Paul Aussaresses

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Paul Aussaresses (born November 7, 1918 in Saint-Paul-Cap-de-Joux , Département Tarn , † December 3, 2013 in La Vancelle , Département Bas-Rhin ) was a French général de brigade . In his career he was mainly used as a paratrooper and instruction officer. Paul Aussaresses provoked a public controversy in 2000 when, in an interview with the daily newspaper Le Monde, he admitted that he had resorted to torture in the Algerian war, and in particular in the Battle of Algiers , and justified it.

Life

Paul Aussaresses was born on November 7, 1918 in Saint-Paul-Cap-de-Joux.

Military career until the end of the Algerian war

Aussaresses signed up for military service with the French secret service in 1941. He served as a cadet in Cherchell , Algeria during World War II in 1941 . He took part in the secret and not state-authorized Operation Jedburgh , which offered resistance to the German occupying forces in Belgium , the Netherlands and France. To do this, he jumped behind the German lines with a parachute in August 1944.

After the Second World War he was a founding member of the 11th Paratrooper Assault Regiment (11e régiment parachutiste de choc) , which was under the Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage and whose commander he later became. He held this command until 1948. He then took part in the French Indochina War and the Algerian War.

In 1955 he was sent to Philippeville , Algeria . He served in the 41st Paratrooper Brigade as an intelligence officer. This brigade fought against Algerian insurgents from the Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN). On August 20, 1955, the FLN launched an attack on the Philippeville police. Aussaresses claimed he knew about the attack and thus prevented bloodshed. The FLN was able to convince hundreds of Algerians from the rural population to march with them unarmed. Aussaresses reported that he and his men killed 134 of these men, women and children.

In the spring of 1956 he prepared for the Suez War . He took part in a training session in Salisbury . An injury, which he sustained shortly before, prevented his use in this war.

General Jacques Massu , who became aware of Aussaresses' repressive actions in Philippeville , summoned him to Algiers to control the FLN. Aussaresses began his service in Algiers on January 8, 1957. During the Battle of Algiers in 1957 he acted as the executive hand of Massu. On January 28, 1957, he cracked down on a strike called by the FLN. The workers were forcibly forced to work by soldiers. Closed shops were broken into. Later in 1957 he ordered the assassination of Larbi Ben M'hidi , a key member of the FLN. He had him hung up to fake suicide. In another case he ordered the murder of Ali Boumendjel , an influential Algerian lawyer. He had this thrown from the sixth floor of a building. France portrayed both deaths as suicides. In 2000, Aussaresses admitted that both were murdered.

After the Algerian War

Aussaresses did not stay in Algeria until the end of the war, unlike other officers who joined the OAS . After the war he continued his successful military career. In 1961 he became a French military attaché in Washington , along with ten French veterans of the Algerian War. He was also in contact with the 10th Special Forces Group at Fort Bragg . There he taught the American soldiers the lessons of the Algerian war, including torture. The Americans studied Colonel Roger Trinquier's book on subversive warfare, under whose command the Aussaresses had been in Algeria. Trinquier's book is said to have inspired the Americans' Operation Phoenix during the Vietnam War. Aussaresses' students are said to have sent this book to CIA agent Robert Komer .

Aussaresses went to Brazil during the time of the Brazilian dictatorship, where he had close ties with the military. According to General Manuel Contreras , the former head of the Chilean dictatorship's intelligence service, Chilean officers were training under Aussaresses in Brazil. He taught them the fight against terrorism and the use of torture, which was mostly used against left oppositionists in the dictatorships of Argentina, Paraguay and Chile.

Attitude to torture

Aussaresses claims in his 2001 book “Special Services - Algeria 1955/57” that the French government ordered the eradication of the FLN as soon as possible. In France, this sparked debate among historians as to whether this claim was really true. In an interview with Le Monde on May 3, 2001, Aussaresses said :

“The torture was tolerated, if not encouraged. Justice Minister François Mitterrand had an emissary at Massu in Judge Jean Bérard, who covered us and who had extensive knowledge of what happened at night. "

Aussaresses justified the torture by describing his horror after the massacre at the El Haila mine. He thought torture was the lesser evil if it could be used to combat the greater evil of terrorism. He defended the torture because it provided an opportunity to get information quickly. Furthermore, the legal system was only created for the case of peace and not for a war against terrorism, as France had waged in Algeria. In an interview with Marie-Monique Robin , Aussaresses described some of the methods used, including the use of death squads .

process

Human Rights Watch wrote a letter to President Jacques Chirac in 2001 calling on him to try Aussaresses for war crimes, arguing that his crimes were crimes against humanity and therefore could not be amnestied.

The French League of Human Rights (Ligue des droits de l'homme) and other organizations sued him as a co-plaintiff in the criminal trial for excusing war crimes . He was sentenced on January 25, 2002 by a Paris criminal court to a fine of 7,500 euros. The Paris Court of Appeal upheld the judgment on April 25, 2003. Aussaresse's appeal to the Court of Cassation was rejected. In 2005 he was expelled from the French Legion of Honor by the French head of state Jacques Chirac .

After an operation in 2013 and a subsequent stay at a spa, he died on December 3, 2013 in the spa clinic in La Vanecelle.

literature

  • Aussaresses, General Paul. The Battle of the Casbah: Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism in Algeria, 1955–1957 . New York, Enigma Books, 2010.
  • Horne, Alistair . A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962 . London, Macmillan, 1971.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Controversial General Aussaresses has died. In: FAZ of December 4, 2013 (accessed December 4, 2013).
  2. ↑ page 41, Aussaresses
  3. ↑ a b L'accablante confession du général sur la torture Aussaresses en Algérie , Le Monde , May 3, 2001
  4. ↑ a b Interview of Pierre Messmer by Marie-Monique Robin in Escadrons de la mort - l'école française ( from 18min-19min )
  5. ↑ Marie-Monique Robin in Escadrons de la mort - l'école française ( from 21min30 )
  6. ↑ Marie-Monique Robin in Escadrons de la mort - l'école française ( from 24 min )
  7. ↑ Marie-Monique Robin in Escadrons de la mort - l'école française ( from 27 min )
  8. ↑ page 12, Aussaresses
  9. ^ French: "Quant à l'utilisation de la torture, elle était tolérée, sinon recommandée. François Mitterrand, le ministre de la justice, avait, de fait, un émissaire auprès de Massu en la personne du juge Jean Bérard qui nous couvrait et qui avait une exacte connaissance de ce qui passait la nuit. »
  10. ↑ Interview Aussaresses' by Marie-Monique Robin in Escadrons de la mort - l'école française ( from 8min38 )
  11. ↑ Human Rights Watch: le gouvernement français doit ordonner une enquête officielle. ( September 15, 2003 memento on the Internet Archive ), Human Rights Watch . Memento from the Internet Archive from September 16, 2003.
  12. ↑ Condamnation du général Aussaresses pour “apologie de crimes de guerre” ( Memento of September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), Ligue des droits de l'homme , February 2002.
  13. ↑ La condamnation du général pour Aussaresses apologie of Torture est maintenant définitive ( Memento of 30 September 2007 at the Internet Archive ), Ligue des droits de l'homme, December 11, 2004
  14. ↑ Controversial General Aussaresses died, Le Monde from December 4, 2013 in: in: https://www.faz.net/aktuelle/politik/Ausland/europa/Frankreich/umstrittener-general-aussaresses-gestorben-12694522.html
personal data
SURNAME Aussaresses, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French general
DATE OF BIRTH November 7, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH Saint-Paul-Cap-de-Joux , Tarn department
DATE OF DEATH 3rd December 2013
Place of death La Vancelle , Bas-Rhin department