The War in Algeria: A Dossier on Repression
French public opinion has been deeply stirred by the increasingly detailed news of widespread repression in Algeria. Temoignage Chretien published in its January 6th issue an appeal of 700...
...One ol...
...Instead, to this day the only thing has been the release on December 9, 1955 of 249 Algerians arrested in France in September and interned at Berrouaghia, and of a few dozen others since...
...its reports (on camps in Russia) appeared in the Spring 195Q DISSENT...
...Internment camps, said to exist specifically at Lodi, Berrouaghia, Aflou, Bossuet, Djorf...
...French public opinion has been deeply stirred by the increasingly detailed news of widespread repression in Algeria...
...Esprit" for the articles by Sarrazin and Duchef...
...In the prison of Blida, for instance, the Moslem prisoners seem to be deprived of their right to worship...
...The plaintiffs' lawyers protest that the unlawfulness of the Governor General's and the Prefects' measures has become aggravated since the dissolution of the Algerian National Assembly, an act which ought to have abrogated the law on the state of emergency and of the measures enforcing it...
...The law of April 3, 1955, establishing a state of emergency in Algeria, grants the authorities special powers...
...those arrested being sent back to Algeria by plane in handcuffs) and similar procedures in Algeria...
...Persons sentenced to forced residence therefore had to be "sheltered...
...The same paper in its January 20th issue publishes a document dealing with the summary execution of six members of a family between August 22 and 26, 1955...
...Conditions in camps and prisons vary widely...
...France-Observateur published on December 8th two affidavits on tortures undergone last August by Mohammed Benmokkaden when he was arrested and detained for questioning at the civilian prison in Algiers and similar treatment inflicted in November 1955, in Algiers as well as in Blida at the central Commissariat and at the police stations, on Mustapha Ben Mohammed, municipal councillor of the City of Algiers...
...political internees are put in with common criminals...
...The first information received seems to establish: • Flagrantly illegal procedures in arresting and detaining Algerian Moslems in France (mass arrests made during September in Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Valenciennes, Metz, Roubaix, Le Havre...
...These complaints on hygienic conditions and lack of medical care seem to be quite general...
...The CICRC (International Commission Against Concentration Camps), • Prepared by the International Commission Against Concentration Camps...
...Grave outrages committed against those arrested or interrogated at police stations, by the gendarmerie and DST (French FBI...
...The places of forced residence, however, were established in the south of three Algerian departments, outside any inhabited area...
...In the latter articles some material has been omitted...
...Article 6, while giving the right to confine a person to a definite place of residence, explicitly excludes the establishment of detention camps...
...Several thousand persons must at this moment still be confined in camps...
...La Revue Socialiste" for the article by Rous...
...Temoignage Chretien published in its January 6th issue an appeal of 700 political internees held in the camp of Djorf near M'Sila...
...upon opening an investigation into the conditions and nature of repression in Algeria has officially gotten in touch with all those who in some way have recently testified on the subject...
...hence the creation of "lodging centers...
...These internment camps have officially been called "lodging centers...
...syphilitic and tubercular internees are not isolated...
...hygienic conditions are execrable, sanitation deliberately bad...
...NOTE: In preparing this section on North Africa, we have been indebted to the French radical press: "France-Observateur" for the letter from the French official...
...all camps being surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by gendarmes or soldiers...
...At Lodi camp no measures are taken to keep diseases from spreading...
...This open letter does not deal with conditions inside the camp but denounces the illegal character of the internment measures and calls for immediate dissolution of the camps...
...In actuality, the Governor General and Prefects intern where by law they have only the right to pronounce a sentence of forced residence...
Vol. 3 • July 1956 • No. 3
