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Saadia Mebarek, who died on May 25, 1960, was an Algerian woman arrested, tortured and killed by French soldiers during the Algerian War. [1]
She married to Mohamed Kader, a crane operator, and was pregnant when she was arrested in Algiers on May 24, 1960. Her husband filed a complaint two days later Saadia was found dead in the early morning of May 25. She was brought on a stretcher, by a French soldier, to the Mustapha Pacha hospital. [2]
On June 3, 1960, President Charles de Gaulle asked Prime Minister Michel Debré to initiate an investigation: "The facts denounced are of particular gravity. [...] It goes without saying that if torture is established, exemplary sanctions will have to be taken”. [3] According to the army report transmitted on June 11 by Minister Pierre Messmer, Saadia Mebarek was suspected, along with four other women, of "abstentionist propaganda for the cantonal elections", in a context where the National Liberation Front called for the 'abstention.The trial of an active lieutenant and two reserve second lieutenants suspected of having tortured Saadia Mebarek to death. [4]
The trial was held behind closed doors in January 1962 at the Permanent Armed Forces Tribunal. This is, according to Sylvie Thénault and Raphaëlle Branche, the only trial involving soldiers involved in operations in Algeria. [5]
The accused admitted the facts with which they were charged. However, the soldiers present in court acquitted the three defendants. Thus, “the army would not take responsibility for the abuses committed during the war, for which it ultimately holds the political power responsible”. [6]
The Organisation armée secrète was a far-right French dissident paramilitary and terrorist organisation during the Algerian War. The OAS carried out terrorist attacks, including bombings and assassinations, in an attempt to prevent Algeria's independence from French colonial rule. Its motto was L’Algérie est française et le restera.
The Algerian War was a major armed conflict between France and the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) from 1954 to 1962, which led to Algeria winning its independence from France. An important decolonization war, it was a complex conflict characterized by guerrilla warfare and war crimes. The conflict also became a civil war between the different communities and within the communities. The war took place mainly on the territory of Algeria, with repercussions in metropolitan France.
French Algeria, also known as Colonial Algeria, was the period of Algerian history when the country was a colony and later an integral part of France.
Jacques Émile Massu was a French general who fought in World War II, the First Indochina War, the Algerian War and the Suez Crisis. He led French troops in the Battle of Algiers, first supporting and later denouncing their use of torture.
Raoul Albin Louis Salan was a French Army general and the founder of the Organisation armée secrète, a clandestine terrorist organisation that sought to defend the French colonial empire by preventing Algerian independence. He served as the fourth French commanding general during the First Indochina War. He was one of four retired generals who organized the 1961 Algiers Putsch operation. He was the most decorated soldier in the French Army at the end of his military career.
Marcel Bigeard, personal radio call-sign "Bruno", was a French military officer and politician who fought in World War II, the First Indochina War and the Algerian War. He was one of the commanders in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and is thought by many to have been a dominating influence on French "unconventional" warfare thinking from that time onwards. He was one of the most decorated officers in France, and is particularly noteworthy because of his rise from being a regular soldier in 1936 to ultimately concluding his career in 1976 as a Lieutenant General and serving in the government of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.
Elements from the French Armed Forces used deliberate torture during the Algerian War (1954–1962), creating an ongoing public controversy. Pierre Vidal-Naquet, a renowned French historian, estimated that there were "hundreds of thousands of instances of torture" by the French military in Algeria.
Danièle Minne was one of the few European women convicted of assisting the FLN during the Algerian War. Her mother Jacqueline Netter-Minne-Guerroudj and her stepfather Abdelkader Guerroudj, were both condemned to death as accomplices of Fernand Iveton, the only European who was guillotined for his part in the Algerian revolt. Her mother was never executed, partly due to a campaign on her behalf conducted by Simone de Beauvoir; her stepfather was also freed.
Benjamin Stora is a French historian, expert on North Africa, who is widely considered one of the world's leading authorities on Algerian history. He was born in a Jewish family that left the country following its War of Independence in 1962. Stora holds two PhDs and a Doctorate of the State (1991).
The Battle of Philippeville, also known as the Philippeville massacre or the August Offensive was a series of raids launched on 20 August 1955 on various cities and towns of the Constantine region by FLN insurgents and armed mobs during the Algerian War between France and Algerian rebels. The raids, which mostly took the form of ethnic riots, resulted in the massacre of several dozens of European settlers known as Pieds-Noirs. These massacres were then followed by reprisals by the French army and Pieds-Noirs vigilantes, which resulted in the death of several thousand Muslim Algerians. The events of late August 1955 in the Constantinois region are considered to be a major turning point of the Algerian War.
Philippe Louis Edmé Marie François Erulin was a senior French military officer. He is best known as the Colonel Commandant of the 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment 2e REP, who directed the military intervention in Zaïre during the Shaba II conflict against rebels of the Congolese National Liberation Front (FLNC).
Algeria and Israel have no official diplomatic relations, with Algeria being part of the Arab League boycott of Israel, and officially does not recognize the State of Israel. Algeria refuses entry to any person holding an Israeli passport or any other passport with a visa from Israel.
The Battle of Bab el Oued was a violent confrontation which occurred during the latter stages of the Algerian War (1954–1962) between the French Army and the Organisation armée secrète (OAS) which opposed Algerian independence. It took place in Bab El Oued, then a working-class European quarter of Algiers, from 23 March to 6 April 1962.
Yves Courrière, real name Gérard Bon was a French writer, biographer and journalist.
The Battle of Bouzegza took place during the Algerian War in the Berber-speaking region of the Adrar Azegzaw massif, at the far eastern end of the Mitidja Plain.
The Ambush of Palestro, or Ambush of Djerrah, took place on the 18th May 1956, during the Algerian war, near the village of Djerrah in the region of Palestro in Kabylie. A section of about forty men from the National Liberation Army (ALN) under the command of Lieutenant Ali Khodja ambushed a unit of 21 men from the 9th Colonial Infantry Regiment of the French Army commanded by Second Lieutenant Hervé Artur.
The villa Sésini is a torture center established in El Biar during the Algerian war in the city of Algiers.
Mohamed Aïchaoui was an Algerian journalist and militant in the nationalist movement against French Algeria. Aïchaoui wrote the Declaration of 1 November 1954, the National Liberation Front's first appeal to the Algerian people at the start of the Algerian War. After earlier imprisonment and torture, he died in a 1959 clash with the French army.
Baya Hocine, also known as Baya Mamadi was an Algerian independence fighter.
The Battle of Ath Yahia Moussa was an armed conflict during the Algerian War that took place on January 6, 1959, in the Kabylia region of Algeria. This battle involved the National Liberation Army (ALN) against the French Army.
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