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Algerians Who Served France Claim Crimes Against Humanity
BIAS, France, Aug 29 (News Agencies) - Algerians who served with the French army during the Algerian independence war will go to court Thursday and charge France with abandoning 150,000 of them to be massacred, news agencies reported Wednesday.
Harkis, a group of Muslim Frenchmen of Algerian origin who served in an auxiliary contingent in the French army during the 1954-62 war, are filing a suit before a Paris court alleging "crimes against humanity".
The plaintiffs are "challenging the behavior of French and Algerian authorities," said Philippe Reulet, representing the National Liaison Committee of the Harkis. The suit is officially against "persons unknown".
The high court in Paris will receive the complaint but no official hearing date has been set, officials said.
A peace accord ending the war and granting Algerian independence was signed on March 18, 1962.
"We were disarmed and abandoned by France from March 19th," said former Harkis member Messaoud Belaid. "They handed us over to the National Liberation Front [FLN, the Algerian independence movement]."
Some 150,000 Harkis members were massacred after France withdrew. Many were decapitated or had their throats cut.
"By their scope and the fact that they were committed for political reasons, these acts of extermination constitute crimes against humanity," Reulet said.
The eight are also filing a suit against "persons unknown" for what they say was inhumane treatment of survivors at the hands of French authorities.
More than 60,000 Harkis and their families escaped, despite official French instructions to prevent a mass exodus.
Those who made it to France had to languish there for years in camps behind barbed wire, isolated from the French.
Despite improvements in their conditions, the remaining Harkis continued protesting, sometimes violently, against past treatment.
In 1997, some went on hunger strike to alert public opinion and obtain official acknowledgment of their plight.
The last straw occurred in June of last year when on a visit to France, Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika compared the Harkis to French collaborators with German occupiers during World War II.
Earlier this year, 82-year-old retired French general Paul Aussaresses sparked another scandal when he admitted torturing and murdering Algerians during the independence war.
In May, survivors and their descendants decided to file a lawsuit against Aussaresses, but the Harkis have yet to have their day in court.
"We are going to law to restore their pride," said Ahmed Rafa, the liaison committee spokesman.
Describing conditions in one of the original reception camps at Bias in the south of France, he said, "We lived for a long time in inhumane conditions. It was like a place for Muslims to die who had been repatriated from Algeria and ruled unfit to work."
More than 1,300 elderly, invalids, widows and children were among those who vegetated there for more than a decade; they lived in barracks dating from the 1930s, shared outside toilets, and were only allowed to shower once a week.
Rafa was nine when he first arrived. He said the worst thing was the isolation, commenting that, "Until 1975 everything was arranged to keep us apart from the population."
Inmates were not allowed to go outside and could receive no visitors. They had to shop at a special store inside the camp, which was run in military fashion. The children went to a school inside the camp, with no local classmates.
The electricity was cut off every night at 10:00 p.m.
"I worked for 50 francs a month cleaning the camp school and the showers," recalled 83-year-old Jjili Rbehia. "That's what they call slavery."
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