French Army Leaders Ordered Liquidation of Algerians, A Former Conscript Testifies
A French conscript went out to break the delay of his country’s authorities in declassifying documents related to the crimes of French colonialism in Algeria. The conscript is “Jacques Inrep”, who was called to work within the occupation forces in Algeria from May 1960 to August 1961. He decided to expose the inhumane practices against the Algerians during the liberation revolution.
The conscript justified his decision with the duty dictated by moral scruples, and he considered what he had done as a testimony to history. The importance of this testimony lies in the fact that its source is a conscript who was working in the secretariat of a senior official in the French army, with the rank of colonel, in the first historical state, Aures, one of the hottest regions and strongholds of the Algerian revolution.
Jacques Inrep photographed dangerous military documents from the Colonel’s office, marked “secret” and “top secret”. He also described two documents he had no time to photograph and said that since then, contrary to the law governing archives in France, historians who worked on the studying methods of torture practised by the French armed forces during the Algerian war have been unable to do that.
He explained in a testimony reported by the French “Mediapart” website: “At the end of April 1960, before I left for Algeria… I had a long conversation with my brother Michel and asked him to keep my letters in case something bad happened to me. I assured him that if I found any signs of a fascist aberration by the French army, I’d send him this evidence and we agreed on a place in the house where he could hide it. There was almost a premeditation, but it was just a vague idea. I didn’t know then that after a few months, I’d come across secret documents”.
“I regularly wrote to my parents, while concealing from them my various problems, and my physical and psychological crises as well. I only told Michel of the horrors of war…As soon as I arrived in Batna, I quickly realized that I had made a great mistake. Before leaving, I thought that these stories of torture can only be the work of sadists. The observation was frightening, the French army was torturing with all its might. Torture was an institutional system”.
The liquidation of members of the Liberation Army as soon as they were found and without trial was common, Inrep added: “I learned in particular, through a circular from Pierre Messmer, Minister of the Armed Forces, on July 18, 1960, of the horrors that were taking place in Algeria. The memorandum to stop the killing of guerrilla prisoners. However, this memorandum was not sent by the Batna region (eastern Algeria), where my unit was located, until nine months later, and I noted that after April 11, 1961, we continued to practice the war crimes consecrated by Generals Massu and Salan, ignoring the memorandum of the Minister of War “.
The witness Jacques Inrep spoke about his daily life in the colonel’s secretariat: “The daily work has hardly changed, except for three seals that appeared on his desk: “confidential”, “secret” and “top secret.” My work consisted of writing notes, answering the phone, and a keyboard that connected me to all units in Batna”.
The recruit took advantage of his military commander’s absence to set out to search and copy the rare documents exposing the practices of the colonial army: “While the colonel was away, I was left alone in the barracks. I began frantically searching among the dozens of volumes on the shelves. I quickly discovered a large number of sealed notes: “Confidential”, ‘”Secret” and “Top secret”. It was hard to make up my mind. Should I keep silent? steal those service notes? Become a traitor? But also: become a witness to history?”. Finally, he decided to copy the documents and hide them in a safe place.
The conscript admits that two documents remained engraved in his mind because he did not have time to photograph them, after the Colonel promptly knocked on the door, the first of which was signed by General Massu, stamped with “secret”, but it is widely spread in the army, in which he explained the different methods that must be used during interrogations of Algerians, represented by psychological pressure and threats, punches or kicks, and the use of 110-volt electricity, a water basin and a bucket.
As for the second document, it was signed by General Salan when he was the commander-in-chief of the French army in Algeria. It includes a phrase emphasizing “the liquidation of every person carrying a weapon as soon as he/she is arrested”, which were the instructions that continued to be applied in the Batna region, which this conscript left in August 1961, contrary to the instructions of the aforementioned Minister of the Armed Forces.
