Zitouni: “The state will ensure return of skulls of Algerian resistance fighters”

Since Algerian historians and academics have called for the return of Algerian resistance fighters’ skulls of early French colonization, stored in special boxes in the reserves of the “Museum of Man” in Paris, in the collection of the Anthropology funds, the Minister of Moujahidin or war veterans, Tayeb Zitouni, said that the case of the return back to Algeria of these skulls would be ensured by the Algerian state.

Indeed, speaking in a statement to APS on the sidelines of a conference at the National Museum of Moudjahid on the occasion of the 171st anniversary of the choking off by fumes of the tribe of Ouled Riah, in the western mountains of the Dahra region (Mostaganem) committed under the orders of sinister French executioner, Colonel Pelissier, who had slaughtered more than 1,000 Chouhada or Martyrs, the minister said his department was currently working in close collaboration with the Foreign Ministry for an “optimal care for this burning question whose history dates back to over a century.”

Moreover, a petition has been launched online by the University Professor, Brahim Senouci in order to ensure return the remains of those Algerian resistance fighters to have a proper burial in Algeria saying he has been haunted by the case since 2011 when the historian Farid Ali Belkadi revealed it to the large public.

As a matter of fact, it is the historian Farid Ali Belkadi, who exposed the case through his research for his book “Boubaghla the Sultan with the Gray Mule” … the Chorfas Resistance”, which is at the origin of these horrendous revelations. 

According to him, some fragments of the bodies have been preserved in the French museum since 1880, when they entered its ethnic collection.

These mortal remains, dry skulls mostly belong, among others, to Sheikh Bouziane, leader of the revolt of Zaâtchas (Biskra region in 1849), Moussa El-Derkaoui, Si Mokhtar Ben Kouider Al-Titraoui and Mohamed Lamjad Ben Abdelmalek, Cherif called “Boubaghla” (the man with the gray mule) who was killed in 1854 while he was the head of an insurrection in Kabylia against the French colonial army and the mummified head of Aissa El -Hamadi, who was his lieutenant, as well as the integral molding of the head of Mohamed Ben Allel Ben Embarek, lieutenant of Emir Abdelkader.