The general was convicted for 'complicity in justifying war crimes' in connection with his memoir about Algerian independence war
theguardian.com, Wednesday 4 December 2013
The French general Paul Aussaresses, whose cold admission of executions and torture during the Algerian independence war five decades ago forced France to examine a dark period of its past, has died. He was 95.
Aussaresses, whose death was announced on Wednesday on the website of the veterans' association Who Dares Wins, was convicted and fined in January 2002 for "complicity in justifying war crimes" in connection with a memoir about the seven-year war that ended with Algeria's independence from French rule in 1962.
The general was intelligence chief and a top commander during the brutal 1957 Battle of Algiers. His admission of torture and summary killings horrified then-French President Jacques Chirac, who also served in the French army during the French-Algerian war in 1954.
"I express regrets," Aussaresses said in a 2001 interview with the Associated Press. "But I cannot express remorse. That implies guilt. I consider I did my difficult duty of a soldier implicated in a difficult mission."
Aussaresses was instantly recognisable by his eye patch. He lost sight in one eye because of a botched cataract operation, not combat.
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