Algeria Officially Initiates Proceedings With France To Retrieve Martyrs' Skulls

Algeria applied formal request to France to restore the skulls of its martyrs, which existed for nearly two centuries in Paris Musée de l’Homme, and to retrieve the archives of the period from 1830 to 1962.

APS quoted the Algerian Embassy as announcing that the Foreign Minister, Abdelkader Messahel, told France’s ambassador to France, Abdelkader Massdoua, to initiate proceedings with the French authorities over the two files that are linked to the memory issue.

This move comes after the meeting between President, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, and his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, who was on a working and friendship visits to Algeria.

Memory issue between the two countries was one of the topics that were discussed during the meeting of the two presidents.

Macron announced that France is ready to hand over copies of the archives from 1830 to 1962 to Algeria.

“French Foreign Minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian received last Wednesday, two requests, one on retrieving the skulls, that was signed by the Foreign Minister, Abdelkader Messahel, and the War Veterans Minister, Tayeb Zitouni, and the second was submitted on the archive and it was signed by Abdelkader Messahel as well”, APS added.

Algeria’s official request to retrieve the skulls of its opponents from the French Museum comes in the wake of Prime Minister Ouyahia’s comments on the occasion of the 4th session of the Algerian-French High-level Joint Governmental Committee on December,7, when he asserted that the two parties “made progress” in this delicate issue concerning the French-Algerian memory files, referring to the continued negotiation in order to retrieve the archives of the period 1830-1962 gradually.

In the framework of bilateral cooperation, three subcommittees were created to address the issue of memory, with more than a year of talks on three important files, which are, the archives, the Algerian missing during the liberation revolution and the compensation of the victims of the nuclear tests in Algerian Sahara, during the first visit that led the Algerian War Veterans Minister to France last year.