in this adventure? It is not for me to initiate the charges
and the process in this direction. Our Commission is not
authorized to interfere with the course of justice.
'But I am struck by the fact that the population did not
react publicly. Ain-Isser is very close to the community
of Lamoriciere. The regular authorities of this commu-
nity did not react. Only the Agha Bouamedi, who had
two relatives among the suspects, dared address the colo-
nel. The silence of the country does not indicate absence
of indifference or terror. The population is indifferent
and terrified. Protest? What good will it do?
"The real guilt lies with the system itself, which unbal-
ances a young lieutenant of 26 years and holds the entire
country in mute despair, a silence which can only be over-
come by secretly reaching the Commission of Safeguard
in Paris.

"The affair of Ain-Isser stands out as testimony of the
fearful lack of confidence of the Moslem population with
regard to the French authorities of the region. As if they
too were prisoners of a system which is enveloping and
corrupting everything. . .

Tortures

The question of torture is obviously no less grave . . . Two documents affirm conclusively that such abuses have been committed.

These are the reports of Mr. Mairey, Director General of Security, and Mr. Guillaume, Inspector General. They were added as an annex to the report of Mr. Maurice Garcon [Member of the Commission of Safeguard] .

In his last report of December 13, 1955, Mr. Mairey wrote:
"It was a fact, confirmed, and generally admitted when
not officially stated, that the Algerian police as well as
the gendarmery, employed, on suspects, or merely people
taken into custody, methods of investigation having
greater affinity with the Gestapo than with a democratic
police ...

In this excess, the police has its responsibility, and the
Army also.

As the responsible head of national security, it is intolerable to me to think that the French police can by its actions, evoke the methods of the Gestapo. Likewise, as a reserve officer, I cannot endure to see the French soldiers compared to the sinister S. S. of the Wehrmacht." These revelations of the Director General of the French National Security were made in December 1955, that is, even before the military authority had received the delegation of special powers accorded in the law of March 16, 1956 . . . .

Mr. Maurice Garcon, in his report, has enumerated the charges presented by various persons who claim to have been tortured, and medical confirmations have been likewise presented.

The January, 1960 report of the International Committee of the Red Cross describes some of the methods used by the French as "inhumane and in flagrant contradiction to elementary humanitarian principles." 1 The report is written with the traditional moderation and reserve observed in such Red Cross reports, presenting the findings of the mission with the greatest possible caution and discretion to eliminate any possible charges of going beyond the truth. It scrupulously reports every detail, every difference between the "worse" and "better" camps, every "improvement" noted since the last mission. In view of this, the precise and detailed revelations of torture and inhuman treatment brought out in this report are even more shameful and horrifying. As the C. B. S. commentator, David Shoenbrun, reported from Paris: "In the light of the cruelties revealed this time, one wonders what horrors are covered by the notice of improvement over last. time. . . . " 2

The same evidence of the use of torture has been presented in numerous books and newspapers.

Contre La Torture 3 by Pierre-Henri Simon, a reserve officer in the French army, was published in March 1957. The

1 See Appendix V. Full text of summary of Report.

2 C. B. S. "World News Roundup", January 6, 1960.

3 Simon, Pierre-Henri,

Contre La Torture,

Paris: Editions du Seuil,

1957.

book presents an historical account of the use of torture through the ages, until its current practice by France in Algeria. The French torture cases cited by Simon are documented with affidavits by torture victims, statements by French priests and extracts of journals of French army and police officers.

One of the cases Simon quotes is that of a leading Arab citizen of Constantine:1

"I was arrested by the Army and immediately after taken
to C-
My interrogation began on Saturday at
10:00, in the presence of a colonel, two majors and a cap-
tain. It lasted 57 hours and was conducted, for the most
part, by a major. In the course of it I underwent the
following tortures: (1) electric shocks on the fingers
and ears (2) immersion in a bath (3) whipping on the
soles of the feet and the sexual organs (4) electric shocks
on the sexual organs. The electric generator, it should
be noted, was worked by a captain."

There is abundant evidence that such incidents are not isolated examples of brutality practiced by exasperated soldiers. It becomes apparent that an organized structure, fully equipped, exists for the routine practice of torture.

La Gangrene, 2 is the latest book published on the subject of French torture practices and has perhaps aroused the greatest furor. This book, written by seven Algerian students, tells of tortures inflicted on them in Paris itself at the hands of the French police in offices three hundred feet from the Elysee Palace, the official residence of the President of the French Republic. The students were arrested on the charge of endangering national security by reconstituting an Algerian student association (UGEMA) which the French Government had dissolved because it supported Algerian nationalism. La Gangrene was confiscated four days after publication

1 Simon, Pierre-Henri, Contre La Torture, Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1957, p. 82.

2 La Gangrene, La Cite Editeur; Lausanne, Switzerland; 1959. (Reprinted in Switzerland after confiscation of the original French edition published in Paris by Les Editions de Minuit.)

by order of the Minister of the Interior.

Justifying the action, Prime Minister Debre issued a short communique stating that the book had been seized because it was "untrue and defamatory". Le Monde, a leading French newspaper, replied (June 26, 1959): "The government's statement is a little brief. The book contains names, dates and places which call for other refutations than that of the simple statement 'untrue and defamatory'. It remains to be proven whether it is untrue or not."

Another French newspaper, France Observateur, in a full page story on the practice of torture on the soil of Paris, despaired:

"These are not soldiers in Algeria, lost in a war-torn country, who hysterically use such methods, thinking the information gained may save the lives of some of their fellow troops. These are French civil servants, who perform acts of torture in their own offices, when they are not sitting at a typewriter or filing reports, and their work finished, they go home to their families, to cafes, or to neighborhood movies. If these Algerians have lied, let the government prove it."

Disappearances

Both the International Commission Against Concentration Camp Practices and the Commission for the Safeguard of Individual Rights and Liberties have concerned themselves with the question of disappearances. The Commission for Safeguard pointed out in its report:

"The question of disappearances has caused profound concern in public opinion. It is in truth one of the most heartrending aspects.

This concerns individuals who are arrested, generally by parachutists, and who are never heard of again.

On this basis, it is easy to suppose that they were executed, that they died under torture, or that they are consigned to hidden graves: all interpretations are commonly put forward.

The Commission has received numerous complaints. The courts of Algiers have also been asked to consider nu

merous complaints and the public prosecutor of Algiers has sent us a large number of dossiers. Inquiries have been opened and inquests ordered.

Nevertheless, many disappearances still remain unexplained and mysterious."

In the section of its report on "Missing Persons", the International Commission Against Concentration Camp Practices stated:

"The delegation was provided with lists of persons said
to have been arrested by the police, chiefly military po-
lice, and said either to have escaped or to have been killed
while trying to escape or to have disappeared.
The delegation was also furnished, in particular, with
two testimonies dealing with the following case. A boy
of sixteen and a half, interned in a center, was supposed
to be transported, for reasons of health, to a hospital. As
there was no room for him, the hospital was unable to re-
ceive him. With the consent of the commanding officer of
his center, he obtained from the competent authorities
permission to sleep at his parents' home. One evening,
men, dressed as parachutists, came to fetch him at his
home and took him away. He has since been missing and
has left no traces. The commanding officer of his center
has made many inquiries. The only reply he has obtained
was that no one had been arrested by the parachutists
that evening. Other cases were related, involving other
circumstances...

99

In August 1959, the "Cahier Vert" 1 of disappearances in Algeria was published. This is a compilation of documents relating the circumstances of the disappearance and the fruitless efforts by the family to find any trace of the missing individual. The cases described are typical of the experiences of unknown numbers of other Algerian families. The following are two of the 150 cases reported in the "Cahier Vert":

1 "Les Disparus Le Cahier Vert". La Cite Editeur; Lausanne, Switzerland; Fall, 1959.