French Occupation Army: Kidnaping and Liquidation of Algerians

A study prepared by French historians revealed how French colonialism turned kidnapping and obligatory disappearance into its preferred weapon against the Algerian people during the liberation revolution, to break their resolve and discourage them from fighting to expel the French occupation army.

The study was prepared by historians Fabrice Riceputi and Malika Rahal, and it examined the systematic crimes regarding which coordination existed between the colonial administration and the occupation army represented by the 10th French Paratrooper Division under the command of the criminal General Jaacques Massu, at the level of the historic fourth province, and exactly in the capital during what is known as the “Battle of Algiers”.

The study indicates that throughout 1957, the Capital’s Governorate used to send packages of documents every week to General Massu, including forms containing the name and surname of the person, age, address and occupation, and the date and circumstances of his abduction by the occupation army, in addition to the name of a member of his/her family under the pretext of notifying him/her when the missing person is found.

According to the same study, within one year, the governorate issued 2039 of these forms, pending answers from the army about the fate of the person concerned. The waiting was often in vain, the study adds, because in 70% of the cases, the army did not answer them, or its responses were “invalid” or “unsatisfactory.” The responses are usually written as follows: “It has long been simply no longer possible for me to tell a single lawyer whether his/her client is dead or alive.”

The idea of the investigation carried out by the two historians was based on the file of the “disappeared detainees” reported by their families in 1957, which is preserved today in the French Archives Overseas.

The study indicates that on January 7, 1957, Guy Mollet’s government gave carte blanche to General Massu to restore the colonial regime in Algiers, which had already become seriously threatened since the fall of 1956, as a result of the growing influence of the liberation revolution at the level of the capital, as well as in the rest of the country.

After that, the repression reached its extent when the number of detainees in the camps reached 20,000 in the capital after the army was exempted from all legal restrictions to make the barbaric operation a success, as it allowed it to enter homes, search, arrest, detain, and interrogate, as it deems appropriate, says the study, and this without the need to explain to someone about the motives of these operations, and about the identity and fate of the detained “suspects”, while it was allowed to generalize torture, rape and executions, which are usually followed by hiding or dissolving the corpses.

In January and February 1957, during the suppression of the strike organized by the National Liberation Front, the two historians confirm, all Muslim neighbourhoods – not just the Casbah – were subjected to targeted raids and kidnappings, often at night and with ostentatious brutality, leaving behind broken doors, thefts, violence against relatives, and bloody statements about the ominous fate that awaits the person thrown into a covered truck, often carrying a masked informant, nicknamed “Bouchkara” by witnesses. Kidnapping also took place on public roads or in workplaces, kids, youth and the elderly were not excluded from it, and none of them survived until 1962.

The study conveys some of the testimonies collected by the two historians, “how wives and mothers roamed the city in search of their missing prisoners, sometimes stopping for hours in front of those places, hoping to see them or obtain information. Sometimes they succeed, but it also happened that they were driven away or a soldier told them harshly that there is no more hope. Released detainees provided information, and sometimes families received letters from their relatives, they may visit them in a camp for a while, and then suddenly there is no news. For many families, the hope that the missing person may reappear only dashed after the ceasefire of March 19, 1962, when the camps released thousands of prisoners…the disappeared did not return”.

The two historians confirm that the families of the forcibly disappeared wrote a lot to the colonial administration in the capital, to Minister Robert Lacoste, to Generals Raoul Salan, and Jacques Massu and even to his wife Suzanne Massu, to the Archbishop of Algiers, and all the authorities in the French capital. However, their letters rarely received replies.

What has been verified based on this study is that over 400 cases of final disappearance were identified, out of approximately 1,200 cases that have been announced.

The disappearances worked so well that today no one knows the total number of “The Disappeared in the Battle of Algiers”.