Elements from the French Armed Forces used deliberate torture during the Algerian War (1954–1962), creating an ongoing public controversy. Pierre Vidal-Naquet, a renowned French historian, estimated that there were "hundreds of thousands of instances of torture" by the French military in Algeria.
Overview The Algerian War was an armed conflict between the French Armed Forces and the Algerian National Liberation Front between the years 1954-1962 which ended with Algeria gaining independence from France. The French state itself refused to see the colonial conflict as 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."COLONIALISM THROUGH THE SCHOOL BOOKS – The hidden history of the Algerian war , Le Monde diplomatique, April 2001
Since France did not consider the conflict to be a war but rather "maintaining order" in the country, it did not consider itself tied by Common Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which only mandates the humane treatment of persons in a non-interstate conflict. Besides prohibiting the use of torture, Common Article 3 gave the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) access to the detainees. Those detained by the French were considered criminals and therefore did not receive the treatment that should be granted to them under Common Article 3. It wasn't until it became public knowledge in 1957 that the French government was using torture that they began to grant more rights to captured rebels. In 1957 the leader of the French Army in Algeria, Raoul Salan, announced that they would start treating captured enemies “as close as possible as the way in which prisoners of war are taken care of by civilized countries.” The following year saw creation of internment camps for prisoners, but the French government continued with their stance that the conflict was not a war.
Early in the war, the FLN was progressively assuming control in Algeria through targeted acts against French nationals and Algerians supporting the French. From 1954 to 1956, the amount of violence massively increased, accompanied by summary executions and internment in camps by the French army. Justified by the notion of "terrorism", torture was used indiscriminately against FLN detainees and civilians 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).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 1954 song Le Déserteur, 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 cancer 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. In 2001, General Paul Aussaresses confirmed that torture had been employed not only at large scale but also pursuant to orders by the French government.
Battle of Algiers (January–October 1957), state of emergency and ICRC report
The civilian authorities relinquished control to the military during the Battle of Algiers from January to October 1957. Thus, General Jacques Massu, commander of the 10th Parachute Division (10e DP), in charge during the Battle of Algiers, was 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") after the surname of a notorious paratroop helicopter commander.Film testimony by Paul Teitgen, Jacques Duquesne and Hélie Denoix de Saint Marc on the INA archive websiteHenri Pouillot, mon combat contre la torture , El Watan, 1 November 2004.Des guerres d’Indochine et d’Algérie aux dictatures d’Amérique latine, interview with Marie-Monique Robin by the Ligue des droits de l'homme (LDH, Human Rights League), 10 January 2007. French military chaplains 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.Quoted by Argentine journalist Horacio Verbitsky in Breaking the silence: the Catholic Church and the "dirty war" , 28 July 2005, extract from El Silencio transl. in English by openDemocracy (p.3).
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 International Committee of the Red Cross (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." (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.Torture in Algeria. The report that was to change everything , ICRC, 19 August 2005
Torture in school facilities The French army occupied school buildings and converted the classrooms to "salles d'interrogatoire" (rooms of interrogation) where torture was practiced. The French army either entirely closed the schools, or used only part of the school. These include schools in Azzouza, Taourirt Moussa in Tizi Ouzou as early as 1956, and Algiers in 1960. Tassadit Yacine, Algerian anthropologist, has testified that as a pupil in the school in Mouzaïa-les-mines, torture was taking place in the room adjacent to her classroom. The practice was not isolated and was widespread across many regions in Algeria. Between 1955 and 1957, the FLN attacked and burned certain schools occupied by the French army to prevent their transformation into torture centers. In 1956, the FLN general strike appeal condemned the widespread torture in schools. Mouloud Feraoun, then a teacher, wrote letters to the inspectors of the department of education, denouncing the French army's occupation of schools and their use as places of torture.
Other testimony and descriptions
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), which sold 60,000 copies in one day.The torture of Algiers , Adam Shatz, The New York Review of Books, 21 November 2002 (mirrored by Algeria Watch NGO) 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, which included the infamous gégène (an electricity generator initially used for telephones), sleep deprivation, and truth serums, etc. Besides 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 to 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, and rape. It was described by "Verité Liberté":