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REPUBLICA PRESS
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Algerian War (1954-62)

France Eases Declassification Rules, Opening Up Secret Algerian War Archives

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PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron of France on Tuesday announced that the declassification of secret archives more than 50 years old would be accelerated, a move that will facilitate access to documents related to the Algerian War — a controversial chapter of France’s history that authorities have long been reluctant to face.

A statement from the Élysée Palace said that starting Wednesday a new rule would “significantly shorten the time required for the declassification procedure” in order to “encourage respect for historical truth.”

Mr. Macron has recently taken a series of steps to lift the veil on France’s colonial history in Algeria, a lasting trauma that continues to shape modern France. The change announced Tuesday was intended to respond to growing complaints from historians and archivists about strict government instructions for declassifying archives.

2011 government requirement that every document classified “secret” or “top secret” be formally declassified before being made public. That contradicts a 2008 law that calls for the immediate release of secret documents 50 years after they were produced.

The 2011 instruction had been loosely enforced, or even ignored, by archivists in recent years. But the General Secretariat for Defense and National Security, a powerful unit inside the prime minister’s office, started enforcing the rules last year.

Tens of thousands of once-public documents were subsequently resealed, impeding historical research and reimposing secrecy on information that had been previously revealed.

Robert O. Paxton, an American historian who revealed French authorities’ collaboration with Nazi Germany, had challenged the 2011 requirement before France’s supreme court.

Ms. Branche, who is leading the legal fight, said the group would keep up its challenge despite Mr. Macron’s announcement on Tuesday.

It is unclear what motivated the effort to enforce the declassification policy last year. But Mr. Macron’s desire to pull back the curtain on the Algerian War has ruffled some feathers in the military, which oversees most archives relating to defense matters.

Fabrice Riceputi, a historian of the Algerian War, said that the declassification policy had led to some absurd situations.

2008 law.

In fact, the report was anything but secret, as it had been first revealed in a 1962 book and then cited in several historical studies in the 1990s.

report on the Algerian War that advised putting an end to the page-by-page declassification process but also returning “as soon as possible” to declassifying any secret document more than 50 years old, as required by the 2008 law.

In its statement, the Élysée Palace said that the government would try to reconcile the 2011 instruction and the 2008 law through legislation by this summer.

“It is a question of coordination between different legal regimes,” Mr. Ricard said in a recent interview, as he carefully flipped the pages of a (declassified) archive file on Maurice Audin, a mathematician who was tortured to death by the French Army in Algeria in 1957.

Documents on Mr. Audin are part of about 100 files released in 2019 and 2020 after Mr. Macron called for the opening of all archives dealing with people who disappeared during the war.

official acknowledgment last week that France had “tortured and murdered” a leading Algerian independence fighter in 1957 was much criticized by the French right.

But nearly 60 years after the end of the war, the issue of France’s colonial past has perhaps never been so pressing, underlying a racial awakening by immigrants in the country and fueling heated debates on the country’s model of integration.

website listing hundreds of names of people who went missing during the war, based on archival research he was able to do before the new instructions were enforced.

Within weeks, he said, he had received a torrent of testimonies from Algerian families, enabling him to document more than 300 cases.

“It wouldn’t stop,” he said.

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In Reconciliation Act, Macron Acknowledges Truth of Algerian Lawyer’s Death

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PARIS — Emmanuel Macron, the first French president born after the brutal Algerian war of independence, has taken a further step toward reconciliation through truth by declaring that a leading Algerian lawyer and nationalist did not die by suicide in 1957, as France had long claimed, but was tortured and killed by French soldiers.

Ali Boumendjel, a prominent wartime defender of Algerians imprisoned by the French, was captured on Feb. 5, 1957, during the Battle of Algiers and held in secret for 43 days.

Speaking “in the name of France,” Mr. Macron said Mr. Boumendjel “did not commit suicide. He was tortured and then assassinated.”

For decades, and despite persistent pressure from the lawyer’s late widow, Malika Boumendjel, France clung to the story that the death was a suicide. It did so even after the French army general, Paul Aussaresses, admitted in a book published in 2001 that he had killed Mr. Boumendjel by defenestration through a sixth-floor window.

report commissioned by Mr. Macron on the legacy of colonization and a war for independence between the two countries. Written by Benjamin Stora, a prominent French historian, and made public in January, it called for a Memories and Truth Commission, now established, to shed light on the conflict’s grim history and to heal wounds.

the widespread use of torture by French forces, and specifically its use against Maurice Audin, a member of the Algerian Communist Party who was also killed by French soldiers in 1957.

Mr. Macron, who is facing a presidential election 14 months from now and knows how explosive the Algerian issue still is on the right of the political spectrum, has insisted that there will be “no repentance nor apologies.” The French ambassador to Algeria, François Gouyette, said in an interview published this week that reconciliation must be achieved through a spirit of “neither denial nor repentance.”

Jean Castex, Mr. Macron’s prime minister, said last November that French “self-flagellation” around the theme of colonization was regrettable. He called for the country to assume its history and find in it a source of pride.

The 60th anniversary of the end of the war will be marked in March next year, one month before the first round of the presidential election. Mr. Macron is determined to advance his quest for Franco-Algerian reconciliation before then, in part to head off the anti-immigrant challenge of Marine Le Pen.

A perennial candidate, Ms. Le Pen has been working hard to appeal to the moderate center-right by dropping some of her more extreme positions, like exiting the European Union and the euro. Her National Rally party, formerly the National Front, exploited resentments over the loss of Algeria to build its support after its founding almost a half-century ago.

“No crime, no atrocity committed by anyone during the Algerian War, can be excused or hidden,” Mr. Macron said in his statement. “They must be viewed with courage and lucidity, in the absolute respect of all those whose life and destiny they destroyed.”

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