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Only Djamila Bouazza, a 19-year old Algerian girl, remained as a witness to sustain the accusation in court. Djamila Bouazza was admittedly a syphilitic patient who had already spent three years in a mental institution and whose insanity was manifested during the trial itself. After the first day. of trial, the star witness slid from hysterical exhibitionism to prostration, and near the end of the trial she remarked that she was having injections twice a day, adding: "I feel quite different." Demands for medical examination of Djamila Bouazza were refused by the court.

Maitre Verges flew to Paris to obtain the support of a batonnier of the Paris Bar (a barrister of distinction responsible for upholding professional standards). During his absence, two French Algerian lawyers were imposed upon the defendent against her will. Without Djamila Bouhired's consent one of the lawyers pleaded guilty on her behalf. The batonnier from Paris was refused the technical delay of twenty-four hours he had requested for studying the case, making it impossible for him to defend Djamila Bouhired.

On July 15, 1957 the trial was hurried to a sudden close. Maitre Verges who had returned from Paris, demanded a handwriting expert to examine a confession supposedly written by Djamila Bouhired, but which she declared to be a forgery. He also requested a medical opinion on the star witness for the court, Djamila Bouazza, and requested that her mother be allowed to give testimony. These requests were rejected by the President as "dilatory". Maitre Verges was not allowed to deliver his final plea for his client, and thus, the trial was brought to a close. 1

Djamila Bouhired was found "guilty" and condemned to death. Largely because of the vigorous protestations made by Maitre Verges, the details of the case of Djamila Bouhired were reported in the international press. There was strong public reaction and international protest against the way in which the trial was conducted. Her sentence has, as a result, been reduced from "death" to "life imprisonment."

1 Maitre Verges, Jacques, Pour Djamila Bouhired. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1957.

The case of Djamila Bouhired is only one example of the unorthodox legal procedures being practiced in Algeria today. The French press has from time to time reported similar trials. However, penal codes enacted since the Djamila Bouhired trial would now make it virtually impossible for the press, or for that matter, any French citizen to make any adverse public statements regarding a magistrate's behavior or his judgment without committing an illegal act himself. Commenting on these penal codes, Mr. Maurice Garcon, of the French Academy and member of the first Commission for the Safeguard of Individual Rights and Liberties, writes: 1

"The promulgation of the new Article 226 of the Penal Code has given rise during the past few days to justified apprehension

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This text has been made part of that chapter in the Code which deals with outrages and violence towards the repositories of authority and public force. It punishes by imprisonment from one to six months and by fine of 50,000 to 2 million francs, all persons seeking to cast discredit upon a jurisdictional act or decision in conditions of a nature to be prejudicial to the authority of justice and its independence.

The Code already punishes outrages to the magistrates rendering judgment. This new text no longer protects a man, but an entity. It is the judgment itself which becomes unassailable. To doubt the infallibility of justice becomes an unlawful act. Indeed, how may we criticize a legal decision without in some measure questioning it, and by questioning it being prejudicial to the legal authority which handed it down?

We must add that the criticism dealt with by article 226 is that which manifests itself by acts, words, or writings, that is, in any of the forms 'n which thought can be manifested. Of course, it does specify that it has to be public, but jurisprudence has given to this word its widest

1 "Concerning the Infallibility of Justice", Le Monde, Paris: December 25, 1958.

meaning: once a seditious statement has been made in a place accessible to the public, the public element prevails. A conversation, even one held in normal tones, in the street or in a cafe, or even on the staircase of a building whose door is open, is reputed to be public if it has been overhead."

Summary executions carried on without trials or in spite of a favorable judgment rendered by the court have also been made public knowledge.

There is the recent case of Mr. Aissat Idir 1 who had been arrested on May 23, 1956 by the French authorities for his activities as a labor leader. His organization, the U. G. T. A. (an affiliate of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions) was outlawed by the French Government. Mr. Aissat Idir was subsequently detained for three years. He was finally brought to trial by the Permanent Tribunal of the French Armed Forces in Algiers on January 12, 1959 and acquitted of all charges against him. He was not, however, released from custody after his acquittal, but was instead kept in jail. Neither his family nor his lawyers were allowed to visit him for two months after his acquittal. Later, the French authorities announced that Mr. Idir had attempted suicide and was under treatment in a military hospital. One of his lawyers was then allowed to visit him in the presence of an army officer and a guard. Mr. Aissat Idir denied vehemently that he had ever attempted suicide and claimed that his legs were badly burned because of tortures conducted on him with a blow-torch by French paratroopers.

Aissat Idir died on July 26, 1959. The French explanation of his death is that, while held in the administrative detention center of Birtraria, he accidentally set fire to his bed on January 17, 1959, and was taken to the hospital on that date. His death, in the opinion of the French authorities, was a result of "burns involuntarily provoked when he set fire to his bedding when he fell asleep while smoking."

The case of Aissat Idir does not represent an isolated ex

1 The New York Times, August 1, 2, 1959.

ample. There are, amongst many others, the cases of Larbi Ben M'hidi, member of the Algerian Executive Committee, who allegedly killed himself on February 26, 1957 and the case of the young lawyer, Ali Boumendjel, who is said to have jumped from a fifth floor window on March 23, 1957.

Summary executions have also been carried out in detention camps, it has been revealed. A common method is the practice of corvee du bois (wood-chopping expedition). Persons selected by the parachutists for the corvee du bois are loaded onto trucks and never seen again. They are officially noted as "missing persons" or as "shot while trying to escape". 1

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The French public, reading the testimonies and reports of atrocities being committed in Algeria and in France itself has on numerous occasions demonstrated concern over the French Government's use of these extreme practices in conducting the war.

An example of this is the letter addressed by 357 eminent Frenchmen to Mr. Rene Coty, then President of the French Republic, in March 1957. It declared notably:

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. . . for over a year, we have collected a great number of concurring statements, based on testimony of unquestionable validity, which affirms that these young soldiers have to participate, regardless of their own desires, in actions which would arouse every human conscience . It is not a question of facts, which, however numerous, can be qualified as isolated instances; rather, it concerns a widespread practice; we refer to the torture of prisoners, captured with their weapons in hand, but who, because they are 'rebels' are refused both the guarantees given by the Geneva Convention to enemy soldiers, and the rights which our law confers upon French citi

1 Des Rappeles Temoignent, Comite Resistance Spirituelle, Paris, March 1957, p. 69.

zens..." 1

As a result of such protests, in 1957, the governmental "Commission for the Safeguard of Individual Rights and Liberties" (referred to previously) was created to investigate the charges of torture which had aroused the concern of public opinion in France. Again, in 1958, a governmental "Commission for the Safeguard of Individual Rights and Liberties" was created. In each case, the leading members of the commissions resigned in protest at the government's refusal to take any action as a result of their findings. 2

As public and international indignation continues, another commission of investigation has been created.

1 Le Monde, March 22, 1957.

Among the 357 signatories of this letter, we note the following:
Francois Mauriac, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature

Andre Philip, Professor of Political Economy at the University of Lyon
Jean Wahl, Professor of Philosophy at the Sorbonne

Abbe Pierre, Leader of the Roman Catholic Organization to Aid the Homeless Poor

Abbe Retif, Pastor Andre Trocme, Abbe Joly, Rene Julliard

2 See Le Monde, December 18, 1957.

Statements by Maurice Garcon, M. DeLavignette, Rene-William Thorp.

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