Macron Admits France Murdered Algerian Independence Figure

In this file photo taken in 2001 Malika Boumendjel, widow of Algerian lawyer Ali Boumendjel gives an interview at her home about her husband's death. (Getty Images)
In this file photo taken in 2001 Malika Boumendjel, widow of Algerian lawyer Ali Boumendjel gives an interview at her home about her husband's death. (Getty Images)
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Macron Admits France Murdered Algerian Independence Figure

In this file photo taken in 2001 Malika Boumendjel, widow of Algerian lawyer Ali Boumendjel gives an interview at her home about her husband's death. (Getty Images)
In this file photo taken in 2001 Malika Boumendjel, widow of Algerian lawyer Ali Boumendjel gives an interview at her home about her husband's death. (Getty Images)

President Emmanuel Macron has admitted for the first time that French soldiers murdered a top Algerian independence figure then covered up his death, in the latest acknowledgement by Paris of its colonial-era crimes.

Macron met four of the grandchildren of Ali Boumendjel and admitted "in the name of France" that the lawyer had been detained, tortured and killed in Algiers on March 23, 1957, his office said Tuesday.

French authorities had previously claimed that he had committed suicide while in detention, a lie that his widow campaigned to be overturned up to her death in August last year.

"Looking our history in the face, acknowledging the truth, will not enable us to heal all of the still open wounds, but it will help to create a path for the future," the statement from Macron's office said.

As the first French president to be born in the post-colonial era, Macron has made several unprecedented steps to face up to France's brutal fight to retain control of its north African colony, which won independence in 1962.

In 2018, he admitted that France had created a "system" that facilitated torture during the war and acknowledged that French mathematician Maurice Audin, a Communist pro-independence activist, was also murdered in Algiers.

In July last year, he tasked French historian Benjamin Stora with assessing how France has dealt with its colonial legacy.

Stora's report in January made a series of recommendations, including acknowledging the murder of Boumendjel and creating a "memory and truth commission" that would hear testimony from people who suffered during the war.

It did not suggest a formal state apology, however, and Macron has said there would be "no repentance nor apologies" but rather "symbolic acts" aimed at promoting reconciliation.

Confessions
Boumendjel was a French-speaking nationalist lawyer and intellectual who served as a link between the moderate UDMA party and the National Liberation Front (FLN), the underground resistance movement.

Macron praised his "humanism" and his "courage" in his statement, adding that Boumendjel had been influenced by French Enlightenment values in his fight against "the injustice of the colonial system".

His grandson Mehdi Ali Boumendjel, who met Macron on Tuesday, called the admission "a big step forward for our family and for the thousands of people who experienced the same atrocities."

He added that he along with fellow relatives stressed that "Ali Boumendjel was not the only one, and this message was heard and confirmed by the President."

In 2001, the former head of French intelligence in Algiers Paul Aussaresses published a book called "Special Services 1955-1957" in which he described how he and his "death squad" tortured and killed prisoners, including Boumendjel.

Aussaresses wrote that the government, notably the then justice minister Francois Mitterrand, who later became president, was informed about and tolerated the use of torture, executions and forced displacements.

Last month, Boumendjel's niece Fadela Boumendjel-Chitour denounced what she called the "devastating" lie the French state had told about her uncle, which had never been officially corrected.

Macron also said on Tuesday that he would continue to open national archives and encouraged historians to continue researching Algeria's independence war, which saw atrocities committed by all sides.

Deep wounds
Paris ruled Algeria for more than a hundred years and the independence war from 1954-1962 left 1.5 million Algerians dead, leaving deep scars and a toxic debate about the legacy of colonization.

During his 2017 election campaign, Macron declared that the occupation of Algeria was a "crime against humanity" and called French actions "genuinely barbaric".

But despite his outreach efforts, he has been criticized for ruling out a state apology, with the Algerian government calling the most recent report by Stora "not objective" and "below expectations".

On France's right and far-right, many politicians object to raking up the past, with French colonialism still defended as a "civilizing" enterprise that helped develop occupied territories.

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen, whose father was a soldier in Algeria, commented that Macron continued to send "disastrous signals of repentance, of division and hatred."

Writing on Twitter, she added: "We need to quickly return to feeling proud to be French at the summit of the state."



US Pulls Out of Two More Bases in Syria, Worrying Kurdish Forces

SDF forces in Syria. (AFP file)
SDF forces in Syria. (AFP file)
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US Pulls Out of Two More Bases in Syria, Worrying Kurdish Forces

SDF forces in Syria. (AFP file)
SDF forces in Syria. (AFP file)

US forces have pulled out of two more bases in northeastern Syria, visiting Reuters reporters found, accelerating a troop drawdown that the commander of US-backed Syrian Kurdish forces said was allowing a resurgence of ISIS.

Reuters reporters who visited the two bases in the past week found them mostly deserted, both guarded by small contingents of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) - the Kurdish-led military group that Washington has backed in the fight against ISIS for a decade.

Cameras used on bases occupied by the US-led military coalition had been taken down, and razor wire on the outer perimeters had begun to sag.

A Kurdish politician who lives on one base said there were no longer US troops there. SDF guards at the second base said troops had left recently but declined to say when. The Pentagon declined to comment.

It is the first confirmation on the ground by reporters that the US has withdrawn from Al-Wazir and Tel Baydar bases in Hasaka province. It brings to at least four the number of bases in Syria US troops have left since President Donald Trump took office.

Trump’s administration said this month it will scale down its military presence in Syria to one base from eight in parts of northeastern Syria that the SDF controls. The New York Times reported in April that troops might be reduced from 2,000 to 500 in the drawdown.

The SDF did not respond to questions about the current number of troops and open US bases in northeastern Syria.

But SDF commander Mazloum Abdi, who spoke to Reuters at another US base, Al Shadadi, said the presence of a few hundred troops on one base would be "not enough" to contain the threat of ISIS.

"The threat of ISIS has significantly increased recently. But this is the US military’s plan. We’ve known about it for a long time ... and we’re working with them to make sure there are no gaps and we can maintain pressure on ISIS," he said.

Abdi spoke to Reuters on Friday, hours after Israel launched its air war on Iran. He declined to comment on how the new Israel-Iran war would affect Syria, saying simply that he hoped it would not spill over there and that he felt safe on a US base.

Hours after the interview, three Iranian-made missiles targeted the Al Shadadi base and were shot down by US defense systems, two SDF security sources said.

ISIS ACTIVE IN SYRIAN CITIES

ISIS ruled vast swathes of Iraq and Syria from 2014 to 2017 during Syria’s civil war, imposing a vision of religious rule under which it beheaded locals in city squares, sex-trafficked members of the Yazidi minority and executed foreign journalists and aid workers.

The group, from its strongholds in Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq, also launched deadly attacks in European and Middle Eastern countries.

A US-led military Coalition of more than 80 countries waged a yearslong campaign to defeat the group and end its territorial control, supporting Iraqi forces and the SDF.

But ISIS has been reinvigorated since the ouster of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in December at the hands of separate opposition factions.

Abdi said ISIS cells had become active in several Syrian cities, including Damascus, and that a group of foreign extremists who once battled the Syrian regime had joined its ranks. He did not elaborate.

He said ISIS had seized weapons and ammunition from Syrian regime depots in the chaos after Assad's fall.

Several Kurdish officials told Reuters that ISIS had already begun moving more openly around US bases which had recently been shuttered, including near the cities of Deir Ezzor and Raqqa, once strongholds for the extremist group.

In areas the SDF controls east of the Euphrates River, ISIS has waged a series of attacks and killed at least 10 SDF fighters and security forces, Abdi said. Attacks included a roadside bomb targeting a convoy of oil tankers on a road near the US base where he gave the interview.