Documents: De Gaulle kept officials involved in massacres against the Algerians in their positions
Documents declassified by the French government and published today showed that President Charles de Gaulle was informed of the massacre of dozens of Algerians in Paris, but he kept those responsible in their positions.
Declassified archive documents and published by the investigative website Mediapart showed that de Gaulle was informed of a massacre committed on October 17, 1961 in Paris, in which dozens of Algerians were killed, but he kept the governor, Maurice Papon and the ministers responsible in their positions.
According to the website, General de Gaulle's advisor for Algerian affairs, Bernard Tricot, wrote in a memorandum addressed to the President of the Republic on October 28, 1961, about "the possibility of 54 dead."
"Some of them were drowned, others were strangled, and others were shot," de Gaulle's advisor explained. "Judicial investigations have been opened. Unfortunately, these investigations may lead to the indictment of some police officers."
About 30,000 Algerians demonstrated peacefully that day, at the invitation of the National Liberation Front, which is fighting for Algeria's independence, in protest against the curfew imposed on Algerians in Paris alone.
In October 2021, the French presidency acknowledged for the first time, "the arrest of nearly 12,000 Algerians and their transfer to sorting centers in the Coubertin stadium, the Palais des Sports and other places. Dozens of them were killed and their bodies were thrown into the Seine. In addition to the many wounded."
On October 16, the fiftieth anniversary of this massacre, French President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged in a statement "unforgivable crimes" committed "under the authority of Maurice Papon", the governor of Paris in 1961.
According to the document, Tricot de Gaulle revealed, in a second memorandum dated November 6, 1961, "a question of government action" which is "to know whether we will let things proceed without interference, in which case it is likely that the matter will become complicated, or whether the Minister of Justice must (Bernard Chesnot at the time) as well as the Minister of the Interior (Roger Frey) inform the judges and the relevant judicial police officers that the government wants the light to be cleared of what happened."
"It seems necessary for the government to take a stand on this issue, while trying to avoid scandal as much as possible, it should show all parties involved that certain things should not be done and should not be allowed to happen," he added.
The document, which was declassified in December, featured de Gaulle's written answer: "The light must be clarified and the perpetrators prosecuted" and "the Minister of the Interior must take an 'authoritative' position, which he did not."
No police were prosecuted in the context of that massacre, and the Ministers of Interior and Justice were confirmed in their positions, and Maurice Papon remained the Governor of Paris, and he has always denied that the police were involved in violence at all.
Later, in 1998, Papon was convicted of complicity in crimes against humanity for his role in transporting Jews to concentration camps during World War II.
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