Abu Juwairiya
Junior Member
The Independence War in Algeria lasted a total of eight years from 1954 until 1962 when freedom was finally achieved of French rule. It had cost 68, 000 Algerian and 5, 800 French lives by 'official' counts. Until the 1990s, France had continued to maintain it had not been a war, but a terrorist insurrection and no Algerian freedom fighters or rebel 'soldiers' had been involved.
Today, France has amended this image to say 'some' battles had been fought with liberation soldiers, and the rest were still terrorists. The 'Jihad' (Algerian perspective) however was 132 years and had started in 1830 when France first set its sights on the North African region.
One of the most significant episodes in the war, the 'Battle of Algiers' (1956-7), involved French paratroopers descending on 'casbah' (old city) in Algiers, the largest city and fighting the people there. The paratroopers decided to resort to 'mass arrest, detention and systematic torture'.
"The most favoured method [of torture].... was the gegene, an army signals magnet from which electrodes could be fastened to various parts of the human body- notably the penis. By one tenable estimate, 'between thirty and forty per cent of the entire male population of the Casbah were arrested at some point or other during the course of the Battle of Algiers....
Disposal of the 'inconvenient', of those who died under torture, or who refused adamantly to talk, apparently became prevalent enough to gain the slang expression 'work in the woods'. 'They used to ask for volunteers to finish off the guys who had tortured', one soldier recalled....victims were sometimes flown out to sea in helicopters and dumped there, dead or still living." (Source: "Crimes Against Humanity" By Adam Jones, P 96, 2008)
Today, France has amended this image to say 'some' battles had been fought with liberation soldiers, and the rest were still terrorists. The 'Jihad' (Algerian perspective) however was 132 years and had started in 1830 when France first set its sights on the North African region.
One of the most significant episodes in the war, the 'Battle of Algiers' (1956-7), involved French paratroopers descending on 'casbah' (old city) in Algiers, the largest city and fighting the people there. The paratroopers decided to resort to 'mass arrest, detention and systematic torture'.
"The most favoured method [of torture].... was the gegene, an army signals magnet from which electrodes could be fastened to various parts of the human body- notably the penis. By one tenable estimate, 'between thirty and forty per cent of the entire male population of the Casbah were arrested at some point or other during the course of the Battle of Algiers....
Disposal of the 'inconvenient', of those who died under torture, or who refused adamantly to talk, apparently became prevalent enough to gain the slang expression 'work in the woods'. 'They used to ask for volunteers to finish off the guys who had tortured', one soldier recalled....victims were sometimes flown out to sea in helicopters and dumped there, dead or still living." (Source: "Crimes Against Humanity" By Adam Jones, P 96, 2008)