Editing Algerian War (section)

=== Reminders ===

From time to time, the memory of the Algerian War surfaced in France. In 1987, when SS-''Hauptsturmführer'' [[Klaus Barbie]], the "Butcher of Lyon", was brought to trial for crimes against humanity, graffiti appeared on the walls of the ''banlieues'', the slum districts in which most Algerian immigrants in France live, reading: "Barbie in France! When will Massu be in Algeria!".<ref name=Cohen/>{{rp|230}} Barbie's lawyer, [[Jacques Vergès]], adopted a ''[[tu quoque]]'' defence that asked the judges "is a crime against humanity is to be defined as only one of Nazis against the Jews or if it applies to more seriously crimes... the crimes of imperialists against people struggling for their independence?". He went on to say that nothing that his client had done against the French Resistance that was not done by "certain French officers in Algeria" who, Vergès noted, could not be prosecuted because of de Gaulle's amnesty of 1962.<ref name=Cohen/>{{rp|230}} In 1997, when [[Maurice Papon]], a career French civil servant was brought to trial for crimes against humanity for sending 1600 Jews from Bordeaux to be killed at Auschwitz in 1942, it emerged over the course of the trial that on 17 October 1961, Papon had organized a [[Paris massacre of 1961|massacre of between 100 and 200 Algerians]] in central Paris, which was the first time that most French had ever heard of the massacre.<ref name=Cohen/>{{rp|231}} The revelation that hundreds of people had been killed by the Paris ''Sûreté'' was a great shock in France and led to uncomfortable questions being raised about what had happened during the Algerian War.<ref name=Cohen/>{{rp|231}} The American historian William Cohen wrote that the Papon trial "sharpened the focus" on the Algerian War but not provide "clarity", as Papon's role as a civil servant under Vichy led to misleading conclusions in France that it was former collaborators who were responsible for the terror in Algeria, but most of the men responsible, like Guy Mollet, General Marcel Bigeard, Robert Lacoste, General Jacques Massu and Jacques Soustelle, had actually all been ''résistants'' in World War II, which many French historians found to be very unpalatable.<ref name=Cohen/>{{rp|231}}

On 15 June 2000, ''Le Monde'' published an interview with Louisette Ighilahriz, a former FLN member who described in graphic detail her torture at the hands of the French Army and made the sensational claim that the war heroes General Jacques Massu and General Marcel Bigeard had personally been present when she was being tortured for information.<ref name=Cohen/>{{rp|233}} What made the interview very touching for many French people was that Ighilahriz was not demanding vengeance but wished to express thanks to Dr. François Richaud, the army doctor who extended her much kindness and who, she believed, saved her life by treating her every time she was tortured. She asked if it were possible for her to see Dr. Richaud one last time to thank him personally, but it later turned out that Dr. Richaud had died in 1997.<ref name=Cohen/>{{rp|233}} As Ighilahriz had been an attractive woman in her youth, university-educated, secular, fluent in French and fond of quoting [[Victor Hugo]], and her duties in the FLN had been as an information courier, she made for a most sympathetic victim since she was a woman who did not come across as Algerian.<ref name=Cohen/>{{rp|234}} William Cohen commented that had she been an uneducated man who had been involved in killings and was not coming forward to express thanks for a Frenchman, her story might not have resonated the same way.<ref name=Cohen/>{{rp|234}} The Ighiahriz case led to a public letter signed by 12 people who been involved in the war to President [[Jacques Chirac]] to ask October 31 be made a public day of remembrance for victims of torture in Algeria.<ref name=Cohen/>{{rp|234}}

In response to the Ighilahriz case, General Paul Aussaresses gave an interview on 23 November 2000 in which he candidly admitted to ordering torture and extrajudicial executions and stated he had personally executed 24 ''fellagha''. He argued that they were justified, as torture and extrajudicial executions were the only way to defeat the FLN.<ref name=Cohen/>{{rp|235}} In May 2001, Aussaresses published his memoirs, ''Services spéciaux Algérie 1955–1957'', in which he presented a detailed account of torture and extrajudicial killings in the name of the republic, which he wrote were all done under orders from Paris; that confirmed what had been long suspected.<ref name=Cohen/>{{rp|239}} As a result of the interviews and Aussaresses's book, the Algerian War was finally extensively discussed by the French media, which had ignored the subject as much as possible for decades, but no consensus emerged about how to best remember the war.<ref name=Cohen/>{{rp|235}} Adding to the interest was the decision by one war veteran, Georges Fogel, to come forward to confirm that he had seen Ighiahriz and many others tortured in 1957, and the politician and war veteran Jean Marie Faure decided in February 2001 to release extracts from the diary that he had kept and showed "acts of sadism and horror" that he had witnessed.<ref name=Cohen/>{{rp|235}} The French historian [[Pierre Vidal-Naquet]] called that a moment of "catharsis" that was "explainable only in near-French terms: it is the return of the repressed".<ref name=Cohen/>{{rp|235–6}}

In 2002, ''Une Vie Debout: Mémoires Politiques'' by Mohammed Harbi, a former advisor to Ben Bella, was published in which Harbi wrote: "Because they [the FLN leaders] weren't supported at the moment of their arrival on the scene by a real and dynamic popular movement, they took power of the movement by force and they maintained it by force. Convinced that they had to act with resolution in order to protect themselves against their enemies, they deliberately chose an authoritarian path."<ref name="Shatz"/>