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Le
Pen described evidence against him as "madness,
ridiculous."
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By
IOL South Asia Correspondent
PARIS,
June 3 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - French extreme right-wing
politician Jean-Marie Le Pen denied Sunday, June 2, allegations that
he had been involved in torturing Algerian prisoners during service as
a paratrooper in the Algerian war of independence during the 1950s.
Asked
on television whether he had carried out torture while serving under
commanding officer General Jacques Massu, Le Pen replied: "I
never found myself in this situation. I defended French officers and
non-commissioned officers who had been the victims of violence, but I
did not do such a thing myself," said Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Le
Pen, who created a political earthquake in April when he came second
in the first round of the French presidential election, lashed out at
what he claimed was a forthcoming article in the newspaper Le Monde
renewing torture accusations.
The
73-year-old head of the extreme right-wing anti-immigrant National
Front party enlisted in the Foreign Legion in Indochina in the 1950s,
then served briefly as a paratrooper in Algeria.
He described evidence against him as "madness, ridiculous,"
and said he would sue Le Monde if it published the allegations.
A
journalist with Le Monde taking part in the program would neither
confirm nor deny that such an article was to be published.
Le
Pen said Le Monde was simply recycling what he claimed had been the
false testimony of members of the FLN -- the Algerian National
Liberation Front -- "who have already been convicted for
defamation on nine occasions before French courts."
The
article was "a particularly unfair manipulation" because it
was to appear in the week before the first round of France's
parliamentary elections in which the National Front hopes to make
gains.
"Aiming
at me personally and coming after my media lynching during the second
presidential round, it amounts in effect to a call to murder,"
said Le Pen, who lost against President Jacques Chirac in the second
round last month.
Best known for his contention that the Nazi gas chambers were "a
detail of history", Le Pen has a history of populist support
built on a particular flair for oratory.
Seen
as a minority band of extremists in the 1970s and 1980s, the National
Front has become Europe's biggest far-right party and can justifiably
claim to be one of the main political movements in France.
In
November 2001, Gen. Paul Assauresses, a former French general went on
trial on charges of "apologizing for war crimes," tied to
his published descriptions of tortures and summary executions he and
other French military committed during Algeria's 1954-1962 struggle
for independence.
Aussaresses,
83, wrote a memoir confessing his role in the death of prisoners
during the Algerian war of independence.
He
faces a maximum penalty of five years in jail and a 300,000 franc -
45,000 euro – fine, BBC’s online news service reported at the
time.
"What
I did were not reprisals, I was not seeking to punish the people I
arrested, those facing me," he told the court. "It was a
matter of stopping actions which were being prepared for deeds causing
the deaths of my fellow French and Algerian citizens."
General
Aussaresses' book, Special Services, Algeria 1955-1957, caused uproar
when it came out in May 2001 because of its frank and entirely
unrepentant tone.
It
has been widely believed that atrocities were committed during the
war, but the general's lack of remorse shocked the country. The book
became an instant best seller.
The
general described how he personally took part in the torture and
killing of 24 Algerian prisoners - a practice, he said, that was
sanctioned at the highest level because of the need to extract urgent
information from the ‘enemy’.
Also
in November 2001, A French appeal court ruled that an Algerian man,
who was conceived when French soldiers raped his mother during
Algeria's struggle for independence, was a victim of war and awarded
him damages.
Finally
addressing a painful period in France's colonial history, the pensions
court in Paris recognized Mohammad Garne as a victim of Algeria's
1954-1962 war against French rule and awarded him disability benefits
and a partial military pension for three years, said the British daily
newspaper, The Guardian at the time.
