Against the Torture

In Algeria's civil war, now in its third inconclusive year, there are no front lines, no territorial objectives, no general rules to restrain belligerents--only a war of repression and attrition. Result: a sentiment d'inquieetude spreading through France, based on the growing realization that while the Algerian struggle is one the French cannot afford to lose, it is also probably one they cannot win. Also spreading is the feeling that the 380,000-man French army in Algeria, reduced to waging a gloryless police action, is using cruel and cynical methods in totting up its weekly bag of rebels killed.*

Pierre-Henri Simon, a left-wing Roman Catholic intellectual, recently stirred Paris with a controversial book on Algeria, Contre la Torture. Simon reproduces affidavits by torture victims, statements by French priests and extracts of journals of French army and police officers, and he quotes a letter from a soldier: "On the afternoon of Dec. 3 some gendarmes invited some soldiers to watch tortures of two Arabs arrested the night before. The first torture consisted in suspending the two men, entirely nude, by the feet, hands tied behind their backs, and plunging their heads into a pail of water for long periods to make them talk. The second torture consisted in suspending them, their hands tied to their feet behind their backs, this time with their heads up, then placing beneath them a trestle [sawhorse], and swinging them with fist blows so that their sexual organs banged against the sharp crossbar of the trestle."

Simon reports that one prominent Arab swore that his interrogation by a French army major and two captains lasted 57 hours, during which he was tortured by electrodes attached to his fingers, ears and testicles, later by immersion in water and beating with a riding crop. Concludes angry Author Simon: "We, who have fought against the racist monstrosity . . . are today conquered by Hitler, if our nation has adopted his ideas and methods."

Avoiding Excesses. Simon's book drew a supporting protest from Nobel Prize-winning Roman Catholic Novelist Fran-gois Mauriac, followed by a solemn declaration signed by all French Catholic cardinals and archbishops warning "all those whose mission it is to protect persons and things" that "in the present crisis" they "have the obligation to respect human dignity and rigorously to avoid all excesses contrary to the law of nature and the law of God."

A more sweeping indictment of the French army's unenviable position is that of a reserve officer who served six months in Algeria, won the Croix Militaire for the Algerian campaign: Lieut. Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, starbright editor of the weekly L'Express. Servan-Schreiber tells, in dramatic narrative form (a legalistic precaution against military inquiry), of a French patrol which is ordered to get the killers of a pro-French Arab, finds a truck with five Arabs in it, and kills all five on suspicion. That night in the officers' mess, Captain Julienne (newly arrived in Algeria) suggests: "It is perhaps bad practice to kill innocent men."

Major Henry, an old hand at killing rebels, answers: "You are right, 100% right--in theory. But in practice you are going to discover you will have to choose. If you consider that every Arab is innocent until proved guilty, let me tell you you will get your men killed, the fellagha will be kings and you will be transferred, because the parents of soldiers don't like them to be killed and will write to their Deputies that you are a butcher. To raise problems of conscience and to treat possible killers as presumed innocents is a luxury we cannot afford."

Servan-Schreiber quotes the report (the authenticity of which he guarantees) of a Major Marcus who, after nine months serving in most regions of Algeria, sums up: "In spite of the optimism of official statements, the situation is not improving. Unable to distinguish between rebels and peaceful citizens [we] are forced to engage in blind repression. Each false fellagha killed is replaced by ten real ones--to the point where our forces, faced with the enmity of the entire population, will either have to practice a policy of extermination ... or give up." Adds Marcus: "Here, lying has become second nature. The government lies to the country, the generals and prefects lie to the minister, the captains and mayors lie to the generals and prefects."

On the Run. This was too much for Defense Minister Maurice Bourges-Maunoury. Last week he brought formal charges before the Paris military tribunal accusing Servan-Schreiber of violating the French Penal Code by seeking knowingly "to demoralize the army." There were some weak points in Servan-Schreiber's attack. His editors had dressed up the articles with pictures of military action committed not in Algeria but in Morocco, and as a close friend and top-rank follower of Radical Socialist Leader Pierre Mendees-France, Servan-Schreiber is also open to the charge of politicking. But Servan-Schreiber reports that more than 100 French army officers and soldiers have written to him, offering to testify to the truth of his articles.

At week's end, as regular as clockwork, Algeria's Minister Resident Robert Lacoste issued another of his familiar claims --that the rebels are on the run, and everything will shortly get better if the present policy is followed.

It says much for the French sense of moral probity that nowhere in the controversy over Algeria has it been seriously suggested that excesses committed by French army officers have been justified by the numerous atrocities committed by Arabs. Just how provocative Arab behavior can be is illustrated in the case of Captain Renee Moureau.

Lean, blue-eyed Captain Moureau, 37, was district government officer in Tar-jicht, Morocco, a district the size of Massachusetts but with a meager population of tribesmen, camels and sheep. He ruled his desert strip so successfully and was liked by its people so well that he stayed on after the French withdrew from Morocco. Then the Moroccan "Army of Liberation" came to pillage Tarjicht, and nine months ago Captain Moureau disappeared. But the desert has its verbal grapevine, and over this came, piece by piece, news of Captain Moureau's fate: emasculated, both arms broken, he was, when last seen alive, on exhibition in an animal's cage, chained hand and foot, dressed in the travesty of a French uniform, with an obscene inscription pinned to his back.

*Last weekend's claimed bag: 200.

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