France Admits Torture During Algeria's War of Independence

• 09.14.2018, 12:39
•  Europe,  Other,  World

aljazeera.com

France acknowledged for the first time it was responsible for systematic torture during the Algerian war of independence in the mid-1950s, Aljazeera reports. 

President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday that Maurice Audin, a communist pro-independence activist who disappeared in 1957, "died under torture stemming from the system instigated while Algeria was part of France".

Macron, who paid a visit to Audin's widow on Thursday, was also set to announce "the opening of archives on the subject of disappeared civilians and soldiers, both French and Algerian".

During the 1954-62 war, which claimed some 1.5 million Algerian lives, French forces cracked down on independence fighters in the colony ruled by Paris for 130 years.

Macron told Audin's widow: "The only thing I am doing is to acknowledge the truth."

Josette Audin told reporters at her apartment in the east Paris suburb of Bagnolet: "I never thought this day would come."