This recognition is one of the appeasement gestures recommended by historian Benjamin Stora in his report on colonization and the Algerian war.
Franco-Algerian memory has long been a source of tension. President Emmanuel Macron makes a gesture: he recognized, Tuesday March 2, “what Malika Boumendjel would have liked to hear”: that the lawyer and nationalist leader Ali Boumendjel was “tortured and murdered” by the French army during the war of Algeria in 1957, announced the Elysee, a murder at the time disguised as suicide.
This recognition “in France’s name “, which the Head of State himself announced to Ali Boumendjel’s four grandchildren by receiving them on Tuesday, is one of the appeasement gestures recommended by historian Benjamin Stora in its report on colonization and the Algerian war, in order to resolve the tensions between the two countries around the memory of this conflict.
“At the heart of the Battle of Algiers, he was arrested by the French army, held incommunicado, tortured, then assassinated on March 23, 1957,” the Elysee said in a statement. In 2000, “Paul Aussaresses [former head of intelligence in Algiers] himself confessed to having ordered one of his subordinates to kill him and disguise the crime as suicide.”
“He also told them of his desire to continue the work started several years ago to collect testimonies, encourage the work of historians by opening the archives, in order to give to all the families of the missing, on both sides of the Mediterranean, the means to know the truth. ”
“This in-depth work over the next few months”
This gesture “is not an isolated act”, promises the president in this press release. “No crime, no atrocity committed by anyone during the Algerian war can be excused or concealed. “
“This work will be extended and deepened over the coming months, so that we can move forward towards appeasement and reconciliation“, concludes the press release, which pleads for “to look history in the face, to recognize the truth of the facts” for ” reconciliation of memories ”.
“The generation of Ali Boumendjel’s grandchildren must be able to build their destiny, far from the two ruts of amnesia and resentment. It is for them now, for the French and Algerian youth, that we must advance on the path of truth, the only one that can lead to the reconciliation of memories, “said the Elysee.
Last month, Ali Boumendjel’s niece, Fadela Boumendjel-Chitour, denounced a “devastating lie of the [French] state”.
