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.”