The 17th of October 1961 is one of the most important and worst events in the history of the Algerian revolution, and it is described as the massacre committed by France against Algerian demonstrators who took to the streets in peaceful protests against the curfew imposed on Algerians in Paris in 1961.

On October 17, 1961, the French police, by order of Paris Police Governor Maurice Papon, shot Algerian immigrants who took to the streets in huge rallies in which the participants estimated in the thousands at the invitation of the National Liberation Front to protest against a law issued against them, and to demand the independence of their country, which had passed Almost seven years of armed struggle at the time.

The events date back to the fifth of October 1961, when Baboun issued an order banning the curfews of Algerians from eight in the evening until five thirty in the morning, and Algerian immigrants at the time considered the ban to be racist and arbitrary.

On October 17, 1961, at eight in the evening, thousands of Algerians took to the streets in Paris in peaceful demonstrations and gathered in public squares to denounce the decision, and to inform the French authorities of demands expressed by their slogans that say, "Let the curfew fall down ... negotiate with the interim government of the Algerian Republic ... independence for Algeria." Long live the Liberation Front. "

The police forces attacked the Algerian demonstrators and deliberately killed dozens of them in the streets and metro stations, and threw dozens of them in the Seine River until their bodies floated on its surface, in a crackdown on the marches, the exact number of which is not known.

Historians and writers who witnessed the events mention that the police arrested about 12 thousand Algerians and detained them in police stations and in camps that they established for them in the Sports Palace in Paris and the Palace of Exhibitions, and there they were subjected to interrogation, insult, beatings, torture and murder.

Some testimonies, and


in a previous testimony to Al-Jazeera Net (2010), Said Bagatash - one of the demonstrators at the time - confirmed that those demonstrations quickly turned into massacres, and that “French police forces attacked the demonstrators with batons and live bullets, and threw some demonstrators in the Seine River. The next day the bodies floated to the surface of the water. "

Said Bktash said that thousands of Algerians were arrested in those demonstrations, noting that some of them died under torture.

For his part, Algerian historian Hassan Zugheida told Al-Jazeera Net that what happened in the October 17 demonstrations is an organized state crime, which is punishable by all international laws and does not die by statute of limitations.

He revealed that the massacres of October 17 took place amid a media blackout, as the French authorities prevented the press from attending and writing about the massacre, and ignored the complaints of relatives of the missing in the demonstrations.

The French survivor of the massacre, Monique Herveaux, said in a previous testimony to Al-Jazeera Net that she saw with her own eyes how the police shot the Algerians, and how they were throwing the bodies in the river.

British historians Jim House and Neil McMaster described what the Algerians were subjected to on October 17th in their book "The Algerians, The Republic and the State's Terror" as "the most violent suppression of a demonstration in Western Europe in contemporary history."

Algerian officials confirm that the victims of October 17th range from three hundred to four hundred dead, dozens of them dead in the Seine River, as well as the missing.

While the French historian Jean-Claude Enode asserts in his book "The Battle of Paris", that more than a hundred to 150 Algerians were killed or forcibly disappeared in those events, and the historian blamed the French police led by Papon openly responsible for their killing.

French recognition


France officially denied for years the massacre of October 17, but President Francois Hollande admitted it in a speech in Algeria in December 2012, but without offering an apology, as he said, "France consciously recognizes the" tragedy "that It was the bloody suppression of Algerians who were demonstrating for their right to independence, "and that was the first official recognition from France of that massacre.

French historians talked about the massacre, most notably Jean-Luc Enode, who revealed in his testimony, published on May 20, 1998 in Le Monde newspaper, that in October 1961, “a massacre occurred in Paris, perpetrated by the police forces on the order of Maurice Papon,” and this is the testimony given to Babon - Who was convicted in 1998 during his trial in cooperation with the Nazis - to file a complaint against him in 1998 for defamation against a public official, but it was rejected in 1999 and the historian was acquitted.

The French immortalized the October 17 massacres by placing a large plaque on a bridge in Saint Michel and writing in it: “From here the police were throwing the Algerians into the Seine River on October 17, 1961 ″, but this painting was vandalized before it was reinstalled, in addition to the establishment of the“ Association of October 17, 1961. Against forgetting. "