A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (39 page)

The exact truth about Ben M’hidi’s death remains a mystery to this day. Lebjaoui, who knew him, and other Algerians insist that the devoutness of his faith ruled out any possibility of his taking his own life. Yves Courrière, generally well-informed on French undercover activities, declares categorically that M’hidi was not tortured, but that he was shot at dawn after being rendered full military honours. What seems to be fact is that Bigeard himself interrogated M’hidi after his capture; was told that the F.L.N. was bound to win eventually, but no other useful details; was impressed by the dignity and courage of the F.L.N. leader; treated him with the respect due to a captured enemy commander, and left him alive and unharmed. According to a F.L.N. spy in Algiers police headquarters, who reported to the C.C.E. on 4 March, Bigeard then “was unable to prevent Ben M’hidi being handed over to men of a ‘special section’ of the paratroops. These interrogated him on their own initiative, and killed him last night.” Admitting that M’hidi had had to be transferred to another prison, at Maison Carrée, for administrative reasons, Massu claims that he hanged himself with an electric flex that night but was “still breathing” when taken to the Maillot hospital, while two French medical officers who examined him stated officially that M’hidi was already dead
before
reaching the hospital, but that “our attention was not attracted by apparent marks of wounds”. Perhaps of all those involved, few would have been more likely to know the truth than the late Colonel Godard. In his memoirs he says, simply but revealingly, that, after first discussing M’hidi’s death with Massu the following morning: “Massu made no comment. In my heart of hearts, I believe that Ben M’hidi would not have committed suicide had he remained
chez Bigeard
.”

La torture

The death of Ben M’hidi left, alive and at liberty, only Belkacem Krim out of the original
neuf historiques
of the F.L.N. Like an unsightly molehill, it also threw up the whole ugly but hitherto largely subterranean issue of the maltreatment of rebel suspects, of torture and summary executions; or what, in another context and depending upon the point of view, might perhaps be termed “war crimes”, and what in France came simply to be known as
la torture
. From the Battle of Algiers onwards this was to become a growing canker for France, leaving behind a poison that would linger in the French system long after the war itself had ended. The resort to torture poses moral problems that are just as germane to the world today as they were to the period under consideration. As Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in 1958, “Torture is neither civilian nor military, nor is it specifically French: it is a plague infecting our whole era.” But what is immediately of importance here is the influence, or influences, brought to bear by it upon the subsequent course of the Algerian war. And these were very potent indeed. It is one of the most difficult things in this world to establish the truth about torture; whether it did or did not take place, and the nature and scale of it. The plaintiff is as unlikely to tell the unadorned truth as his oppressor; for it is so superlative a propaganda weapon given into his hands. All the writer can do is to state what was claimed and admitted on both sides. Here one is aided by the fact that, among others, General Massu has come forward in the aftermath of the war and declared, in his forthright way: “In answer to the question: ‘Was there really torture?’ I can only reply in the affirmative, although it was never either institutionalised or codified…. I am not frightened of the word.” There was, he claimed, no other option in the circumstances then prevailing in Algiers but to apply techniques of torture.

It is essential to be clear about what one means by the word of which Massu was “not frightened”. In a conventional war, so-called “war crimes” generally fall into two distinct categories; those committed in hot blood—prisoners despatched out of hand on the battlefield, shot-down bomber crews lynched by enraged civilians after an air-raid; and those perpetrated in cold blood—the concentration camps. Similarly, in an unconventional war like Northern Ireland or Algeria, there are the brutalities, the roughing-up, the
passage à tabac
that may be inflicted immediately following the arrest of a suspected terrorist; and there is the prolonged and systematic application of physical or psychological pain expressly aimed at making a suspect “talk”, which constitutes torture as opposed to brutality. Though the
passage à tabac
has long existed as a police institution in France, to no people has torture been more abhorrent, morally and philosophically, especially following their own hideous experiences from 1940 to 1944. As an instrument of state, torture was expressly abolished by the French Revolution (which never practised it) on 8 October 1789, but even well before this French humanist writers had decided that it was both inhuman and inefficient. Article 303 of the French Penal Code (aiming specifically at highwaymen who had an unpleasant habit of “warming up the feet” of their victims) actually imposed the death penalty upon anyone practising torture. Nevertheless, in Algeria there appear to have been at least isolated incidents of torture even before 1954, as both Ben Khedda and François Mitterrand assured the author, and the fact of it seems confirmed by the forceful interventions made by French authorities on various occasions. In 1949, for instance, Governor-General Naegelen in an official circular ordered: “strong-arm techniques must be absolutely prohibited as a method of investigation. I am determined to punish with the utmost severity not only those members of the public service found guilty of using violence but also their superiors.” In 1955 Mendès-France declared categorically that all “excesses” “must stop everywhere and at once”, and Soustelle during his stewardship issued strict instructions that “every offence against human dignity…be rigorously forbidden”, and in his memoirs he insists that any proven cases of brutality or summary executions “did not rest without punishment”.

Institutionalise torture?

In March 1955, however, even more suggestive evidence came in a highly controversial proposal made in the Wuillaume Report by a senior civil servant quite unconnected with the police. Wuillaume opined that, like the legalising of a rampant black market, torture should be institutionalised
because it had become so prevalent
, as well as proving effective in neutralising many dangerous terrorists. From his researches, Wuillaume recommended:

The water and electricity methods, provided they are carefully used, are said to produce a shock which is more psychological than physical and therefore do not constitute excessive cruelty…. According to certain medical opinion which I was given, the water-pipe method, if used as outlined above, involves no risk to the health of the victim. This is not the case with the electrical method which does involve some danger to anyone whose heart is in any way affected…. I am inclined to think that these procedures can be accepted and that, if used in the controlled manner described to me, they are no more brutal than deprivation of food, drink, and tobacco, which has always been accepted….

It was a view that would not necessarily be shared by Algerians subjected to the
gégène
or having had their bellies pumped full of water during the Battle of Algiers. Noting how police morale had been affected by the “pillorying” of “such excesses as have taken place”, Wuillaume concluded: “There is only one way of restoring the confidence and drive of the police—to recognise certain procedures and to cover them with authority.”

Although Soustelle “categorically refused” to accept the Wuillaume conclusions, they may well have taken root already in Algeria. Citing a letter from a soldier written well before the Battle of Algiers, Pierre-Henri Simon recounts how the writer had been invited by gendarmes to attend the torture of two Arabs arrested the previous night:

The first of the tortures consisted of suspending the two men completely naked by their feet, their hands bound behind their backs, and plunging their heads for a long time into a bucket of water to make them talk. The second torture consisted of suspending them, their hands and feet tied behind their backs, this time with their head upwards. Underneath them was placed a trestle, and they were made to swing, by fist blows, in such a fashion that their sexual parts rubbed against the very sharp pointed bar of the trestle. The only comment made by the men, turning towards the soldiers present: “I am ashamed to find myself stark naked in front of you.”

But the fact that in the army torture was by no means institutionalised yet seems to be implicit in Servan-Schreiber’s
Lieutenant en Algérie
(1957), which, highly critical as it is of French army excesses, omits any specific reference to torture as such. By way of explaining the essential atmosphere in which torture could become institutionalised within the French army in Algeria, one needs to take into account all those factors touched upon in the previous chapters: horror at the atrocities of the F.L.N., a determination not to lose yet another campaign, and the generally brutalising effect of so cruel and protracted a war. Noting the growing indifference to the “enemy” as a human being, such a tough para commander as Colonel François Coulet himself admits that the army had come to regard a prisoner as “no longer an Arab peasant” but simply “a source of intelligence”.

Interrogation techniques

“Intelligence”, said Godard, “is capital.” Massu’s system of
quadrillage
and the rifling of the police dossiers was augmented by the work of a new body called the Dispositif de Protection Urbaine (D.P.U.). Created by order of Lacoste and placed under the control of that Indo-China expert on subversive warfare, Colonel Roger Trinquier, in its operation the D.P.U. carried with it sinister undertones that also could not help but recall French experiences under the Third Reich. It divided the city up into sectors, sub-sectors, blocks and buildings, each bearing a number or letter (even today the hieroglyphs can still be found painted on the fronts of houses in the Casbah). To each block was nominated a
responsable
, generally a Muslim
ancien combattant
considered trustworthy, and to this block-warden fell the duty of reporting all suspicious activities occurring within his territory. In the short term the D.P.U.—which Trinquier describes as forming “a flexible bond bond between the authorities and the populace”—undeniably produced results. It was through its information that Ben M’hidi had been caught, and, according to Trinquier, it meant that “no Muslim was able to enter the European quarters without being reported”. But in the long run it was to place the “loyal” Muslim block-wardens in a thoroughly invidious position, often resulting either in their assassination or in the end of their loyalty to France.

The numbers of Muslim suspects passing through the hands of the paras as a result of the D.P.U. and the other forms of intelligence collection ran into enormous figures, with Edward Behr reckoning that between thirty and forty per cent of the entire male population of the Casbah were arrested at some point or other during the course of the Battle of Algiers. The suspects were generally, as a matter of principle, arrested at night so that any colleagues they named under interrogation could be grabbed before the lifting of the curfew, and before they would have a chance of being warned and disappearing. A directive marked “Secret” and signed by Massu (dated 4 April 1957) ordered that: “The most absolute secrecy must be ensured on anything concerning the number, identity and the nature of suspects arrested. In particular, no mention of whatever kind is to be made to any representative of the Press.” This was designed as much to confuse the public as to what was going on as it was to heighten terror among the suspect’s entourage at the uncertainty of his fate. He would then be handed over to a Détachement Opérationnel de Protection (D.O.P.) which Massu describes as being “specialists in the interrogation of suspects who wanted to say nothing”, and would then either be released or passed on to a
centre d’hébergement
, where he might be hauled out for further and protracted interrogation.

At first his D.O.P. interrogators would attempt to trap him into admissions by displaying omniscient knowledge about the personalities and workings of his group. Often he would be confronted with a
boukkara
or
cagoulard
, a Muslim with his head covered in a sack with eye-slits who had broken under interrogation and was now acting as an informer—a particular horror for the Algerians. Then, says Trinquier:

If the suspect makes no difficulty about giving the information required, the interrogation will be over quickly, otherwise specialists must use all means available to drag his secret out of him. Like a soldier he must then face suffering and perhaps even death which he has so far avoided.

And this is what happened. Because of the numbers of suspects involved, the D.O.P. “experts” often had to rely on outside help; “in certain cases”, admits Massu, “each of the regimental interrogation teams of the 10th Paratroop Division was obliged to have recourse to violence”. It was at this point, one might say, that torture became institutionalised in the army in Algeria.

“
Little electrodes
….”

The most favoured method of torture was the
gégène
, an army signals magneto from which electrodes could be fastened to various parts of the human body—notably the penis. It was simple and left no traces. Massu states that he, as well as other members of his staff, tried it out on himself in his own office; what he failed, however, to note in his “experiment” was the cumulative effect of prolonged application of the
gégène
, as well as of all deprivation of the element of hope—the essential concomitant of any torture. Robert Lacoste also belittles the
gégène
; it was, he claims, “nothing serious. Just connecting little electrodes. And Massu’s paras were, after all,
des garçons très sportifs
!” But what the
gégène
was really like is vividly described by Henri Alleg (among many others) in his book
The Question
, which caused an uproar in France in 1958 when it first revealed the systematisation of torture in Algeria. Alleg, a European Jew whose family had settled in Algeria during the Second World War, was the Communist editor of the
Alger Républicain
and had been held under interrogation by the paras for a whole month in the summer of 1957. Of his first subjection to the
gégène,
with electrodes attached merely to his ear and finger, he says: “A flash of lightning exploded next to my ear and I felt my heart racing in my breast.” The second time a large magneto was used: “Instead of the sharp and rapid spasms that seemed to tear my body in two, it was now a greater pain that took possession of all my muscles and tightened them in longer spasms.” Next the electrodes were placed in his mouth: “my jaws were soldered to the electrode by the current, and it was impossible for me to unlock my teeth, no matter what effort I made. My eyes, under their spasmed lids, were crossed with images of fire, and geometric luminous patterns flashed in front of them.” He was left with an intolerable thirst, which his torturers refused to assuage.