France will make judicial archives public

For another 15 years, not even historians could access it. What are these documents that France has decided to make public before the scheduled date? Judicial investigations by the gendarmerie and the police into acts committed in Algeria as well as in France during the war between 1954 and 1962. Archives which will perhaps make it possible to remove the opacity with which these investigations were carried out during this period: “We should be able to move forward on our knowledge of searches, arrests, shadowing (…) and of course on a whole series of brutalities, abuses that may have been committed“, predicts historian Benjamin Stora.

This transparency strategy had already been initiated by the French government for years. First, archives on the murderous repression of the demonstration of October 17, 1961. Then in September 2018, Emmanuel Macron admitted the torture and execution of Maurice Audin by the French army: “It is an essential work of truth and I want it to be done in appeasement. I think we can do it“. The question arises whether the unveiling of these archives would have diplomatic aims. in order to renew bonds of trust between the two countries, because Franco-Algerian relations are strained.