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Politics : War -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (1025)	5/5/2001 5:39:07 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 23908

Follow-up to my post on France's past jackboot in Algeria: General's Confessions of Torture Stun France Barry James International Herald Tribune Saturday, May 5, 2001 PARIS A retired French Army general's confession that he and others tortured and murdered victims as a matter of routine during the Algerian civil war is shaking the highest level of state in France, with President Jacques Chirac stating Friday that he was "horrified" by the revelations and disposed to punish the 83-year-old former officer. Mr. Chirac ordered the removal of General Paul Aussaresses from the Legion of Honor, an award for service or achievement, and said he had asked the defense minister, Alain Richard, to propose possible disciplinary action. A statement from the Elysee Palace said the president was horrified by the disclosures and that nothing could justify such acts. A former counterintelligence officer and parachutist, General Aussaresses also holds the Resistance Medal for his action with the Free French Forces in World War II. "The situation was explosive," he said in a book published this week, explaining why he resorted to torture during the battle of Algiers in 1957, when 10,000 French paratroopers surrounded the Muslim Casbah and succeeded in largely destroying a 1,400-man rebel underground network and blowing up the suspected headquarters of the National Liberation Front. "There were threats of bombing attacks all the time and everywhere," he added. "I needed information, I had to win time and I didn't have the right to hesitate. It's efficient, torture. Most people crack and talk. Then, most of the time, we killed them." The one positive outcome from the Aussaresses affair is that the truth about the Algerian war of independence more than four decades ago may now come into the open. Official records from the period were opened last week. Mr. Chirac, who served in Algeria before the period described in General Aussaresses' book, said he hoped historians would be quick to shed light on the period. [snip] Full article: iht.com