While mention of the word torture was banned from official language at the time, the French military in Algeria encouraged the use of torture during the 1954-1962 war of independence, and with the consent of the government in Paris. Historian Fabrice Riceputi, an associate researcher with the Institut d’histoire du temps présent (IHTP), specialised in the events of the independence war, details here how, after the military experimented with torture and forced disappearances during the 1957 Battle of Algiers, French generals recommended a generalisation of the practice.
French tycoon Vincent Bolloré's media empire, which includes TV and radio stations, newspapers and publishing houses, has adopted an agressive pro-Kremlin stance, attacking President Emmanuel Macron's position on the war in Ukraine.
Several 17th-century works by Rococo-period French artist Antoine Watteau have joined an exhibition of his works in the Chateau of Chantilly, north of Paris, after their Franco-American owner saved them from a wildfire licking his home in Los Angeles in January.
In a landmark ruling, the Paris administrative court of appeal this week found that the French state must pay damages to victims of the carcinogenic insecticide chlordecone, which it allowed to be used on banana plantations on France’s Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe for three years after it was banned on the mainland. The court has also widened the criteria of eligibility for the compensation. Amélie Poinssot reports.
Four years after submitting a major report for the French government on colonialism and the Algerian War, the leading French historian Benjamin Stora reflects on the unprecedented deterioration in relations that currently exists between Paris and Algiers. It is the “most serious crisis since independence” he tells Mediapart, and regrets the fact that French politicians have failed to embrace the gains of anti-colonialism. The academic also says that France is undergoing a realignment of the Right towards the stance of the far-right. Interview by Ellen Salvi.
Defence minister says France will use the money to provide the Ukrainian army with older equipment from the French army, in particular AMX-10RC tanks and armored front-end vehicles.
The collective organising the rallies said 250,000 people had taken to the streets across France at some 150 demonstrations, with 120,000 people in Paris alone.
The inhabitants of Syrian Kurdistan are surrounded by urgent threats and challenges: attacks from Turkish troops, the enduring threat from jihadists, the refusal by the new regime in Damascus to consider any form of confederate status for their region and now the historic pronouncement by Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan, who has called on his militant group PKK to lay down its weapons after a long armed struggle. Yet the Kurds in Rojava, as this area of north and east Syria is also known, are determined to defend the de facto autonomy they have secured since 2013 – along with the extraordinary women’s revolution that this independence has made possible. Mediapart's Rachida El Azzouzi reports from the region.
Bernard Squarcini, who led the equivalent of MI5, has been jailed for two years for sending a ‘mole’ after a left-wing filmmaker on behalf of the luxury group
French President Emmanuel Macron spoke on Wednesday, warning that Europe needs to be ready for the United States to not “remain by our side” in the Ukraine-Russia war.
On Wednesday evening President Emmanuel Macron spoke to the nation in a sombre televised address about the current international situation involving Ukraine, the United States, Russia and European security. The French head of state said the country was facing the start of a “new era” in which “the threat from the East is returning”. In doing so he sought to prepare French public opinion for the adoption of radical budgetary choices in order to finance greater military capability. As Justine Brabant and Ilyes Ramdani report, in doing so the French president seems to have opted for cuts in other public services to pay for defence spending rather than funding it through increased government borrowing.
A criminal investigation into events at the Notre-Dame-de-Bétharram private school in south-west France is continuing. Meanwhile Mediapart can reveal that sixteen victims of sexual violence committed by religious figures at the Catholic institution have already been compensated over allegations that are now time-barred under the criminal law. There are also discussions taking place about whether and how this approach of acknowledging abuse and paying compensation can also be extended to victims of laypeople connected to the school. At the same time, prime minister François Bayrou continues to insist that he was never informed about abuse at the institution, which is in his political fiefdom. David Perrotin and Antton Rouget report.
