"I was hearing along the way.. What do we do? Shall we throw it into the Seine? It is better if we put it in a dungeon. Oh, you filthy element."

(Ben Issa Swami in his testimony to his torture in Paris)

During the 132 years of the French occupation of Algeria, the French faced relentless resistance from the people of this ancient country in defense of their homeland, sanctities and sanctities.

In order for France to be able to put an end to all attempts of peaceful and military resistance against it, it worked on implementing a dual strategy that was entitled to buy debts at times, and to use iron, blood and bombs at other times.

It was not for nothing that Algeria was called "the country of a million martyrs."

Perhaps it is known that the history of French torture and intimidation in Algeria was not confined to the time of the armed revolution led by the “Algerian Liberation Front” during the last eight years of the French occupation (1954-1962), but it goes back to the early days of Where the feet of the French land Algeria for their occupation in 1830.

Screaming from the horror of torture

On May 29, 1950, on the pages of the newspaper “Insights” speaking on behalf of the Algerian Muslim Scholars Association, the sheikh and activist, the scholar “Mohamed Al-Bashir Al-Ibrahimi” (1889-1965), the president of the association, enumerated the grievances of France in his country, addressing the issue of torture, in an article He made its title "Tell us about justice, we forgot it", and in it he says: "Democracy is the claim of your time, but it is invalid in Algeria. To teach the high style of beatings and methods of torture, and its first experiences became in our bodies, and had it not been for the roaring of the seas and the clamor of politicians, you would have heard the moaning of the bereaved, and the rustling of whips would not mix in your ears with screaming, and if your time went too far in mastery, and you did not take the initiative to eradicate the germ of colonialism, that you would continue the deliciousness of Nero's burning Rome.”[1]

But the painful torment that France inflicted on the sons of Algeria did not make them less determined to achieve their independence.

At a crucial moment in the country's history (1954-1962), the Algerians decided to declare a general mobilization intent on expelling the occupier.

In the face of these developments in Algeria, the government in Paris decided to take the path of blood - and it took it for a long time - until the French Minister of the Interior - and the president of the country later - "Francois Mitterrand" said: "I do not accept negotiations with the enemies of the homeland, the only negotiations is war." .

And then France sent military and intelligence supplies, as well as its children in crime and murder to torture the sons of Algeria. We have discussed the testimony of the French General “Paul Aussars” (1918-2013) in our article “My Testimony about Torture” .. General Paul Aussards and the horrific crimes of France, which It revealed the extent of the contempt and brutality practiced by France against the Algerians at the time.

However, the systematic crimes of torture of the French were not limited to the Algerian resistance fighters in their country, but also affected the Algerian students who were receiving their education in Paris and sympathized with the cause of their country, seeking in every possible way in the legal, intellectual, cultural and political fields to be a supporter and helper for their country.

France has been tracking these students and monitoring them, and arrested dozens of them, until almost all of them fell victim to the worst forms of torture and criminality.

These crimes were documented in a book published in 1959 entitled "The Rotten Wound", which was translated into Arabic under the title "Gangrene... Torture of Algerians in Paris".

The book narrates the horrific facts of torture of Algerian students - deliberate operations carried out by the French police - through the testimony of four students who were arrested by the Paris police in December 1958 on charges of violating state security, they are: "Bashir Boumaza" and "Moussa Kabyli". Ben Issa Swami, and Mustafa Francis, brother of Ahmed Francis, the well-known politician.

The French authorities confiscated the book after it appeared, claiming that it harmed the reputation of the police with an unsubstantiated accusation, which did not convince the French press.

At the time, the Algerian newspaper El Mujahid continued to publish comments from French newspapers about the book and the authority's position on it.

In a later issue, a testimony was provided by some students confirming the use of torture methods as stipulated in the book.[2]

blood taste certificate

Benaissa Souami, an Algerian political science student in Paris at the time, fell under the hands of the French torture authorities, as the French apparently saw him as a supporter or sympathizer of the Algerian revolution, and she wanted to confirm this fact through a systematic interrogation, which was not human.

We had thought that such means were not carried out except in the most powerful dictatorships in the third world, so France pursued them through its security agents, inspectors and commissioners who received awards in this field from the highest authorities, as the book states.

On the fourth of December 1958, at exactly three thirty in the morning, Bin Issa Swami heard a knock on his door, so he opened the door and found in front of him “pistols and machine guns carried by six inspectors with cinematographers who stormed my room and asked me to raise my arms.”

“Do you have a search warrant?” asked Swami, but “the answer to this question was a few heavy punches, then my handcuffs were put in my hands, I was tied against the wall, and the search and search began, and it lasted two hours.”[3]

When the investigators did not find the "papers and documents" they were looking for, and through which they wanted to ascertain the relationship of Ben Swamy to the resistance in Algeria, they took him to the security headquarters on the Rue de Sousa in Paris. All he accused him of, and then came the turn of the "specialists", as they were called at the time.

In the book, we find that the term "specialists" refers to the persons responsible for torturing the interrogator.

The methods of torture varied from severe physical torture by beating, punching and hanging through a group of strong-willed people, to removing clothes and throwing water on the body, then torture with electricity in the various parts of the body, and finally illusion of murder, whether by drowning in stagnant water, putrid mixture of urine and sewage water or By pointing the weapon at the torturer in order to make confessions.

Ben Issa was exposed to all these stages, and the beating and punching hardly stopped day and night. He wrote about one of these sessions, the "French specialist", saying: "I did not make sure to stand completely until it rained with another series of blows that brought me back to the ground, and in fact I no longer remember the number of times that I fell in.. The period came when I received a very violent blow to my liver, and I collapsed completely, and passed out, I do not know how long I remained in this state.. Two strong palms grabbed me and lifted me, I was trembling, and my head and liver were in great pain.. I was I hear many laughs, commands and questions, but I slept standing, and I received new slaps that bled from my nose.”[4]

This method did not work in forcing Cheb Benaissa to confess what the French wanted from him, so they turned to the second stage of torture.

"The assistant was running the (electrical) machine with his hand and another passed the electrodes over my genitals. I passed out after a few minutes, and they put a few drops of a special liquid in my nostrils, and they went back to the machine again...The torture was repeated more violently, and this time it went away. He passes the electrodes over my whole body."

The electric torture was repeated in this case several times, and at the end of that session the “torture specialist” in Benaissa shouted: “Now put your clothes on, you rotten one, and quickly!”

Issa continued his description, saying: "I was unable not only to stand, but to extend my arms, even if I had every will in the world."

They reprimanded him: "Aren't you in a hurry?", with foot strikes, and slaps, until he finally succeeded in grasping his clothes with one hand after he relied on the table with the other for fear of falling.

[5]

The French investigators were keen to take Benaissa to various destinations to complete the torture and investigation, so that they might extract information from him that would benefit them in penetrating the Algerian Liberation Front and those associated with it inside and outside Algeria, and for this reason they took him to another headquarters outside Paris while he was blindfolded.

The essence of the torture this time was the illusion of drowning in a basin of dirty water, a trick that was famous at the time.

My hands were tied to my back with a piece of red cloth, then the seat was bent so that my head dipped in the water of the small basin, and this process lasted for a long time, and I vomited in the basin, and was forced to swallow a part of the foul water, then I untied, and raised again on the spit (torture column) Until morning".

The torture operations of Ben Issa continued for days and nights, during which he heard the moans and screams of torture of many of his Algerian brothers whom he referred to in his testimony by the letters of their first names. They were taken to a hospital.

Ben Issa did not know how long he remained until he recovered, but they brought him back to "Farzan" prison and from there to the central hospital again, and he stayed there until December 21, meaning that he remained for 17 days under detention and torture.

Benaissa ended this testimony by saying: "I was in the midst of the terrible tortures, thinking strongly of my brothers and sisters, I was thinking of (Arabi) Ben M'hidi, and Jamila (Bouhraid), and I always said to myself that it is possible to be covered in dirt, and then stay Meanwhile, clean.”[7]

Larbi Ben M'hidi (networking sites)

Despite the brutality of the torture Benaissa was subjected to, he was fortunate to finally be released;

Other Algerians were assassinated in the heart of Paris because of their association with the Algerian resistance.

Among them is Ould Odiya, who received a death threat because he protected members of the Liberation Front in France. Nine days after the threat, he was actually assassinated in Paris in May 1959, and a French terrorist organization was accused of killing him. [8]

The testimony of Benaissa Swami was but one of thousands of stories about the atrocities of the French occupation in Algeria, a story that led its owner, months after his detention, and three of his companions to write down their painful experience as Algerian intellectuals and students in the "capital of enlightenment".

And they did well to record their experience in history, for more than sixty years after those tragedies, their stories are still living witnesses to what this occupation has committed against Algeria's past, and indeed its present and future.

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Sources

[1] Muhammad al-Bashir al-Ibrahimi: Tell us about justice, the works of Imam al-Bashir al-Ibrahimi 3/372.

[2] Abu al-Qasim Saadallah: Algeria’s Cultural History 10/152.

[3] Gangrene, Torture of Algerians in Paris, p. 40.

[4] Previous p. 44, 45.

[5] Previous pg 47.

[6] Ibid, p. 51.

[7] Previous pg. 53.

[8] Abu al-Qasim Saad Allah: Previous 10/155.