FRANCE: Gen Paul Aussaresses (83), the retired army officer who shocked France with his explicit account of torturing and murdering prisoners during the 1954-1962 Franco-Algerian war, was yesterday convicted of being an apologist for war crimes. Lara Marlowe reports from Paris
The general was fined €7,500. His publishers, Olivier Orban and Xavier de Bartillat of Éditions Plon Perrin, were fined €15,000 each.
Mr Orban denounced the verdict as "the triumph of hypocrisy and censorship" and said he would appeal. "France still isn't mature enough to talk about what happened in Algeria," he added.
In court yesterday, the one-eyed general was unrepentant, smiling and enjoying the media attention. He was surrounded by ageing former paratroopers, one of whom sang the Marseillaise when Judge Catherine Bezio finished reading the verdict.
Judge Bezio said Gen Aussaresses's lack of regret for his crimes did not constitute an apology. But he had cast torture in a favourable light. His "cold and detailed narratives of his nocturnal outings and interrogations presented (torture) as not only inevitable but legitimate," she added. He also "expressed his contempt for those who oppose torture".
On January 20th, CBS television broadcast an interview with the general on the use of torture after the September 11th attacks. During the Vietnam war, Gen Aussaresses was an "observer" at the US paratroop school at Fort Benning, then a special forces instructor at Fort Bragg, where CIA agents are also trained. He told CBS that he applied electricity to the ears, hands and testicles of his victims, but that the simplest, most efficient means of torture was putting a soaked towel over a prisoner's face so he could not breathe.
Asked whether he would suggest torturing Mr Zacarias Moussaoui, the Frenchman who will stand trial in the US in October, Gen Aussaresses said: "I would. It would be certainly the only way to have him talk."
Gen Aussaresses told me he was on the same flight to the US as Mr Richard Reid, the British Muslim accused of attempting to detonate a shoe filled with explosives. But Mr Reid was on a Paris-Miami flight, I protested - CBS flew the general to New York. "Are you calling me a liar?" Gen Aussaresses asked before threatening: "I'll break your face."