Torture during the war of Algeria

The torture during the war of Algeria was practiced on the population by the colonial forces (the French Army , its back-up troops Harkis, OAS, the Barbouze S, the colonist and police force themselves) in proportions which according to Pierre Vidal-Naquet would relate to hundreds of Algerian thousands of . It was also deployed on a small number of victims by the freedom fighters (FLN, ALN). Police torture existed already largely in Algeria before the insurrection of 1954, as the warning statement launched, as of this date testifies some, by the writer François Mauriac. The army had largely recourse there during the “Bataille of Algiers”, which was, in 1957, a “point of no return” in this respect. But the passage to an all-out war and the systematization of torture corresponds, according to the thesis of Raphaelle Branche, on arrival with the head of the staff of Algiers of the general Salan in December 1956.

By the French Army and the colonial forces

Since the colonial conquest the Torture is a process running of the police force in Algérie which uses it to terrorize the populations autochtones. This practice which was used throughout the colonial presence in Algeria, initially to obtain information on the sites of grain silos at the time of the colonial conquest, then to break the strikes, to meurtrir suspects, to inform the most ordinary penal matters and to terrorize the natives was registered above all in a step of hatred and dehumanization.

In 1951, Claude Bourdet had denounced these practices with force: “Is there a Gestapo in Algeria? ” ( the Observer , December 6th, 1951.)The date is not rather on December 6th, 1954 (see courrière or will stora). With the Guerre of Algeria these practices become even sytématiques. As of the first day of the conflict, François Mauriac, lance a call which will not be heard: “Especially, not to torture”. Already, during the War of Indo-China, torture had been employed.

Called quota Benoist Rey explains why “ with the farm Ameziane, center of information and action (C.R.A.) of Constantine, it is practiced on a quasi industrial scale. (...) It is with the Ameziane farm that all the suspects taken by the units of the Algerian East are led. The arrest of the “suspects” is made by Rafle S, on information, denunciation, for simple identity checks. A stay is carried out under the following conditions: on their arrival with the “farm”, they are separate in two distinct groups: those which must be questioned immediately and those which “will wait”, with all one makes visit the places and in particular the rooms of tortures “in activity”: electricity (Gégène), torment of water, cells, hangings, etc Those which must wait are then parked and piled up in the old arranged stables or it to them will not be given any food during two to eight days, and sometimes more still.

The interrogations, led in accordance with the regulations of the provisional guide of the officer of information (O.R.), chapter IV, are carried out systematically in the following way: Initially, the O.R. raises its questions in the “traditional” form by accompanying them by punches and foot: the provocative agent, or the indicator, is often used as a preliminary for precise charges and… prefabricated. This kind of interrogation can be renewed. One passes then to torture itself, namely: hanging (...) the torment of water (...) electricity (electrodes fixed at the ears and the fingers) burns (cigarettes, etc) (...) the cases of madnesses are frequent (...) the traces, scars, continuations and consequences are durable, certain even permanent (nervous disorders for example) and thus easily detectable. Several suspects died on their premises the shortly after their return of the " ferme".

The interrogation-torments are often taken again at several days of interval. Meanwhile, the suspects are imprisoned without food in cells of which some do not make it possible to lengthen. Let us specify that there are among them very young teenagers and some 75,80 year old old men and more. At the conclusion of the interrogations and imprisonment with the farm, the “suspect” can be: released (it is often the case of the women and those which can pay (...) or interned in a center known as “of lodging” (in Hamma Plaisance, in particular); or regarded as “missing” (when he died of the continuations of the interrogation or cut down in " drudgery of bois" around the city. (...) The “interrogations” are led and carried out by officers, warrant officers or member of the services of C.R.A." (...) The figures - because there is - are eloquent: Capacity of the " center" entered in activity in 1957, is from 500 to 600 people, and it appears to function with full output permanently. Since its constitution it has " controlé" (less than eight days of prison) 108 175 people; driven 11.518 Algerians like nationalist militants on the sector; kept for stays of more than eight days 7.363 people; internee in Hamma 789 suspects." (Text published in Truth Freedom n° 9 of May 1961)

Two documents are particularly revealing systematization of torture. July 1st, 1955 - that is to say one month and half before the Insurrection of Constantinois of August 20th, considered by many historians as the true beginning of the war of Algeria - a text contresigned by the Minister of Interior Department of the time, Mr. Bourges-Maunoury, and the Minister for national defense, the Général Koenig, was diffused in all the French regiments of Algeria. This “instruction n° 11”, which collected “the full adhesion of the government”, stipulates that “the fight must be police than military (…) Fire must be open on any suspect which tries to flee (…) The most brutal means must be employed without delay (…) It is necessary to seek success by all the means. ” Other discovered of Claire Mauss-Chips: a text of August 3rd, 1955, signed by the same Koenig general, but also by the Minister for justice, Robert Schuman. It specifies the action to be taken in the event of complaints making following “alleged infringements” allotted to the police force: “an action removing the criminal responsibility of its authors (…) followed by a refusal to inform (…) The complaints will have to be the subject of a classification without continuation, since it will appear undeniable that these facts are justified by the circumstances, the need, or the order of the law. ” In other words, the civil capacity ensured in advance the soldiers impunity for the goings beyond which it required of them. And that, two years before the “battle of Algiers”, supposed to have constituted the turning as regards exactions.

February 10th 1957, the Massu general, with the head of the tenth Division parachutist (DP) in Algiers, which is not unaware of moreover that catholic workmen took the weapons with dimensioned FLN makes diffuse the “Reflections of a priest on the urban terrorism” of the Delarue father, chaplain of division, in which, under certain conditions, it tries to justify torture. Part of the public opinion offusque, and the catholic mediums are indignant

Colonel Trinquier explains in these terms the alleged one required torture: The terrorist became the soldier of the revolutionary war like the artillerist, the infantryman or the aviator of the conventional war. The soldier admits the physical suffering and death like inherent in his state. To have the same rights, the terrorist must accept the same risks. However he refuses them. It is a cheater. Who will be questioned on his organization more than on his actions. If it gives the information - what is the case in general - the interrogation will be finished. If not, they will be torn off to him by the suitable means. Like the soldier, it will have to face the suffering and perhaps death. It must accept it as the consequence of the use of the weapons of war which it chose. .

In its documentary " Enemy intime" Patrick Rotman explains why " As Trinquier the officers who took part in the battle of Algiers advance the case of the bomb planter which it is necessary to make speak at all costs to save of the lives. This urgency justifies in their eyes torture but the thousands of stopped and questioned suspects were not all of the person who plants bombs far from there. The soldiers know that on hundred people embarked in the Kasbah, three, five or ten are sympathizers of the FLN: it is enough to find them, for that everyone must speak. In the reality of the action the paras torture to tear off information which will make it possible to reassemble dies: Trinquier is a follower of this fishing to the filet". Patrick Rotman note that " in all the regiments para torture is practiced: is needed that the suspect speaks and speaks quickly, the called upon argument is that of the effectiveness which the colonel Trinquier specialist in the war subversive" exposes;

" If the honor of the France cannot go with these tortures, then France is a country without honneur" explain Robert Bonnaud, " A small number of French was tortured ignoblement in Oranie, and of the hundreds of Algerians are to it each day everywhere. And the practice to torture, if not the methods of torture, does not date from summer 56 nor even of November 54. It dates from the moment when there was in Algérie natives and police force, bicots and flics." It analyzes in these terms sublimation and the justificatory rhetoric which carries the soldiers to make such acts: " History absurdity, free Sadism? Not. In this country, the enormous majority of the suspects, and also of those which are not it, help really the patriots, would be this only by their silence. One does not run great risk, by inopportune tortures or brimades, to put at back the population: the Algerian people lost confidence in our forgery Libéralisme and our lying promises. The gendarmes of Guentis, like all the peacemakers of some experiment, left from the point of view which one could not be Algerian innocently. The outburst of perverse brutality whose they gave us the example, example sometimes followed alas, derived from this elementary observation, aggravation also and the feeling of impotence. It is necessary to know what one wants. The maintenance of our domination required, requires, will require increasingly terrible tortures, increasingly general exactions, increasingly indistinct slaughters. There is no innocent Algerian of the desire of human dignity, desire of collective emancipation, desire of national freedom. There is no suspect stopped wrongly and tortured by erreur."

January 5th, 1960, the newspaper Le Monde publishes a summary of the report/ratio of a mission carried out in Algeria by the ICRC. “Many cases of maltreatment and torture are always announced”, raises the article. The historian Raphaëlle Branche note that “in metropolis, torture does not reach the same width as in Algeria. It does not remain about it less on two banks, a practice tolerated by the authorities and a violence to which the Algerians can be able attendre".

Consents of the Massu general

Torture in Algeria was evoked, inter alia, by the military chief of Algiers, the general Jacques Massu in his work the true battle of Algiers published in 1972. In 2000, during a maintenance given to the daily newspaper Le Monde of June 21st, 2000, he declared that “the principle of torture was accepted; this action, undoubtedly reprehensible, was covered, even ordered, by the civil authorities, which were perfectly with the current”. He adds: I said and recognized that the Torture had been generalized in Algeria (...) One should have differently made, it is especially with that I think. But what, how? I do not know. It would have been necessary to seek; to try to find. One unfortunately succeeded, neither Salan, neither Allard, neither me, nor nobody. . This declaration echoes the charge of Lila Ighilahriz, militant Algerian tortured in 1957 in Algiers, become psychologist.

In 2000, she showed the Massu general, and the general (colonel at the time) Bigeard, to have left the free field to torture in Algeria. Massu recognized it, but Bigeard refuted the charge. According to Louisette Ighilahriz, " Massu could not deny the évidence" any more;.

According to recent the interview of a French officer, Paul Aussaresses which does not regret anything, the Massu general was with the current each day, of the list of the prisoners passed to the question, as well as “accidents” of course. Continued by the League of the Human rights for " apology for crimes of guerre" , Aussaresses was condemned to 7.500 euros of fine by the 17th room correctional of the TGI of Paris, the editors Plon and Perrin was condemned to 15.000 euros of fine each one being the book " Special services, Algeria 1955-1957: My testimony on the torture". This judgment was confirmed in call in April 2003. The court of appeal rejected the appeal in December 2004. Indeed, the general on several occasions justified in this book the use of the torture which would make it possible to save innocent lives by pushing the alleged terrorists to reveal the details of their projects and their accomplices. The President of the Republic asked that be withdrawn with the officer his legion of honor by condemning its remarks like inadmissible.

On the other hand, the Aussaresses general had been the subject of complaints for the crimes of tortures which he had recognized in his book. Another procedure had been open but the Court of appeal rejected, the continuations brought against the general for the crimes of tortures themselves, prescribed and amnestied with the contempt of the international law which devotes the concept of juice cogens repression imprescriptibility of the facts of which it is question (Article 53 of the Convention of Vienna).

Louisette Ighilahriz is the author of the book " Algérienne" to the editions Beech, it went in justice to defend its probity against those which blamed its testimonys and gained its lawsuits in slanderings the general Maurice Schmitt was thus condemned penally.

A article published in El Watan recalls that " Florence Beaugé, called to testify in favor of Mrs. Ighilahriz, has, to corroborate the assertions of this one, evoked the testimony of old called, Raymond Cloarec, whom it quotes in his work. Not only the former soldier, with whom it had several phone interviews, confirms the remarks of Louisette Ighilahriz, but he gives also a report on the pressures of the Schmitt general to do it taire."

Questioned on the evolution of the perception of the problems related to torture during the war of Algeria, Raphaelle Branche notes that " The official recognition of the war in Algeria did not lead to a modification of the official discourse on the practice of torture during this war. Whereas it was used within a system of repression of which it constituted an central element, it is always brought back to drifts of minority elements! This said, independently of the speech of the more high ranking authorities of the State, it seems to me that the recognition of this practice and its place in the war is increasingly clear in the public opinion, especially since, precisely, that a public debate had place on this question in 2000 and 2001." (Source: http://www2.cnrs.fr/presse/thema/191.htm)

Works published during the war

Torture during the Guerre of Algeria is in particular known thanks to the testimony of Robert Bonnaud, then with that of old tortured, director of Algiers Républicain : Henri Alleg. Henri Alleg published her testimony under the title the Question (Minuit, 1958). With Gangrène of Bachir Boumaza, appeared the same year also in the same editor, the work was immediately censured. All methods of torture (Gégène, water, barbed straw mattress, truth drug, pulling up of nails, brutality, deprivation of sleep, pepper in vagina etc…) there are detailed. This work was censured by the government, because blaming the army and its methods, revealing it like the news Gestapo of Algeria. Tortures are also evoked with the lawsuit of Djamila Boupacha, militant of the ALN, defended by the lawyer Gisele Halimi. The ministry intervenes so that the French soldiers are put out of cause.

A film put in scene by Laurent Heynemann in 1977 takes again the entirety of the book of Henri Alleg, and reconsiders the business Audin. In 1959, five Algerians publish Gangrène , work denouncing the tortures applied to the seat of the DST, with Paris. The book is prohibited.

In April 1961 was seized as of its exit, the book “the stickers” of called quota Benoist Rey published first once at the Éditions of Midnight which to the point describe “the daily newspaper of murder, rapes, plunderings, fires, destruction, tortures, sadism, imbecillity… of an army made up of engaged and… of called”. As other testimonys this book was then censured. Benoist Rey denounces that “torture is in Algeria a usual means of repression, systematic, official and massive. ”.

Jean-Marie Le Pen with her way allowed well in spite of him that the thing is made available of the public: " I do not have anything to hide. I tortured because it had to be done. When you are brought somebody who has just posed twenty bombs which can explode from one moment to another and which he does not want to speak, it is necessary to employ exceptional means for forcing there. It is that which refuses there which is the criminal because it has on the hands the blood of tens of victims whose death could have been avoided. ” lieutenant Le Pen in a maintenance granted to the daily newspaper declares “Fights”, on November 9th, 1962. He rather moderated his remarks the following day November 10th in the daily newspaper speaking about “methods of constraints” than of tortures. He had already declared in 1957 in front of the National Assembly “I were with Algiers officer of information (...), as such I must be with the eyes of a certain number of my colleagues what could be the mixture of an officer S and an agent of the Gestapo. This trade, I did it…” Retranscription of the remarks of Jean-Marie Le Pen to the official journal French of June 12th, 1957.

Colonial compost

In front of violence the extreme that constitutes torture of the intellectuals try to alert the opinion “the France, formerly, it was a name of country; let us take guard that it is not, in 1961, the name of a neurosis. ” Jean-Paul Sartre in September 1961 declares by denouncing processes which translate according to him the process of ensauvagement about which Aimé Césaire in Discours speaks on colonialism where this last states that “It would initially be necessary to study how colonization works with déciviliser the colonizer, to abrutir it with the clean direction of the word, to degrade it, to awake it with the hidden instincts, covetousness, violence, the racial hate, the moral relativism, and to show that, each time there are with the Vietnam a cut head and a burst eye and that in France one accepts, a young girl violated and that in France one accepts, a Malagasy torture victim and that in France one accepts, there is an asset of the civilization who is of his dead load, a universal regression which takes place, a gangrene which settles, a hearth of infection which extends and which at the end of all these violated treaties, of all these propagated lies, all these tolerated punitive forwardings, of all these prisoners tied up and questioned, of all these tortured patriots, at the end of this encouraged racial pride, of this spread out jactance, it has there the poison instilled into the veins of the Europe, and progress slow, but sure, of ensauvagement of the continent. ”

It is precisely what Henri Alleg advances: " the bottom of the problem was this unjust war itself. As from the moment when a colonial war is carried out, i.e. a war to subject people to his will, one can enact all the laws which one wants, there will be always goings beyond. ” (...) “Moreover, if it is necessary to judge, is this only the torture and its crimes or the engagement of France in the war and more largely still colonialism like system of oppression? This question is not about justice: it is posed, it remains posed with those which are located at the top of the pyramid, with the political officials. ”

In its thesis on “torture and the army during the war of Algeria”, Raphaelle Branche indeed develops the idea according to which the techniques of of torture “naturally” thrived on the compost of more than one century of colonization. During an interview granted to a review of CNRS it specifies its thought which abounds in the direction of the analysis of Aimé Césaire: " The practice of torture during the war in Algeria has at least two origins: clean colonial compost in Algeria (torture was used there by the police force within the framework of the colonial maintenance of law and order and case of armed confrontations) and a compost more specifically military with the weight of the colonial army and the Indochinese experiment in particular which led the Staff to interpret the war according to grids resulting from the conflict précédent." (Source: http://www2.cnrs.fr/presse/thema/191.htm)

That joined the conclusions of Olivier the Court Grandmaison which explains that “years 1840 with independence in 1962, the physical body of the " arabe" was thus used as an instrument of terror on which the colonial capacity did not cease registering the marks of its any power. Torture in Algeria and in the French empire: an exception limited to the national liberation wars led against the metropolis? Not, the rule. ”.

In " Hundred years of capitalism in Algeria, history of the conquest coloniale" , article published in the proletarian Revolution in 1930, Robert Louzon explains why torture is the only means of instruction of the penal matters since it is question of " indigènes" and denounces already this irrefutable fact particularly feeling reluctant like falling under colonial reality at the point to be one of the most authentic demonstrations about it (Source: Hundred years of capitalism in Algeria Robert Louzon ED. Acratie)

Marc Ferro in the black book of colonialism announces its regret: " Those which work on the totalitarian modes read Hannah Arendt only one eye, seems it. They omitted to realize that with the Nazism and Communism it had associated the colonial imperialism (Hannah Arendt, the origins of totalitarianism, imperialism, 1955) Between these modes indeed, it exists a relationship which the West-Indian poet Aimé Césaire had located well, at least with regard to Nazism and colonialism: " What the very Christian middle-class man of the XXème century does not forgive with Hitler, it is not the crime in oneself, it is the crime against the white man (...) to have applied to Europe of the processes colonialists to which belonged up to now only Arabic, the coolies of India and the negros of Afrique" (Aime Césaire, Speech on colonialism, African Presence, 1955.) ” (Marc Ferro, the black book of colonialism) That of course raises the question of a genealogy of the totalitarianism, whose dehumanization holds much more according to authors like Aimé Césaire of the mental structures of colonialism that those of the French revolution. Authors as Olivier the Court Grandmaison see directly in the colonial compost beyond the systematization of means of terror of mass, a laboratory of the genocides of the XXème century. (Source: To colonize To exterminate, Olivier the Court Grandmaison Beech) At all events, as Marc Ferro " indicates it; Without excess, one can affirm that colonization led to a development of racism and that this Racisme mainly nourished the rancour of colonized. The humiliations undergone by the Algerians, Africans, Annamites or Madagascans under the French colonial administration contributed certainly, more than extreme violences of the conquest or the various forms of exploitation and spoliation, with the anger of the offensés." (Source: http://www.ldh-toulon.net/spip.php?article1075) Obviously the racism inherited the colonial company and the colonial presence is not foreign with the persistence and the systematization of torture during the war of Algeria.

The impunity of of torture and investigations into torture

Since 1949, the Naegelen general governor writes a circular prohibiting the use of torture and the maltreatment by the police services, but does not manage to be made obey.

January 20th, 1955, Pierre Mendès France and François Mitterrand amalgamate the police forces of Algeria and Metropolis, putting an end to the autonomy of the Algerian police force. Tens of police officers suspected of practicing, of encouraging, or of guaranteeing torture are transferred in Metropolis. The government Mendès France is reversed as of on February 5th, the radical deputies of Algeria having voted the censure. According to F. Mitterrand then Minister of Interior Department, the government was reversed to have fought against “this hateful system”. The historian Jean-Pierre Peyroulou is not far from sharing this analysis.

As of on April 6th, 1956, Guy Mollet request with the International committee of the Red Cross to send a mission in Algeria to inquire into the living conditions of the militants of the Face of national release held by the French authorities. In October 1956, it meets Hubert Beuve-Méry and asks for details to him on the charges of torture practiced by certain soldiers. The director of the World having given to him a file of a score of sheets, Guy Mollet writes with Robert Lacoste, which answers him that sanctions were taken each time exactions could be proven (up to sixty days of confinement), and that the charges relayed by Beuve-Méry are almost all untrue. New reports/ratios being given him (one of the Red Cross, the other of Jean Mairey, director of the National security), and certain newspapers multiplying the charges, the Mollet government creates a “standing committee of safeguard of the rights and personal freedoms”, directed by Pierre Béteille, adviser with the Court of appeal, in April 1957. No member of Parliament is member, the deputies and senators being shown of partiality, and the commission is entirely free of its organization. The practice of torture does not cease, but several disciplinary actions are taken, several legal procedures are started against the of torture ones supposed, and several hundreds of interned people are released. Lastly, Guy Mollet authorizes the International commission against the mode concentrationnaire with diligenter an investigation. This one concludes, in July 1957, that during April, torture seems to have decreased, and that the living conditions in the camps of lodging are overall satisfactory. These investigations were largely brocardées for their ridiculous in particular by the film adaptation of the book of Henri Alleg “the question” carried out by Heynemann.

To 1959 to 1961, Edmond Michelet, Minister for Justice, endeavors in its turn “to fight” against torture. But Michel Debré, Prime Minister, obtains finally Général de Gaulle, president of the Republic, that Edmond Michelet leaves his functions, which “releases police brutality” according to the historian Alain Dewerpe. With Paris, the prefect Maurice Papon who had had important responsibilities in the constantinois, makes come from the harkis which already proved reliable.

Laws of amnesty were promulgated after the war, but torture as a crime against humanity is imprescriptible and insusceptible of amnesty if one sticks to the international law. In a stop of June 18th, 2003 the French Court of appeal considers that there no was crime against humanity during the war of Algeria, drawing aside the possibility of continuations against the general Paul Aussaresses. This current jurisprudence although she does not deny with properly not spoken torture nor the qualification about crime against humanity within the meaning of the current penal code come into effect on March 1st, 1994 considers the facts occurred during the War of Algeria insusceptibles to take on the qualification of crime against humanity such as the French right characterized it at that time, since it aimed only the powers of the Axis, the facts occurred before the coming into effect of the new penal code which devotes the current definition and that ensures the impunity of the of torture ones consequently. Indeed for the Court of appeal, since the events are former to March 1st, 1994, only the facts made by the powers of the Axis are suitable for cover the qualification of crime against humanity, that thus made obstacle with the judgment of of torture and their accomplices in spite of the imperative standards of international law which have vocation to however apply. The doctrines are shown very critical and of defense associations of the human rights as FIDH require obviously a reversal

In 1982, OAS was rehabilitated contrary to the general of Bolardière which had been sanctioned in its time to have denounced torture. It was at the time the only French officer to do it, which been worth to him up to sixty days of confinement.

The case of the OAS

OAS is an terrorist organization who forever hesitated to resort to torture to sit its practices of terror. Its members nevertheless were also victims of torture on behalf of the mode gaullist. As the historian Pierre Vidal Naquet denounces it very early the tortures perpetrated by the secret agents were psychological and especially physics. Torn off blows, throttlings, electricity, nails, burst eyes, burns, are the daily batch of horrors which the prisoners have to undergo. They will prefer with the verb to torture that “to triturate”. The of torture ones used the “electric chair”, armchair whose file and seat were replaced by two arise with roll and a mesh wire. The current then was connected between the seat and the file and regulated on 110,220 volts, and could go up to 500 volts.

Henri Vincent stopped on January 27th, 1962 towards 20:30, was taken along to El Biar by the secret agents. Given to the legal Police force of Hussein Dey it was examined by the doctors Henri de Jolinière and Maurice Bourhy which noted and certified undergone tortures. The Petijean business was very mediatisée at the time, this engineer was tortured then assassinated by the secret agents. One can however read a declaration of Mr. Mestre, at the time spokesperson of the General delegation, today former minister: “It is possible that Mr. Petitjean was victim of a settling of score within the O.A.S.”.

However torture against the OAS or the partisans of “French Algeria” was not a single speciality of the secret agents: the gendarmes of colonel Debrosse, the mobile guards at the police academy of Hussein Dey, the police officers of the mission “C” in the famous barracks of the “Tagarins” also made themselves guilty of War crimes. Among their victims, Mrs Salasc, wife of a doctor of Algiers, Mr Ziano, etc

By the ALN

Of dimensioned sound, ALN employed similar methods. Paul Bonnecarrère, in particular, evokes both in its book the cruel war ; Moslem or civil back-up troops of the mechtas faithful to France cut the throat of, émasculés, broken women, massacre of a village MNA of Messali Hadj by FLN. It is about the massacre of the douar of Melouza (300 people). Other massacres of partisans of the MNA took place in particular in Ain-Manaa and Wagram.

Tortures aimed at maintaining a climate terror. The N°61 special issue of 1957 of the review Medical Algeria , official body of the medical company of the hospitals of Algiers and the Federation of Medical sciences of North Africa, presents the efforts of the French medical community in Algeria to repair the mutilations made with the face against the Moslems not having followed the instructions of the FLN. According to the French military sources of 1954 to March 19th, 1962 there be 16.378 Moslems killed by the FLN and 13.296 missings. In 1962, were added there tens of thousands of Harkis killed after being disarmed and being given up by the French Army.

The old one called quota Benoist Rey in its work the Stickers seems to estimate the number of victims of the much lower ALN and without common measurement with that of the victims tortured by the French Army, the colonial administration and their partisans. On this point the historians, unanimously, give him reason: there were more tortures perpetrated by the French authorities during the war of Algeria that by the Algerian freedom fighters. The center of torture of Constantine where the number of questioned people largely exceeds the 100.000 Algerians, only adds up with him more tortures that the freedom fighters.

The historian Guy Pervillé explains on this subject that even if one adds to the crimes perpetrated during the war the massacres of harkis occurred after ceased fire and independence, that does not restore of anything balance.

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