Caroline Baudry, edited by Clément Perruche 6:29 am, October 17, 2021
This weekend, France was commemorating the 60th anniversary of the massacre of October 17, 1961. That night, several dozen Algerian demonstrators were killed by the Parisian police.
Amaz Nanouche was present that evening.
He told Europe 1 this appalling episode in French history.
TESTIMONY
That was 60 years ago, to the day.
In the middle of the Algerian war, Algerians who marched peacefully in Paris at the call of the FLN to oppose the curfew imposed on them were killed by the Parisian police.
Impossible to establish a precise balance sheet of the repression orchestrated by the Prefect of Police Maurice Papon, but historians agree at least on several dozen dead during the night, killed by gunshot or drowned in the Seine (nearly 300 dead according to the heaviest balance sheets).
Amar Nanouche, 84, was demonstrating this evening of October 17, 1961. Europe 1 met him in his apartment in Gennevilliers.
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"They massacred people on the bus"
"I'm shaking ... what do you want me to do?" Amar's laughter disappears as the old man looks at the black and white photo he is holding in his hand. In this photo, hundreds of demonstrators, seated, in the rain. Glued near a barrier, we recognize his face. Amar Nanouche was then 24 years old. "We are in Paris, on the Place de l'Etoile. So there ... catastrophic ... thousands ... everyone with their hands on their heads ... A policeman came. He was running, me You can hear someone [say]: don't worry, there you go, everyone is going home. But they slaughtered people on the bus when we left, "he said.
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Crowded into this bus, the demonstrators were taken to the Palais des sports at the Porte de Versailles. "Lots of people on the floor. A thousand people easily! And there was someone next to me, excuse me, he wanted to pee. The guy, he came back ... he fell on top of me. He died. . They were massacred in the toilets, ”he recalls. Amar Nanouche spends a total of seven days in the Palais des sports. He sleeps on the floor and eats only a small piece of bread. It was there that he learned that some demonstrators were thrown into the Seine. "He did not want to run away, they took him, tied his hands. Thrown to the Bezons bridge, found in Saint-Denis." Four of his friends go missing that night. 60 years later, surrounded by his children in his apartment, he is theone of the last to witness this Black Tuesday.