ministers to soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and other members of the military. In many countries, chaplains also minister to the family members of military personnel, to civilian noncombatants working for military organizations and to civilians within the...
s quieted the troubled military's consciences. One of them, Louis Delarue, wrote a text distributed to all units:
"If, in the general interest, the law allows a murderer to be killed, why should it be seen as monstrous to submit a delinquent who has been recognized as such, and is therefore liable to be put to death, to an interrogation which might be painful but whose only object is, thanks to the revelations he may make about his accomplices and leaders, to protect the innocent? Exceptional circumstances call for exceptional measures."
In 1958 General Salan set up special military internment centers for PAM rebels. The Minister of Interior declared a state of emergency
State of emergency
A state of emergency is a governmental declaration that may suspend some normal functions of the executive, legislative and judicial powers, alert citizens to change their normal behaviours, or order government agencies to implement emergency preparedness plans. It can also be used as a rationale...
, while the army engaged in a "struggle against the terrorism" of the FLN. Special powers were devolved to the military and were returned to civilian powers only in September 1959, when Charles de Gaulle
Charles de Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969....
made his speech on self-determination
Self-determination
Self-determination is the principle in international law that nations have the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status with no external compulsion or external interference...
. General Salan refused to apply the Geneva Conventions, ratified by France in 1951, because the detainees were not POWs. The civil authorities had different attitudes concerning the use of torture by the military. The IGAME (Inspecteur général en mission extraordinaire) of both Oran
Oran
Oran is a major city on the northwestern Mediterranean coast of Algeria, and the second largest city of the country.It is the capital of the Oran Province . The city has a population of 759,645 , while the metropolitan area has a population of approximately 1,500,000, making it the second largest...
and 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...
chose to avoid the issue, whereas the IGAME of Constantinois, Maurice Papon
Maurice Papon
Maurice Papon was a French civil servant, industrial leader and Gaullist politician, who was convicted for crimes against humanity for his participation in the deportation of over 1600 Jews during World War II when he was secretary general for police of the Prefecture of Bordeaux.Papon also...
(who died in 2007, after having been convicted for crimes against humanity for his role under Vichy
Vichy France
Vichy France, Vichy Regime, or Vichy Government, are common terms used to describe the government of France that collaborated with the Axis powers from July 1940 to August 1944. This government succeeded the Third Republic and preceded the Provisional Government of the French Republic...
), was actively involved in repression (Branche, 2004).
On 5 January 1960 the newspaper Le Monde
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
published a summary of the report on the ICRC's seventh mission to Algeria. "Numerous cases of ill-treatment and torture are still being reported", the article disclosed, giving the ICRC's legitimacy to the many previously documented cases. A colonel in the French police force had told the delegates, "The struggle against terrorism makes it necessary to resort to certain questioning techniques as the only way of saving human life and avoiding new attacks." However, in practice, torture was not used for short-term information and immediate action. The aim of torture was not to make people talk, but to affect the group as a whole. Torture was a full part of psychological warfare methods as theorized by Salan and others (Branche, 2004).
It was found much later that Gaston Gosselin, a member of the Ministry of Justice who was responsible for internment issues in metropolitan France, had leaked the report to the journalists of Le Monde. He had to resign a few months later, and the ICRC was prohibited for a year from undertaking any mission to Algeria.
Other testimony and descriptions
Henri AllegHenri Alleg
Henri Alleg , born Henri Salem, is a French-Algerian journalist, director of the "Alger républicain" newspaper, and a member of the French Communist Party...
, 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 of 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 ....
(PCA), who himself had been tortured, denounced it in La Question (Minuit, 1958), which sold 60,000 copies in one day. The title of his book referred to the Inquisition
Inquisition
The Inquisition, Inquisitio Haereticae Pravitatis , was the "fight against heretics" by several institutions within the justice-system of the Roman Catholic Church. It started in the 12th century, with the introduction of torture in the persecution of heresy...
, who was said to put people "to the question." Alleg's book detailed the various torture methods, among which the famous gégène, an electricity generator initially used for telephone purposes, but also sleep deprivation
Sleep deprivation
Sleep deprivation is the condition of not having enough sleep; it can be either chronic or acute. A chronic sleep-restricted state can cause fatigue, daytime sleepiness, clumsiness and weight loss or weight gain. It adversely affects the brain and cognitive function. Few studies have compared the...
, 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...
s, etc. Beside torturing actual suspects, the French military also buried alive
Premature burial
Premature burial, also known as live burial, burial alive, or vivisepulture, means to be buried while still alive. Animals or humans may be buried alive accidentally or intentionally...
old men.
Benoist Rey's book Les égorgeurs was also censored in April 1961. In the same year, he denounced torture as a "habitual repressive method, systematic, official, and massive."
According an article of Verité Liberté published in 1961, "In the Ameziane farm, a CRA (Centre de renseignement et d'action, Information and Action Center) of Constantine
Constantine, Algeria
Constantine is the capital of Constantine Province in north-eastern Algeria. It was the capital of the same-named French département until 1962. Slightly inland, it is about 80 kilometres from the Mediterranean coast, on the banks of Rhumel river...
it is practiced on "industrial scale". The suspects were arrested during raids, after having been denounced. Suspects were divided into two groups, those immediately interrogated and those who would be forced to wait a bit. The latter were deprived of food for from two to eight days in a blatant violation of the 1949 Geneva Conventions."
According to historian R. Branche, torture would begin with the systematic stripping of the victim. Beating was combined with many different techniques, among them hanging by the feet or hands, water torture
Water torture
-Forced ingestion:In this form of water torture, water is forced down the throat and into the stomach. It was used as a legal torture and execution method by the courts in France in the 17th and 18th century, was employed against Americans and Chinese during World War II by the Japanese, and was...
, torture by electric shock, rape. According to "Verité Liberté" 's description:
"The interrogatoriesInterrogationInterrogation is interviewing as commonly employed by officers of the police, military, and Intelligence agencies with the goal of extracting a confession or obtaining information. Subjects of interrogation are often the suspects, victims, or witnesses of a crime...
is done in accordance with the provisional guide of the intelligence agent (Guide provisoire de l'officier de renseignement, OR), chapter IV: first, the officer questions the prisoner in the "traditional" manner, hitting him with fist and kicking him. Then follows torture: hanging..., water tortureWater torture-Forced ingestion:In this form of water torture, water is forced down the throat and into the stomach. It was used as a legal torture and execution method by the courts in France in the 17th and 18th century, was employed against Americans and Chinese during World War II by the Japanese, and was...
..., electricity..., burning (using cigarettes, etc.)... Cases of prisoners who were driven insane were frequent... Between interrogation sessions, the suspects are imprisoned without foodStarvationStarvation is a severe deficiency in caloric energy, nutrient and vitamin intake. It is the most extreme form of malnutrition. In humans, prolonged starvation can cause permanent organ damage and eventually, death...
in cells, some of which were small enough to impede lying down. We must point out that some of them were very young teenagers and others old men of 75, 80 years or more."
According to the article of "Vérité Liberté", the end of these torture sessions was either liberation (often the case for women and for those who could pay), internment, or "disappearance." "The capacity of this center, opened in 1957, is of 500 to 600 persons.... Since its constitution, it has "controlled" (less than 8 days of prison) 108,175 persons; filed 11,518 Algerians as nationalist activists...; kept for duration of more than 8 days 7,363 persons; interned to Hamma [an internment camp] 789 suspects."
The controversy during the war
The systematic use of torture created a national controversy which has had lasting effects on French and Algerian society. As early as 2 November 1954, Catholic writer François MauriacFrançois Mauriac
François Mauriac was a French author; member of the Académie française ; laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature . He was awarded the Grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur .-Biography:...
called against the use of torture in L'Express
L'Express (France)
L'Express is a French weekly news magazine. When founded in 1953 during the First Indochina War, it was modelled on the US magazine TIME.-History:...
in an article titled Surtout, ne pas torturer ("Above all, do not torture.").
Two important officials, one civilian and another military, resigned because of the use of torture. The first was Paul Teitgen, former General Secretary of the Algiers Police, who had been himself tortured by the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
. He resigned on 12 September 1957, in protest against the massive use of torture and extrajudicial killings
Extrajudicial punishment
Extrajudicial punishment is punishment by the state or some other official authority without the permission of a court or legal authority. The existence of extrajudicial punishment is considered proof that some governments will break their own legal code if deemed necessary.-Nature:Extrajudicial...
ordered by generals Bigeard and Massu. Under pressure from the left-wing opposition to the war and the use of torture, including the anti-colonialist 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...
(PCF), the government, then led by Guy Mollet
Guy Mollet
Guy Mollet was a French Socialist politician. He led the French Section of the Workers' International party from 1946 to 1969 and was Prime Minister in 1956–1957.-Early life and World War II:...
(SFIO), created a Commission of Safeguard of Rights and Individual Liberties, composed of various personalities named by the government, which gave the public its report in September 1957: according to it, torture was a frequent practice in Algeria. The other was General de Bollardière
Jacques Pâris de Bollardière
Jacques Pâris de Bollardière was a French Army general, famous for his non-violent positions during the 60s.-Early life:...
, who was the only army official to denounce the use of torture. He was put in charge of military arrests and then had to resign.
Torture was denounced during the war by many French left-wing intellectuals, members or not of the PCF, which maintained an anti-colonialist line. Confronted by the left-wing opposition, prime minister Guy Mollet
Guy Mollet
Guy Mollet was a French Socialist politician. He led the French Section of the Workers' International party from 1946 to 1969 and was Prime Minister in 1956–1957.-Early life and World War II:...
, general secretary of the SFIO from 1946 to 1969, ordered in April 1957 a "Commission de sauvegarde des droits et des libertés individuels" (Commission for the protection of rights and individual freedoms), composed of personalities named by the government, to investigate the issue. However, the main aim was in fact to absolve the French army of accusations and to gain time (Raphaëlle Branche, 2004).
Henri Alleg
Henri Alleg
Henri Alleg , born Henri Salem, is a French-Algerian journalist, director of the "Alger républicain" newspaper, and a member of the French Communist Party...
, 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 of 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 ....
(PCA), who himself had been tortured, denounced it in 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...
(Minuit, 1958). Along with La Gangrène, by Bachir Boumaza, and Italian Communist
Italian Communist Party
The Italian Communist Party was a communist political party in Italy.The PCI was founded as Communist Party of Italy on 21 January 1921 in Livorno, by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party . Amadeo Bordiga and Antonio Gramsci led the split. Outlawed during the Fascist regime, the party played...
Gillo Pontecorvo
Gillo Pontecorvo
Gillo Pontecorvo was an Italian filmmaker. He worked as a film director for more than a decade before his best known film La battaglia di Algeri was released...
's 1966 film on The Battle of Algiers
The Battle of Algiers (film)
The Battle of Algiers is a 1966 war film based on occurrences during the Algerian War against French colonial occupation in North Africa, the most prominent being the titular Battle of Algiers. It was directed by Gillo Pontecorvo...
, Alleg's book was immediately censored in France
Censorship in France
France has a long history of governmental censorship, particularly in the 16th to 18th centuries, but today freedom of press is guaranteed by the French Constitution and instances of governmental censorship are relatively limited and isolated....
. Torture was also evoked during the trial of ALN activist Djamila Boupacha, defended by lawyer Gisèle Halimi
Gisèle Halimi
Gisèle Halimi, born Zeiza Gisèle Élise Taïeb in 1927, is a French-Tunisian lawyer, feminist activist, and essayist.-Career:Born in La Goulette, to a Jewish mother and father, she was educated at a French lycée in Tunis, and then attended the University of Paris, graduating in law and philosophy...
. A 1977 film by Laurent Heynemann adapted the book, and also treated of the 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...
affair. Writer Albert Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
, a pied-noir
Pied-noir
Pied-Noir , plural Pieds-Noirs, pronounced , is a term referring to French citizens of various origins who lived in French Algeria before independence....
and famous existentialist, tried unsuccessfully to persuade both sides to at least leave civilians alone, writing editorials against the use of torture in Combat
Combat (newspaper)
Combat was a French newspaper created during the Second World War. Originally a clandestine newspaper of the Resistance, it was headed by Albert Ollivier, Jean Bloch-Michel, Georges Altschuler and, most of all, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, André Malraux, Emmanuel Mounier, and then Raymond Aron...
newspaper. Other famous opponents of torture included Robert Bonnaud
Robert Bonnaud
Robert Bonnaud is an anti-colonialist historian and professor of history at the Paris VII Jussieu University....
, who published on counsel of his friend Pierre Vidal-Naquet
Pierre Vidal-Naquet
Pierre Emmanuel Vidal-Naquet was a French historian who began teaching at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in 1969....
an article in 1956 in L'Esprit
Esprit (magazine)
Esprit is a French literary magazine. Founded in October 1932 by Emmanuel Mounier, it was the principal review of personalist intellectuals of the time. From 1957 to 1976, it was directed by Jean-Marie Domenach. Paul Thibaud directed it from 1977 to 1989. The philosopher Paul Ricoeur often...
, a personalist review founded by Emmanuel Mounier
Emmanuel Mounier
Emmanuel Mounier was a French philosopher.Mounier was the guiding spirit in the French Personalist movement, and founder and director of Esprit, the magazine which was the organ of the movement. Mounier, who was the child of peasants, was a brilliant scholar at the Sorbonne...
(1905–1950). Bonnaud was later imprisoned, in June 1961, on a charge of support to the FLN. Pierre Vidal-Naquet, one of the many signatories to the Manifeste des 121 against torture, wrote a book, L'Affaire Audin (1957), and, as a historian, would continue to work on the Algerian War all his life. Beside Vidal-Naquet, famous signatories of the Manifeste des 121, published after the 1960 Barricades Week, included Robert Antelme
Robert Antelme
Robert Antelme was a French writer. During the Second World War he was involved in the French Resistance and deported....
, an Auschwitz survivor and writer, Simone de Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir
Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir, often shortened to Simone de Beauvoir , was a French existentialist philosopher, public intellectual, and social theorist. She wrote novels, essays, biographies, an autobiography in several volumes, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and...
, Maurice Blanchot
Maurice Blanchot
Maurice Blanchot was a French writer, philosopher, and literary theorist. His work had a strong influence on post-structuralist philosophers such as Jacques Derrida.-Works:...
, Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...
, André Breton
André Breton
André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....
, Hubert Damisch
Hubert Damisch
Born in 1928, Hubert Damisch is a French philosopher specialised in aesthetics and art history, and professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris from 1975 until 1996....
, Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Donnadieu, better known as Marguerite Duras was a French writer and film director.-Background:...
, Daniel Guérin
Daniel Guérin
Daniel Guérin was a French libertarian and author, best known for his work Anarchism: From Theory to Practice, as well as his collection No Gods No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism in which he collected writings on the idea and movement it inspired, from the first writings of Max Stirner in the...
, Robert Jaulin
Robert Jaulin
Robert Jaulin was a French ethnologist. After several journeys to Chad, between 1954 and 1959, among the Sara people, he published in 1967 La Mort Sara in which he exposed the various initiation rites through which he had passed himself, and closely analyzed Sara geomancy...
, Claude Lanzmann
Claude Lanzmann
Claude Lanzmann is a French filmmaker and professor at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.-Biography:Lanzmann attended the Lycée Blaise-Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand. He joined the French resistance at the age of 18 and fought in Auvergne...
, Robert Lapoujade, Henri Lefebvre
Henri Lefebvre
Henri Lefebvre was a French sociologist, Marxist intellectual, and philosopher, best known for his work on dialectics, Marxism, everyday life, cities, and space.-Biography:...
, Michel Leiris
Michel Leiris
Julien Michel Leiris was a French surrealist writer and ethnographer.-Biography:...
, Jérôme Lindon, editor of the Minuit
Les Éditions de Minuit
Les Éditions de Minuit is a French publishing house which has its origins in the French Resistance of World War II and still publishes books today.-History:...
edition house, François Maspero
François Maspero
François Maspero ) is a French author and journalist, best known as a publisher of leftist books in the 1970s. He has also worked as a translator, translating the works of Joseph Conrad and John Reed, author of Ten Days that Shook the World, among others...
, another editor, Théodore Monod
Théodore Monod
Théodore André Monod was a French naturalist, explorer, and humanist scholar.-Exploration:...
, Maurice Nadeau
Maurice Nadeau
Maurice Nadeau is a French writer and editor. He was born in Paris. One of his well-known works, translated into several languages, is the Histoire du surréalisme , published in French in 1944 and in English 21 years later, translated by Richard Howard. Nadeau turned 100 in May 2011.- External...
, Jean-François Revel
Jean-François Revel
Jean-François Revel was a French politician, journalist, author, prolific philosopher and member of the Académie française from June 1998...
, Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet , was a French writer and filmmaker. He was, along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Claude Simon, one of the figures most associated with the Nouveau Roman trend. Alain Robbe-Grillet was elected a member of the Académie française on March 25, 2004, succeeding Maurice...
, founder of the nouveau roman
Nouveau roman
The nouveau roman is a type of 1950s French novel that diverged from classical literary genres. Émile Henriot coined the title in an article in the popular French newspaper Le Monde on May 22, 1957 to describe certain writers who experimented with style in each novel, creating an essentially new...
, Françoise Sagan
Françoise Sagan
Françoise Sagan – real name Françoise Quoirez – was a French playwright, novelist, and screenwriter. Hailed as "a charming little monster" by François Mauriac on the front page of Le Figaro, Sagan was known for works with strong romantic themes involving wealthy and disillusioned bourgeois...
, Nathalie Sarraute
Nathalie Sarraute
Nathalie Sarraute was a French lawyer and writer of Russian Jewish origin.-Life:Sarraute was born Natalia/Natacha Tcherniak in Ivanovo , 300 km north-east of Moscow in 1900 , and, following...
, 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...
, Claude Simon
Claude Simon
Claude Simon was a French novelist and the 1985 Nobel Laureate in Literature. He was born in Antananarivo, Madagascar, and died in Paris, France....
, Jean Bruller
Jean Bruller
Jean Marcel Bruller was a French writer and illustrator who co-founded Les Éditions de Minuit with Pierre de Lescure and Yvonne Paraf. During the World War II occupation of northern France he joined the Resistance and his texts were published under the pseudonym Vercors.Several of his novels have...
(Vercors), Jean-Pierre Vernant
Jean-Pierre Vernant
Jean-Pierre Vernant was a French historian and anthropologist, specialist in ancient Greece. Influenced by Claude Lévi-Strauss, Vernant developed a structuralist approach to Greek myth, tragedy, and society which would itself be influential among classical scholars...
, etc.
According to Henri Alleg, "in reality, the base of the problem was this unjust war itself. From the moment one starts a colonial war, i.e. a war to submit a people to one's will, one can issue all the laws one wants, but they will always be violated."
Torture and the OAS
Pierre Vidal-NaquetPierre Vidal-Naquet
Pierre Emmanuel Vidal-Naquet was a French historian who began teaching at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in 1969....
(1930–2006), one of the leaders of the Comité 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...
, had denounced the systematic use of torture by the 10e D.P. (10th Paratrooper Division), commanded by General Massu
Jacques Massu
Jacques Émile Massu was a French general who fought in World War II, the First Indochina War, the Algerian War and the Suez crisis.-Early life:Jacques Massu was born in Châlons-sur-Marne to a family of military officers; his father was an artillery officer...
, during the 1957 Battle of Algiers
Battle of Algiers (1957)
The Battle of Algiers was a campaign of guerrilla warfare carried out by the National Liberation Front against the French Algerian authorities from late 1956 to late 1957. The conflict began as a series of hit-and-run attacks by the FLN against the French Police in Algiers. Violence escalated...
. But he also denounced the non-systematic use of torture, mainly beatings, by the French Army on members of the Organisation de l'armée secrète (OAS), a far-right terrorist group, which engaged after the March 1962 Évian 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 a campaign of bombings directed against the civilian population in Algeria. He wrote a letter in L'Esprit
Esprit (magazine)
Esprit is a French literary magazine. Founded in October 1932 by Emmanuel Mounier, it was the principal review of personalist intellectuals of the time. From 1957 to 1976, it was directed by Jean-Marie Domenach. Paul Thibaud directed it from 1977 to 1989. The philosopher Paul Ricoeur often...
in May 1962:
"Have OAS activists or sympathizers been tortured during these last months in Algeria?... far-right weekly newspapers, La Nation françaiseLa Nation françaiseLa Nation française was a French monarchist weekly influenced by Charles Maurras, the founder of the Action française movement...
, RivarolRivarol (magazine)- External links :* ...
, Carrefour have started to publish articles on crimes committed against supporters of French Algeria. Articles which are sometime strange: in the 1 November 1961 issue of Carrefour, for example, M. Vinciguerra, who was, with Kovacs, one of the torturers in the Villa des Sources, offered his indignation, and on the next page we could read the prose of ... Colonel TrinquierRoger TrinquierRoger Trinquier was a French Army officer during World War II, the First Indochina War and the Algerian War, serving mainly in airborne and Special forces units...
.... We certainly do not forget that torture is a system that has been established in Algeria by policemen and military men of whom many are today members of the OAS. But we do not forget either that torture is a gangreneGangreneGangrene is a serious and potentially life-threatening condition that arises when a considerable mass of body tissue dies . This may occur after an injury or infection, or in people suffering from any chronic health problem affecting blood circulation. The primary cause of gangrene is reduced blood...
which largely overhauls the frame of colonial war. Whoever are the victims, these torturers speak and act in our name; we do not have the right to allow, by our silence, the belief that we are their accomplices. The half-voluntary ignorance, the cowardy indifference, in which readers of the FigaroLe FigaroLe Figaro is a French daily newspaper founded in 1826 and published in Paris. It is one of three French newspapers of record, with Le Monde and Libération, and is the oldest newspaper in France. It is also the second-largest national newspaper in France after Le Parisien and before Le Monde, but...
have basked for years do not justify themselves in any case, whatever may be the ensign with which one would pretend to cover them, and anti-fascismAnti-fascismAnti-fascism is the opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals, such as that of the resistance movements during World War II. The related term antifa derives from Antifaschismus, which is German for anti-fascism; it refers to individuals and groups on the left of the political...
least of all.... Another few remarks impose themselves:
- It is striking to observe that these tortures, more than the "scientific" technologies applied during the Battle of Algiers, seem to belong in most of the cases to beatings (passages à tabac) disproportionately aggravated by the responsible policeman.
- ... any symmetry with the 1957 Battle of Algier would however be absurd; it was the whole of the 10th D.P. which, in 1957, controlled, arrested, tortured. The team of the "Tagarins" [barracks] remains to the contrary isolated.... To our knowledge, nobody has accused the units charged with controlling Bab-el-Oued of torturing....
This having been said, there is no need to dissimulate against the truth; such facts are scandalous and intolerable. They also proceed from a ruthless logic. It was difficult for an army and a police force which has for years tortured Muslims to abandon such methods, on the pretext that the opponent is no longer the same. The struggle against the OAS must be directed with ruthlessness, certainly, but it is not with teams of torturers, even less with courts-martialCourt-martialA court-martial is a military court. A court-martial is empowered to determine the guilt of members of the armed forces subject to military law, and, if the defendant is found guilty, to decide upon punishment.Most militaries maintain a court-martial system to try cases in which a breach of...
that we will arrest what J.-M. DomenachJean-Marie DomenachJean-Marie Domenach was a French writer and intellectual. He was noted as a left-wing and Catholic thinker.He took over in 1957 the editorship of Esprit, the literary and political journal of personalism founded in 1945 by Emmanuel Mounier and continued from 1950 to 1957 by Albert Béguin...
called a "clandestine fascismFascismFascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
." There still remain other methods. The arrest of Generals SalanRaoul SalanRaoul Albin Louis Salan was a French Army general and the fourth French commanding general during the First Indochina War. Salan was one of four generals who organized the 1961 Algiers Putsch operation and then founded the Organisation de l'armée secrète....
and JouhaudEdmond JouhaudEdmond Jouhaud was one of four French generals who briefly staged a putsch in Algeria in April 1961. As Army General he had been the Inspector General of the Air Force in French North Africa. After the failure of the putsch, he became the deputy of Raoul Salan in the Organisation de l'Armée Secrète...
[leaders of the OAS] has just proved it.
Pierre-Vidal Naquet, Member of the Bureau of the Comité Audin.
PS: I do not want to be unfair towards all these right-wing men: some have been able to do their self-criticism and to recognize, as did Philippe ArièsPhilippe ArièsPhilippe Ariès was an important French medievalist and historian of the family and childhood, in the style of Georges Duby. Ariès has written many books on the common daily life. His most prominent works regarded the change in the western attitudes towards death.Ariès regarded himself as a...
in La nation française, that they had erred in their judgment against the campaign against torture.
In metropolitan France
The war also affected metropolitan FranceMetropolitan France
Metropolitan France is the part of France located in Europe. It can also be described as mainland France or as the French mainland and the island of Corsica...
. Little firm evidence exists about the use of torture by either side, but there are instances where French police or police auxiliaries may have engaged in torture as well as murder of FLN agents or protesters, and likewise the FLN may have used torture in eliminating opponents and in collecting funds among Algerian expatriates in France.
After being involved in early repression in Constantine, Algeria
Constantine, Algeria
Constantine is the capital of Constantine Province in north-eastern Algeria. It was the capital of the same-named French département until 1962. Slightly inland, it is about 80 kilometres from the Mediterranean coast, on the banks of Rhumel river...
as prefect, Maurice Papon
Maurice Papon
Maurice Papon was a French civil servant, industrial leader and Gaullist politician, who was convicted for crimes against humanity for his participation in the deportation of over 1600 Jews during World War II when he was secretary general for police of the Prefecture of Bordeaux.Papon also...
was named head of the Parisian police
Prefecture of Police
The Prefecture of Police , headed by the Prefect of Police , is an agency of the Government of France which provides the police force for the city of Paris and the surrounding three suburban départements of Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis, and Val-de-Marne...
on 14 March 1958. Tensions increased after 25 August 1958, when an FLN guerilla offensive in Paris killed three policemen on boulevard de l'Hôpital in the XIIIe arrondissement
XIIIe arrondissement
The 13th arrondissement of Paris is one of the 20 arrondissements of the capital city of France....
and another in front of the cartoucherie de Vincennes, leading to arrestations and internments of Algerians suspected of supporting the FLN. In 1960 Papon created the Auxiliary Police Force (FPA - Force de police auxiliaire), which was made up of 600 Algerians by autumn 1960 and operated in areas densely populated by Algerians in Paris and its suburbs. While incompletely evidenced, the strongest presumption of torture by the FPA pertains to two locations in the XIIIe arrondissement
XIIIe arrondissement
The 13th arrondissement of Paris is one of the 20 arrondissements of the capital city of France....
. Further escalation occurred from August to October 1961, as the FLN resumed bombings against the French police and killed 11 policemen and injured 17 (in Paris and its suburbs). This culminated on 17 October 1961, when the French police
French National Police
The National Police , formerly the Sûreté Nationale, is one of two national police forces and the main civil law enforcement agency of France, with primary jurisdiction in cities and large towns. The other main agency is the military Gendarmerie, with primary jurisdiction in smaller towns and rural...
repressed a demonstration
Demonstration (people)
A demonstration or street protest is action by a mass group or collection of groups of people in favor of a political or other cause; it normally consists of walking in a mass march formation and either beginning with or meeting at a designated endpoint, or rally, to hear speakers.Actions such as...
of 30,000 Algerians who were ostensibly protesting against a de facto curfew imposed on them by the prefecture of police, though the FLN had planned the demonstration as potential provocation
Provocation (legal)
In criminal law, provocation is a possible defense by excuse or exculpation alleging a sudden or temporary loss of control as a response to another's provocative conduct sufficient to justify an acquittal, a mitigated sentence or a conviction for a lesser charge...
as well. While estimates differ, the number of dead officially acknowledged (in French government reports and statements of 1998) is 40 to 48. Some protesters may have been tortured before being killed and their bodies being thrown in the Seine
Seine
The Seine is a -long river and an important commercial waterway within the Paris Basin in the north of France. It rises at Saint-Seine near Dijon in northeastern France in the Langres plateau, flowing through Paris and into the English Channel at Le Havre . It is navigable by ocean-going vessels...
.
From 1954 onward, the FLN sought to establish a politico-military organization among the 300,000 Algerians residing in France; by 1958, it had overwhelmed Messali Hadj
Messali Hadj
Ahmed Ben Messali Hadj was an Algerian nationalist politician dedicated to the independence of his homeland from France...
's Algerian National Movement
Algerian National Movement
The Algerian National Movement was an organization founded to counteract the efforts of the Front de Libération Nationale . It was supported and, some say, partly financed by the French who used it to validate the claim that the FLN was not the sole representative of Algerian desires.It was...
, despite the latter's popularity with Algerian expatriates at the onset of the war. Torture was occasionally used alongside beatings and killings to eliminate opponents of the FLN, and the death toll of this internecine violence within France alone was approximately 4,000. Subsequently, the FLN used this organization to obtain a "revolutionary tax" that FLN leader Ali Haroun estimates amounted to "80% of the [financial] resources of the rebellion"; this was partly done through extortion
Extortion
Extortion is a criminal offence which occurs when a person unlawfully obtains either money, property or services from a person, entity, or institution, through coercion. Refraining from doing harm is sometimes euphemistically called protection. Extortion is commonly practiced by organized crime...
, in some instances by means of beatings and torture.
An important issue within metropolitan France was public opinion, given that a substantial native population held a formally anticolonialist ideology (Communists, in particular) or was debating the war. The parties fought on this front too. The Prefecture of Police denied using torture or undue violence. Conversely, informers reported an organized campaign to implicate the FPA such that FLN "leaders and carefully chosen militants from the workers' residence in Vitry
Vitry-sur-Seine
Vitry-sur-Seine is a commune in the southeastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris.-Name:Vitry-sur-Seine was originally called simply Vitry. The name Vitry comes from Medieval Latin Vitriacum, and before that Victoriacum, meaning "estate of Victorius", a...
- 45, rue Rondenay - have been tasked with declaring in cafés and public places that they have suffered exactions, have been robbed of a pocketbook, a watch [...] and were victims of violence by the 'Algerian police'." A note diffused by the French arm of the FLN to its branches in September 1959 specifically focused on making claims of torture to influence the legal system:
For those of our brothers who will be arrested, it is important to specify what attitude they must adopt. Regardless of the way that the Algerian patriot is treated by police, he must in all circumstances, when presented to the prosecutor state that he has been beaten and tortured... He must never hesitate to accuse the police of torture and beatings. This greatly influences the judge and courts.
Amnesties
No one was brought to justice for crimes committed during the war, not even for the case of Maurice AudinMaurice 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...
, a young communist student arrested and tortured to death. The case had been specifically documented at the time by the "Comité Audin", to which historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet
Pierre Vidal-Naquet
Pierre Emmanuel Vidal-Naquet was a French historian who began teaching at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in 1969....
belonged.
The first amnesty was imposed in 1962 by President Charles de Gaulle
Charles de Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969....
, by decree, preempting a parliamentary discussion that might have denied immunity to men like General Paul Aussaresses
Paul Aussaresses
Paul Aussaresses is a retired French Army general, who fought during World War II, the First Indochina War and Algerian War...
, Massu's right-hand man.
The second amnesty was enacted in 1968 by the National Assembly
French National Assembly
The French National Assembly is the lower house of the bicameral Parliament of France under the Fifth Republic. The upper house is the Senate ....
, which gave blanket amnesty to all acts committed during the Algerian war.
The OAS members were given amnesty by president François Mitterrand
François Mitterrand
François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was the 21st President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra, serving from 1981 until 1995. He is the longest-serving President of France and, as leader of the Socialist Party, the only figure from the left so far elected President...
(PS
Socialist Party (France)
The Socialist Party is a social-democratic political party in France and the largest party of the French centre-left. It is one of the two major contemporary political parties in France, along with the center-right Union for a Popular Movement...
), and a general amnesty for all war crime
War crime
War crimes are serious violations of the laws applicable in armed conflict giving rise to individual criminal responsibility...
s was declared in 1982. Pierre Vidal-Naquet, among others, has qualified it as a "shame".
The archives of the war were closed to the public for thirty years, a period extendable for up to 60 years for those documents that were liable to compromise a person's privacy or state security. It was only in 1995-96 that new works began to reveal information.
2000s controversies
General Jacques MassuJacques Massu
Jacques Émile Massu was a French general who fought in World War II, the First Indochina War, the Algerian War and the Suez crisis.-Early life:Jacques Massu was born in Châlons-sur-Marne to a family of military officers; his father was an artillery officer...
, military chief of Algier, had defended the use of torture in his 1972 book, The True Battle of Algiers (La vraie bataille d'Alger). He later declared to Le Monde in 2000 that "torture was not necessary and that we could have decided not to use it".
Two days after the visit to France of Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika
Abdelaziz Bouteflika
Abdelaziz Bouteflika is the ninth President of Algeria. He has been in office since 1999. He continued emergency rule until 24 February 2011, and presided over the end of the bloody Algerian Civil War in 2002...
, Louisette Ighilahriz, a former Armée de Libération Nationale
Armée de Libération Nationale
The Armée de Libération Nationale or ALN was the armed wing of the nationalist Front de Libération National during the Algerian War of Independence...
activist, published her testimony in Le Monde on 20 June 2000. At the age of twenty she had been captured in September 1957, during the Battle of Algiers, and raped and tortured for three months. She named General Massu as the responsible of the French military at the time. Massu, 94 years old, acknowledged Ighilahriz's testimony and declared to 'Le Monde' that "Torture isn't indispensable in times of war, and one can very well do without it. When l look back on Algeria, it saddens me... One could have done things differently." To the contrary, General Bigeard (then Colonel) called her remarks a "tissue of lies", while Aussaresses justified it
General Aussaresses' 2000 confession and condemnation
General Paul AussaressesPaul Aussaresses
Paul Aussaresses is a retired French Army general, who fought during World War II, the First Indochina War and Algerian War...
admitted in his 2001 book, "Services spéciaux, Algérie 1955–1957", to the systematic use of torture during the war. He confessed to having himself engaged in torture and having himself illegally executed 24 Algerians, under the orders of Guy Mollet
Guy Mollet
Guy Mollet was a French Socialist politician. He led the French Section of the Workers' International party from 1946 to 1969 and was Prime Minister in 1956–1957.-Early life and World War II:...
's government. He also acknowledged the assassination of lawyer Ali Boumendjel and head of FLN in Algiers, and Larbi Ben M'Hidi
Larbi Ben M'hidi
Mohammed Larbi Ben M'hidi ), commonly known as Larbi Ben M'hidi or simply as Ben M'hidi, was a prominent Algerian leader during the war of independence. He was captured by French paratroopers in February 1957 , while supervising the guerilla actions of the FLN in the Battle of Algiers...
, which had been covered up as "suicides." For justifying the use of torture, he was condemned in court, and stripped of his army rank and his Legion of honor
Légion d'honneur
The Legion of Honour, or in full the National Order of the Legion of Honour is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the Consulat which succeeded to the First Republic, on 19 May 1802...
.
According to Aussaresses, Massu followed on a daily basis the list of "interrogated" prisoners and of "accidents" which occurred during these torture sessions. Aussaresses said that it had been directly ordered by Guy Mollet
Guy Mollet
Guy Mollet was a French Socialist politician. He led the French Section of the Workers' International party from 1946 to 1969 and was Prime Minister in 1956–1957.-Early life and World War II:...
's government. He notably declared:
"I have given daily accounts of my activity to my direct superior, General Massu, who informed the Chief of Staff. It would have been possible for the political or military authority to put an end to it at any moment."
He also wrote:
"Concerning the use of torture, it was tolerated, if not recommended. François MitterrandFrançois MitterrandFrançois Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was the 21st President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra, serving from 1981 until 1995. He is the longest-serving President of France and, as leader of the Socialist Party, the only figure from the left so far elected President...
, the Minister of Justice, had, as a matter of fact, an emissary near [General] Massu in the person of judge Jean Bérard who covered us and knew exactly what was going on at night."
However, historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet
Pierre Vidal-Naquet
Pierre Emmanuel Vidal-Naquet was a French historian who began teaching at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in 1969....
said, concerning Mitterrand, who was President of France from 1981 to 1995, that "when he was Justice Minister in 1956-57, during the Algerian War, he has been not as bad as had been claimed. He had under his charge only civil justice, and Reliquet (the public prosecutor in Algiers and who was a liberal [i.e. "liberal" in French usually refers to economic liberalism
Economic liberalism
Economic liberalism is the ideological belief in giving all people economic freedom, and as such granting people with more basis to control their own lives and make their own mistakes. It is an economic philosophy that supports and promotes individual liberty and choice in economic matters and...
Following Aussaresses' revelations, which proved that torture had been ordered by the highest levels of the French state hierarchy, Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...
sent a letter to President Jacques Chirac
Jacques Chirac
Jacques René Chirac is a French politician who served as President of France from 1995 to 2007. He previously served as Prime Minister of France from 1974 to 1976 and from 1986 to 1988 , and as Mayor of Paris from 1977 to 1995.After completing his studies of the DEA's degree at the...
(RPR
Rally for the Republic
The Rally for the Republic , was a French right-wing political party. Originating from the Union of Democrats for the Republic , it was founded by Jacques Chirac in 1976 and presented itself as the heir of Gaullism...
) to indict Aussaresses for war crimes, declaring that, despite past amnesties, such crimes, which may also have been crimes against humanity, may not be amnestied. The Ligue des droits de l'homme (LDH, Human Rights League) deposed a complaint against him for "apology of war crimes", as Paul Aussaresses justified the use of torture, claiming it had saved lives. He was condemned to a 7,500 Euros fine by the Tribunal de grande instance court of Paris, while Plon
Plon (publisher)
Plon is a French book publishing company, founded in 1852 by Henri Plon and his two brothers.The Plon family were Walloons coming from Nivelle, France. One of their ancestors is probably the Danish typographer Jehan Plon who lived at the end of the 16th century.-History:The Editions Plon were...
and Perrin, two editing houses who had published his book in which he made an apology of the use of torture, were sentenced each to a 15,000 Euros fine. The judgement was confirmed by the Court of Appeal in April 2003. The Court of Cassation
Court of Cassation (France)
The French Supreme Court of Judicature is France's court of last resort having jurisdiction over all matters triable in the judicial stream but only scope of review to determine a miscarriage of justice or certify a question of law based solely on points of law...
rejected the intercession in December 2004. The Court of Cassation declared in its judgment that "freedom to inform, which is the basis of freedom of expression" does not lead to "accompany the exposure of facts ... with commentaries justifying acts contrary to human dignity and universally reproved", "nor to glorify its author." Aussaresses had written in his book: "torture became necessary when emergency imposed itself."
However, the Court of Cassation rejected the complaint which had been deposed against him on charges of torture, claiming they were amnestied.
Bigeard's attitude
General Marcel BigeardMarcel Bigeard
Marcel "Bruno" Bigeard was a French military officer who fought in World War II, Indochina and Algeria. He was one of the commanders in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and is thought by many to have been a dominating influence on French 'unconventional' warfare thinking from that time onwards...
, who had denied employing torture for forty years, finally also admitted that it had been used, although he claimed that he personally had not engaged in the practice. Bigeard, who qualified FLN activists as "savages", claimed torture was a "necessary evil." To the contrary, General Jacques Massu
Jacques Massu
Jacques Émile Massu was a French general who fought in World War II, the First Indochina War, the Algerian War and the Suez crisis.-Early life:Jacques Massu was born in Châlons-sur-Marne to a family of military officers; his father was an artillery officer...
denounced it, following Aussaresses' revelations, and before his death pronounced himself in favor of an official condemnation of the use of torture during the war.
Bigeard's justification of torture has been criticized by various persons, among whom Joseph Doré, archbishop of Strasbourg, and Marc Lienhard, president of the Lutheran Church of the Augsbourg confession in Alsace-Lorraine.
In June 2000, Bigeard declared that he was based in Sidi Ferruch
Sidi Ferruch
Sidi Fredj is a coastal town in Algiers Province, Algeria. It is located within the territory of the municipality of Staouéli, on a presque-isle on the Mediterranean Sea....
, known as a torture center and from which many Algerians never left alive. Bigeard qualified Louisette Ighilahriz's revelations, published in Le Monde on 20 June 2000, as "lies". An ALN activist, Louisette Ighilahriz, had been tortured by General Massu. She herself called Bigeard a "liar", and criticized him for continuing to deny the use of torture 40 years later. However, since General Massu's revelations, Bigeard has now admitted the use of torture, although he denies having personally used it. He then declared: "You are striking the heart of an 84-year-old man." Bigeard also recognized that Larbi Ben M’Hidi had been assassinated, and his death disguised as a "suicide".
Jean-Marie Le Pen
Jean-Marie Le PenJean-Marie Le Pen
Jean-Marie Le Pen is a French far right-wing and nationalist politician who is founder and former president of the Front National party. Le Pen has run for the French presidency five times, most notably in 2002, when in a surprise upset he came second, polling more votes in the first round than...
, former leader of the far-right National Front party and a lieutenant during the war, attacked Le Monde
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
and former Prime minister Michel Rocard
Michel Rocard
Michel Rocard is a French politician, member of the Socialist Party . He served as Prime Minister under François Mitterrand from 1988 to 1991, during which he created the Revenu minimum d'insertion , a social minimum welfare program for indigents, and led the Matignon Accords regarding the status...
on charges of defamation after the newspaper accused him of having engaged in torture. However, he lost his trial, with the French justice declaring Le Mondes investigations as legitimate and credible, though Le Pen appealed. Le Pen still denies the use of torture, claiming there had been only "interrogation sessions". Le Monde produced in May 2003 the dagger
Dagger
A dagger is a fighting knife with a sharp point designed or capable of being used as a thrusting or stabbing weapon. The design dates to human prehistory, and daggers have been used throughout human experience to the modern day in close combat confrontations...
he allegedly used to commit war crimes as court evidence. This affair ended in 2000 when the "Cour de cassation
Court of Cassation (France)
The French Supreme Court of Judicature is France's court of last resort having jurisdiction over all matters triable in the judicial stream but only scope of review to determine a miscarriage of justice or certify a question of law based solely on points of law...
" (French supreme jurisdiction) concluded that it was legitimate to publish these assertions. However, because of the amnesty and the prescription
Statute of limitations
A statute of limitations is an enactment in a common law legal system that sets the maximum time after an event that legal proceedings based on that event may be initiated...
, there can be no criminal proceedings against Le Pen for the crimes he is alleged to have committed in Algeria. In 1995, Le Pen unsuccessfully sued Jean Dufour, regional counselor of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur or PACA is one of the 27 regions of France.It is made up of:* the former French province of Provence* the former papal territory of Avignon, known as Comtat Venaissin...
(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...
) for the same reason.
Pierre Vidal-Naquet
Pierre Vidal-Naquet
Pierre Emmanuel Vidal-Naquet was a French historian who began teaching at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in 1969....
in "Torture; Cancer of Democracy" alleges that, after being refused a drink at an already closed bar in Algiers, Le Pen had the bartender tortured to death.
"The French School" and "The American School"
There are both French and U.S. pathways that explain the spread of torture, including methods used in Algeria, to Latin American regimes allied with the West from the 1960s onwards.Regarding the French pathway, journalist Marie-Monique Robin
Marie-Monique Robin
Marie-Monique Robin is an award-winning French journalist. She received the Albert Londres Prize in 1995 for Voleurs d'yeux, an expose about organ theft...
argued in her 2004 book on death squad
Death squad
A death squad is an armed military, police, insurgent, or terrorist squad that conducts extrajudicial killings, assassinations, and forced disappearances of persons as part of a war, insurgency or terror campaign...
s how French intelligence agents had taught their Chilean and Argentine counterparts the use of torture and "disappearances" as a counter-insurgency tactic. Her argument was based on several filmed interviews of high-ranking Argentine military officers, who were themselves accused of torture at the time. French intelligence agents have long been suspected of having trained their Argentine counterparts in "counter-insurgency" techniques. In testimony in January 2007 before Argentine judges, Luis María Mendía
Luis María Mendía
Luis María Mendía was the Argentine Chief of Naval Operations in 1976-77, with the rank of vice-admiral. According to confessions gathered by Horacio Verbitsky and made by Adolfo Scilingo , Luis María Mendía was the architect of the "death flight" assassination method whereby the Argentine state...
, Argentine Admiral and originator of the "death flights" during the "Dirty War
Dirty War
The Dirty War was a period of state-sponsored violence in Argentina from 1976 until 1983. Victims of the violence included several thousand left-wing activists, including trade unionists, students, journalists, Marxists, Peronist guerrillas and alleged sympathizers, either proved or suspected...
", referred to Marie Monique Robin's film documentary titled The Death Squads - the French School (Les escadrons de la mort - l'école française), which argued that the French intelligence services had trained Argentine counterparts in counter-insurgency techniques. Attempting to exonerate himself, Luis María Mendía used this source to ask that former French president, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing
Valéry Marie René Georges Giscard d'Estaing is a French centre-right politician who was President of the French Republic from 1974 until 1981...
, former French premier Pierre Messmer
Pierre Messmer
Pierre Joseph Auguste Messmer was a French Gaullist politician. He served as Minister of Armies under Charles de Gaulle from 1960 to 1969 – the longest serving since Étienne François, duc de Choiseul under Louis XV – and then as Prime Minister under Georges Pompidou from 1972 to 1974...
, former French ambassador to Buenos Aires Françoise de la Gosse, and all officials in place in the French embassy in Buenos Aires between 1976 and 1983 be brought before the court. Robin also argued that a 1959 agreement between France and Argentina instaured a "permanent French military mission" which was located in the offices of the chief of staff of the Argentine Armed Forces. However the argument is questionable as Robin argued that the mission consisted of veterans of the Algerian War, which would have been extremely unlikely at the onset of the purported mission (since the war in Algeria was ongoing) and remains an undocumented claim even after 1962.
The French role in spreading torture to Latin America appears modest, in terms of geographic scope and seniority of the officers involved, relative to local and other foreign sources. During the 1960s, the U.S. started spreading the use of torture to its allies in Latin America, specifically torture using electrical generators, with Brazil and Andean cone countries first. The training of Latin American officers, including a number of future tortionists and leaders who ordered torture, was conducted on a large scale via the formal education programs of the School of the Americas. This U.S. pathway leads directly to SOA graduate Leopoldo Galtieri
Leopoldo Galtieri
Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri Castelli was an Argentine general and President of Argentina from December 22, 1981 to June 18, 1982, during the last military dictatorship . The death squad Intelligence Battalion 601 directly reported to him...
, the Argentine dictator and commanding officer of Luis María Mendía. It is under Galtieri's regime that the use of torture became systematic in Argentina; other countries where SOA graduates were accused of involvement in torture or political murders include Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia, Panama and Haiti.
The French and U.S. pathways have a common root, as the use of electrical generators for torture was invented in America in 1908, spread in Asia during World War II, and passed to both French and U.S. forces during their respective involvement in the First Indochina War
First Indochina War
The First Indochina War was fought in French Indochina from December 19, 1946, until August 1, 1954, between the French Union's French Far East...
and the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
(or Second Indochina War).
John McGuffin's book "Beating the Terrorists" (Penguin) also alleges that French advisors were seen at Fort Morbut in Aden during the independence war. In that case, regardless of the correctness of this allegation or the mission of these advisors, their role was minute relative to that of the British forces trying to ensure a peaceful transfer of power during Aden Emergency
Aden Emergency
The Aden Emergency was an insurgency against the British crown forces in the British controlled territories of South Arabia which now form part of the Yemen. Partly inspired by Nasser's pan Arab nationalism, it began on 10 December 1963 with the throwing of a grenade at a gathering of British...
.
French-language studies
- Alleg, HenriHenri AllegHenri Alleg , born Henri Salem, is a French-Algerian journalist, director of the "Alger républicain" newspaper, and a member of the French Communist Party...
Mémoire algérienne : Souvenirs de luttes et d'espérances, Paris, StockStockThe capital stock of a business entity represents the original capital paid into or invested in the business by its founders. It serves as a security for the creditors of a business since it cannot be withdrawn to the detriment of the creditors...
, 2005, 407 pp., ISBN 2-234-05818-X. - Bousselham, Hamid, "Torturés par Le Pen" sur Rebellyon.info de édité par Rahma co-édition Rahma-Anep.
- Branche, Raphaëlle "La torture et l'armée pendant la guerre d'Algérie", Gallimard septembre 2001.
- Harbi, MohamedMohamed HarbiMohamed Harbi is an Algerian historian who was a member of the FLN during the Algerian War of Independence.Mohamed Harbi was born in 1933 into a wealthy family in el-Arrouch, Algeria. At the age of 15, he joined the FLN. According to his later memoirs, Harbi lived underground in France and...
and Stora, BenjaminBenjamin StoraBenjamin Stora is a French historian, expert on North Africa, who is widely considered one of the world's leading authorities on Algerian history. He was born in a Jewish family in Constantine, then in French Algeria, which left the country following its War of Independence in 1962. Stora holds...
, La Guerre d'Algérie, 1954–2004. La fin de l'amnésie Paris, Laffont, 2004 ISBN 2-221-10024-7. Re-edition Pluriel ISBN 2-01-279279-0 ISBN 978-2-01-279279-1 (includes abstract by Raphaëlle Branche, "La torture pendant la guerre", p. 381-402) - Le Cour Grandmaison, Olivier (2005). Coloniser, Exterminer: Sur la guerre et l'État colonial, FayardFayardFayard is a French Paris-based publishing house established in 1857. Fayard is controlled by Hachette Livre.-Works published:Works published by Editions Fayard include:...
, p. 161. ISBN 978-2-213-62316-0 }} - Robin, Marie-MoniqueMarie-Monique RobinMarie-Monique Robin is an award-winning French journalist. She received the Albert Londres Prize in 1995 for Voleurs d'yeux, an expose about organ theft...
, Escadrons de la mort, l'école française, 453 pages. La Découverte (15 September 2004). Collection: Cahiers libres. (ISBN 2-7071-4163-1) Los Escuadrones De La Muerte/ the Death Squadron, 539 pages. Sudamericana; Édition : Translatio (October 2005). (ISBN 950-07-2684-X) "Escadrons de la mort, l’école française" présentation sur le site de la LDH de Toulon. - Vidal-Naquet, PierrePierre Vidal-NaquetPierre Emmanuel Vidal-Naquet was a French historian who began teaching at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in 1969....
, L'Affaire Audin (1957); La Torture dans la République : essai d'histoire et de politique contemporaine (1954–1962), MinuitLes Éditions de MinuitLes Éditions de Minuit is a French publishing house which has its origins in the French Resistance of World War II and still publishes books today.-History:...
, 1972.
French-language
- Branche, Raphaëlle. "Justice et torture à Alger en 1957 : apports et limites d'un document" (en collaboration avec Sylvie Thénault) in Dominique Borne, Jean-Louis Nembrini et Jean-Pierre Rioux (dir.), Apprendre et enseigner la guerre d'Algérie et le Maghreb contemporain, Actes de l'université d'été de l'Education Nationale, CRDP de Versailles, 2002, p. 71-88. Available on-line.
- "La seconde commission de sauvegarde des droits et libertés individuels" in AFHJ, in La justice en Algérie 1830–1962, Paris, La Documentation Française, 2005, 366 p., p. 237-246.
- "Comment rétablir de la norme en temps d'exception. L’IGCI/CICDA pendant la guerre d'Algérie" in Laurent Feller (dir.), Contrôler les agents du pouvoir, Limoges, PULIM, 2004, p. 299-310.
- "La torture, l'armée et la République" in Université de Tous Les Savoirs, dir. Yves MichaudYves MichaudYves Michaud is a prominent Quebec public figure, a sovereignist and pur et dur supporter of the Parti Québécois.-Background:...
, La guerre d'Algérie (1954–1962), Paris, Odile JacobOdile JacobOdile Jacob is a French publisher who founded Les Éditions Odile Jacob in the middle of the 1980s. She is also a trained scientist, studying the workings of the brain, the mind and thought. She is a member of Le Siècle.-Biography:...
, 2004, p. 87-108 (Audio Conference) - "Faire l'histoire de la violence d'État" in Sébastien Laurent (dir.), Archives « secrètes », secrets d'archives. Historiens et archivistes face aux archives sensibles, Paris, CNRS éditions, 2003, 288 p.
- "La torture pendant la guerre d'Algérie : un crime contre l'humanité ?" in Jean-Paul Jean and Denis Salas (dir.), BarbieKlaus BarbieNikolaus 'Klaus' Barbie was an SS-Hauptsturmführer , Gestapo member and war criminal. He was known as the Butcher of Lyon.- Early life :...
, TouvierPaul TouvierPaul Touvier was a French Nazi collaborator. In 1994, he was the first Frenchman convicted of crimes against humanity for his actions in Vichy France.- Early life :...
, PaponMaurice PaponMaurice Papon was a French civil servant, industrial leader and Gaullist politician, who was convicted for crimes against humanity for his participation in the deportation of over 1600 Jews during World War II when he was secretary general for police of the Prefecture of Bordeaux.Papon also...
... Des procès pour mémoire, Autrement, 2002, p. 136-143. - Branche, Raphaëlle. "Des viols pendant la guerre d'Algérie", Vingtième Siècle. Revue d'histoire, n°75, juillet-septembre 2002, p. 123-132.
- "La lutte contre le terrorisme urbain" in Jean-Charles Jauffret et Maurice VaïsseMaurice VaïsseMaurice Vaïsse is a French historian specialised in international relations and Defence.-Biography:Vaïsse graduated with a History Agrégation in 1967. He has been a professor of contemporary history at Reims university, and is now a professor at the Institut d'études politiques de Paris, where he...
(dir.), Militaires et guérilla dans la guerre d'Algérie, Bruxelles, Complexe, 2001, 561 p., p. 469-487. - "La commission de sauvegarde des droits et libertés individuels pendant la guerre d'Algérie. Chronique d'un échec annoncé ?", Vingtième Siècle. Revue d'histoire, n°62, avril-juin 1999, p. 14-29.
Other languages
- 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.
- Branche, Raphaëlle. "Torture and the border of humanity" (in collaboration with Françoise Sironi), International Social Science Journal, n°174, December 2002, p. 539-548.
- "Campaign against torture" and "Algerian War" in John MerrimanJohn M. MerrimanJohn M. Merriman is a Charles Seymour Professor of History at Yale University. He is the author of many books including his most well known A History of Modern Europe since the Renaissance , a popular survey text for undergraduate history classes at many American universities and colleges...
and Jay WinterJay WinterJay M. Winter is an American historian. He is the Charles J. Stille Professor of History at Yale University, where he focuses his research on World War I and its impact on the 20th century...
(eds.), Encyclopedy of Europe, 1914–2004, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons. - "French Soldiers in Algeria, 1954–1962 : Denouncing Torture during the War and Forty Years Later", international symposium organized by the University of MarylandUniversity of Maryland, College ParkThe University of Maryland, College Park is a top-ranked public research university located in the city of College Park in Prince George's County, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C...
and the Hebrew University of JerusalemHebrew University of JerusalemThe Hebrew University of Jerusalem ; ; abbreviated HUJI) is Israel's second-oldest university, after the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The Hebrew University has three campuses in Jerusalem and one in Rehovot. The world's largest Jewish studies library is located on its Edmond J...
on "Soldier Testimony and Human Rights", Jerusalem, February 2004. - "The State, Historians and Memories: The Algerian War in France, 1992–2002", conference at the international symposium "Contemporary Historians and the Public Use of History", Södertörn University CollegeSödertörn University CollegeSödertörn University College is a public university college located in Flemingsberg, which is located in Huddinge Municipality, and the larger area called Södertörn, in Stockholm County, Sweden. In 2009, it had 6,300 full-time-students...
, Stockholm, August 2002 (published in 2006) - "The violations of the law during the French-Algerian War" in Adam JonesAdam Jones (Canadian scholar)Adam Jones is a political scientist, writer, and photojournalist based at the University of British Columbia Okanagan in Kelowna, BC, Canada. He is executive director of the nongovernmental organization Gendercide Watch...
(eds), Genocide, War Crimes, and the West, Zed Books, 2004, p. 134-145 (also available in German)
- "Campaign against torture" and "Algerian War" in John Merriman
- Lazreg, Marnia, Torture and the Twilight of Empire, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007 (ISBN 978-0-691-13135-1).
- Rejali, DariusDarius RejaliProfessor Darius Rejali is an Iranian-born American academic specialised on torture, who teaches political science at Reed College.- Biography :...
, Torture and Democracy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.
Contemporary works
- Alleg, HenriHenri AllegHenri Alleg , born Henri Salem, is a French-Algerian journalist, director of the "Alger républicain" newspaper, and a member of the French Communist Party...
, La Question, Lausanne: E. La Cité, 1958; Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1961 (ISBN 2-7073-0175-2). - Trinquier, RogerRoger TrinquierRoger Trinquier was a French Army officer during World War II, the First Indochina War and the Algerian War, serving mainly in airborne and Special forces units...
. Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency (1961). - Vian, BorisBoris VianBoris Vian was a French polymath: writer, poet, musician, singer, translator, critic, actor, inventor and engineer. He is best remembered today for his novels. Those published under the pseudonym Vernon Sullivan were bizarre parodies of criminal fiction, highly controversial at the time of their...
, The Deserter (translated in many languages; censored during the war)
Sources
- THE FRENCH ARMY AND TORTURE DURING THE ALGERIAN WAR (1954- 1962), Raphaëlle Branche, Université de RennesRennesRennes is a city in the east of Brittany in northwestern France. Rennes is the capital of the region of Brittany, as well as the Ille-et-Vilaine department.-History:...
, 18 November 2004 - COLONIALISM THROUGH THE SCHOOL BOOKS - The hidden history of the Algerian war, Le Monde diplomatiqueLe Monde diplomatiqueLe Monde diplomatique is a monthly newspaper offering analysis and opinion on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first created mainly for a diplomatic audience as its name implies...
, April 2001 / - Torture in Algeria. The report that was to change everything, ICRCInternational Committee of the Red CrossThe International Committee of the Red Cross is a private humanitarian institution based in Geneva, Switzerland. States parties to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977 and 2005, have given the ICRC a mandate to protect the victims of international and...
, 19 August 2005 - Film testimony by Paul Teitgen, Jacques Duquesne and Hélie Denoix de Saint MarcHélie Denoix de Saint MarcHélie Denoix de Saint Marc is a French former member of the Resistance, then a military officer, and was courtmartialed for participating in the Generals' Putsch against Charles de Gaulle....
on the INAInstitut national de l'audiovisuelThe Institut national de l'audiovisuel , is a repository of all French radio and television audiovisual archives. Additionally it provides customers with a free and immediate access to archives of countries such as Afghanistan and Cambodia...
archive website
See also
- 8 May 1945 Sétif massacreSetif massacreThe Sétif massacre refers to widespread disturbances and killings in and around the Algerian market town of Sétif located to the west of Constantine in 1945. Shooting by the French authorities against local demonstrators occurred on 8 May 1945. Then, riots in the town itself were followed by...
- Paris massacre of 1961Paris massacre of 1961The Paris massacre of 1961 was a massacre in Paris on 17 October 1961, during the Algerian War . Under orders from the head of the Parisian police, Maurice Papon, the French police attacked a demonstration of some 30,000 pro-FLN Algerians...
- Jacques MassuJacques MassuJacques Émile Massu was a French general who fought in World War II, the First Indochina War, the Algerian War and the Suez crisis.-Early life:Jacques Massu was born in Châlons-sur-Marne to a family of military officers; his father was an artillery officer...
, La vraie bataille d'Alger, 1972. - Jean LartéguyJean LartéguyJean Lartéguy was the nom de plume of Jean Pierre Lucien Osty, a French writer, journalist, and former soldier. He was born in 1920 in Maisons-Alfort, Val-de-Marne and died in 2011...
, Les centurions, 1959, and Les prétoriens, 1961. - Maurice AudinMaurice AudinMaurice 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...
- The Battle of Algiers, Italian film which describes very well, according to Paul AussaressesPaul AussaressesPaul Aussaresses is a retired French Army general, who fought during World War II, the First Indochina War and Algerian War...
himself, the use of torture in Algeria - Human rights abuses
- French rule in AlgeriaFrench rule in AlgeriaFrench Algeria lasted from 1830 to 1962, under a variety of governmental systems. From 1848 until independence, the whole Mediterranean region of Algeria was administered as an integral part of France, much like Corsica and Réunion are to this day. The vast arid interior of Algeria, like the rest...
and Algerian War - Battle of Algiers (1957)Battle of Algiers (1957)The Battle of Algiers was a campaign of guerrilla warfare carried out by the National Liberation Front against the French Algerian authorities from late 1956 to late 1957. The conflict began as a series of hit-and-run attacks by the FLN against the French Police in Algiers. Violence escalated...
- French colonial empiresFrench colonial empiresThe French colonial empire was the set of territories outside Europe that were under French rule primarily from the 17th century to the late 1960s. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the colonial empire of France was the second-largest in the world behind the British Empire. The French colonial empire...
and colonialismColonialismColonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by... - Operation CondorOperation CondorOperation Condor , was a campaign of political repression involving assassination and intelligence operations officially implemented in 1975 by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America...
and "Dirty WarDirty WarThe Dirty War was a period of state-sponsored violence in Argentina from 1976 until 1983. Victims of the violence included several thousand left-wing activists, including trade unionists, students, journalists, Marxists, Peronist guerrillas and alleged sympathizers, either proved or suspected...
" - Comparison of Iraq War to the Algerian WarComparison of Iraq War to the Algerian WarThere have been comparisons in public debate comparing the Iraq War to the Algerian War . Henry Kissinger advised President George W...
- Human rights in FranceHuman rights in FranceThe preamble of the Constitution of the French Fifth Republic, founded in 1958, recalls the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. France has also ratified the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as the European Convention on Human Rights 1960 and the Charter of...
External links
- The Torture of Algiers, Adam Shatz, The New York Review Of Books - 21 November 2002
- Branche, Raphaëlle. 7 March 2002, Audio Conference at the Université de Tous Les Savoirs (UTLS) " La torture, l’armée et la République"