Frenchman’s killing in colonial Algeria was ‘unforgivable’: son

Algiers, Algeria – (AFP): The son of a French anti-imperialist tortured and killed by the French army during Algeria’s war of independence has said he cannot forgive and that the “truth” is more important than apologies offered by Paris.

Maurice Audin, a mathematician and communist who supported Algeria’s struggle for self-rule, was killed in 1957, three years into a bitter eight-year war that finally brought an end to French colonial control. His body has never been found.

President Emmanuel Macron in 2018 acknowledged in the name of the French state that Audin had “died under torture stemming from the system instigated while Algeria was part of France”, and asked his widow for forgiveness.

But Audin’s son Pierre, who was visiting the country to receive an Algerian passport and attend the unveiling on Sunday of a bust of his father, said Macron’s apology was too little, too late.

The Algerian struggle for independence pitted armed groups mostly made up of Muslims against French armed forces as well as the far-right Secret Armed Organisation (OAS).

But some Europeans in both countries, notably communists including Audin, supported independence.

Macron has since acknowledged the French army was behind the death of the nationalist lawyer Ali Boumendjel and returned the skulls of 19th century Algerian resistance fighters, as well as opening French state archives on the Algerian war.

But memories of the colonial period continue to provoke recurring diplomatic spats between Paris and Algiers, which is preparing to mark 60 years of independence on July 5.