Paris - The mayor of Paris, Mr Bertrand Delanoe, ended four decades of official silence yesterday by unveiling a plaque on the pont Saint-Michel commemorating the scores of Algerians murdered by French police on the streets of Paris in 1961, Ian Kilroy reports.
In doing so, the Socialist Party mayor was fulfilling an election pledge.
Although the number of Algerians killed in Paris on October 17th, 1961, is not known, some estimates put the number as high as 265. More conservative estimates say no more than 50 were killed at the hands of French police under Mr Maurice Papon.