RIGHTS-FRANCE: Landmark Judgement For Atrocities Committed During Algerian War

By Julio Godoy Reprint | | Print |

Julio Godoy

PARIS, Nov 26 2001 (IPS) - In a landmark case a French military court has acknowledged human rights violations committed by France during the Algerian war of independence in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Last week judges in Paris awarded Algerian citizen, Mohamed Garne, compensation for the physical and mental damage he suffered after his mother was violently assaulted by French soldiers in 1959 while pregnant with him.

The court found that Garne suffers from a partial mental and physical disability of about 30 percent and ordered the French government to pay him money equivalent to three years of pension.

While the legal team expressed disappointment at the meagre award, Garne described the ruling as historical. He said it was a victory that France has finally officially recognised him as a victim of the war it waged against the Algerian people. Garne said he was confident that the judgement would encourage other victims to come forward and seek justice.

For most of his life, Garne said he believed he was the son of Abdelkader Benchouga, an Algerian independence martyr. However, in 1991 he learned that his mother, Kheira, got pregnant in 1959, after she was repeatedly raped by French soldiers in the Algerian concentration camp of Theniet-el- Had. Garne was born in April 1960, a product of the rapes.

Immediately after the birth Garne was given away and he only reunited with his mother in 1991 after he initiated legal proceedings to try and find his father.

It was during that process that Garne discovered the reality of his birth after it was proven in court that Abdelkader Benchouga, who was probably killed by French soldiers in the late1950s, was sterile.

After the case, Garne moved to Paris, and has since been involved in a battle to hold the French authorities accountable for the atrocities committed by French troops against his mother. Apparently the case was made even more difficult by the fact that all crimes committed by France in Algeria were amnestied with the Algerian declaration of independence in 1962. Besides, French jurisprudence, until 1994, only considered crimes against humanity as those committed during the Second World War between 1939 and 1945.

Confronted with this legal situation, Garne referred his case to the French military justice. Following a long drawn-out litigation process, in March 2000 a French military tribunal threw out Garne’s case.

But Garne did not give up and he persuaded another French military tribunal to launch an inquiry into the nature of the disabilities he suffered. The report on his traumas was conducted by military psychiatrist, Louis Crocq, who described Garne’s life as a “portrait of deep suffering”.

According to Crocq, Garne’s mother was raped and was also beaten and tortured with electroshocks while pregnant with him. He says Garne grew up as up as a weak, sick child, suffering from rickets, anorexia and insomnia who was moved from orphanage to orphanage.

According to the psychiatrist during his adolescence Garne developed an abandonment syndrome and a neurosis concerning his relationship with his absent father which led to several suicide attempts.

He says the trauma was made worse in 1991 after Garne found his mother living in a cave near a cemetery in Algiers and she told him of the rape and torture she suffered during her imprisonment. Crocq also listed a series of physical handicaps Garne still suffers as a result of the anorexia and the rickets he developed as a child.

“Mohammed Garne was 31 years old when he realised that his real father was not a hero, but an anonymous French soldier, a non identifiable individual who raped a woman and so procreated a child,” Crocq said.

Garne’s lawyer, Jean-Yves Halimi, says since the judgement several Algerians have already come forward with plans to sue the French military for similar offences.

In a related case General Paul Aussaresses, a French war veteran, is facing a military tribunal for admitting that he personally tortured and executed numerous Algerians during the war.

In his memoirs, published last year, Aussaresses says he feels no remorse for his deeds. “The actions I carried out in Algeria were devoted to my country. Even if I didn’t like what I did, it was my duty. An accomplished duty must not be regretted,” Aussaresses wrote.

Among other forms of torture practised by French soldiers during the Algerian war, Aussaresses lists electroshocks, rapes and suffocation with plastic masks filled with caustic lime.

Lawyers say this is a test case as Aussaresses is being judged not for his crimes but for his confession of these crimes and for his lack of remorse.

RIGHTS-FRANCE: Landmark Judgement For Atrocities Committed During Algerian War

By Julio Godoy Reprint | | Print |

Julio Godoy

PARIS, Nov 26 2001 (IPS) - In a landmark case a French military court has acknowledged human rights violations committed by France during the Algerian war of independence in the 1950s and early 1960s.
(more…)