Zitouni: “We won’t be complacent with France on outstanding issues and we’ll continue to call for archives’ retrieval”

“Algeria is currently safer than France”, said Mr Tayeb Zitouni, Minister of Mujahideen, stressing that Algeria wouldn’t seal any of the outstanding issues between it and the French colonial power, and that it was and is still demanding the retrieval of archives of our glorious revolution, which France has up to now refused to give back for the sake of collective memory enshrinement.

Taking the floor before local officials and mudjahidine or war veterans during a working visit on Thursday to Skikda province ‘eastern Algeria), Mr Zitouni pointed out that  Algeria still insists on the demand for compensations for the much-damaging nuclear explosions in Reggane in southern Algeria  conducted by French colonial  as well as for the retrieval of the skulls of Algerian Martyrs, now displayed shamelessly and for a very long time in a French Museum in Paris.

“We will not accept that the skulls of these heroes are buried elsewhere than in Algeria,” he said, referring to a close cooperation between his sector and that of Foreign Affairs on this question of honor which Concerns all Algerians “, Mr Tayeb Zitouni underscored to this effect.

He further reaffirmed the concern of the national authorities to settle the pending files relating to the disappeared and to the recovery of the Algerian archives now held in France.

The Minister also stated that that Algeria won’t close the vexed file pertaining to those Algerian missing persons who disappeared during the independence revolution, and during the period of the brutal French colonial occupation of Algeria.