Old men do not forget. In two chilling interviews published in today's Le Monde, retired French generals Jacques Massu (92) and Paul Aussaresses (82) recount in unprecedented detail the systematic torture and summary executions carried out by the French army during the 1954-1962 Algerian war of independence.
Gen Aussaresses, then a commandant, was Gen Massu's intelligence chief during the 1957 Battle of Algiers. In Torture in the Republic, the French historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet described Gen Aussaresses as the leader of "a team of professional killers". The general does not deny it. "Personally I never tortured, and yet my hands are not clean," he said.
"Sometimes I captured highranking FLN (National Liberation Front) guys and I said to myself: `That one's dangerous; he has to be killed.' And I did it, or I had it done, which is the same thing."
The journalist Florence Beauge, whose series of reports have made past torture a contemporary issue in France, asked Gen Aussaresses how many Algerian prisoners he murdered. "I'd say between 10 and 30," he answered. "You really don't know exactly how many men you killed?" Ms Beauge insisted. "Yes. I killed 24," he admitted. The confession is surprising given that Maurice Papon, a former government minister now in his 80s, is serving a prison sentence for his second World War role in the deportation of French Jews to Nazi death camps. There could soon be demands for war crimes trials of French officers who served in Algeria.
Gen Aussaresses also shed light on the death camp system run by the French in Algeria. He would ask the secretary general of the prefecture to sign orders for house arrests "which enabled us to lock the people up in camps, particularly the one called PaulCazelles, south of Algiers. In fact, we executed these detainees." Of 24,000 people placed under house arrest by French authorities in Algeria, 3,024 were murdered.
The old generals are unkind to one another. "We shouldn't repent," Gen Aussaresses said. He and others resent the late-life religiosity of Gen Massu, who was invested with police powers by a socialist government in 1956. "Sometimes I used to tell Massu, `we've picked up so-and-so'," Gen Aussaresses said. "And I looked him in the eyes before adding, `We'll kill him tomorrow'. Massu would grunt, and I took that for a `yes'."
"My name has always been associated with torture," Gen Massu admitted, adding, "I found it very hard to live with." The most frequent method of torture used by the French in Algeria was lagegene - after the wind-up radio generators first used to torment prisoners in Indochina. In Algeria, officers placed electrodes on victims' ears and penises and plugged into a 110 volt wall current.
The French adopted their other preferred method - la baignoire or the bathtub - from the Gestapo during the Nazi occupation. Prisoners were held down in tubs of filthy water or urine until they almost drowned.
Gen Massu blames the French civilian authorities who knew that the military "Inter-service Co-ordination Centre" (CCI) and the Operational Protection System (DOP) were torture chambers.
French politicians knew what was happening but did nothing to stop it. One day a parliamentary committee arrived from Paris to investigate charges of torture.
In the 10th Parachute Division headquarters, they came across an officer interrogating an Algerian peasant.
How could the French be sure that Algerian prisoners told the truth? a deputy asked. "I make them swear on the Koran," the officer answered. "On an electric Koran," the Algerian cried out.
