Torture During The Algerian War - "The French School" and "The American School"

"The French School" and "The American School"

There are both French and U.S. pathways that explain the spread of torture, including methods used in Algeria, to Latin American regimes allied with the West from the 1960s onwards.

Regarding the French pathway, journalist Marie-Monique Robin argued in her 2004 book on death squads how French intelligence agents had taught their Chilean and Argentine counterparts the use of torture and "disappearances" as a counter-insurgency tactic. Her argument was based on several filmed interviews of high-ranking Argentine military officers, who were themselves accused of torture at the time. French intelligence agents have long been suspected of having trained their Argentine counterparts in "counter-insurgency" techniques. In testimony in January 2007 before Argentine judges, Luis María Mendía, Argentine Admiral and originator of the "death flights" during the "Dirty War", referred to Marie Monique Robin's film documentary titled The Death Squads - the French School (Les escadrons de la mort - l'école française), which argued that the French intelligence services had trained Argentine counterparts in counter-insurgency techniques. Attempting to exonerate himself, Luis María Mendía used this source to ask that former French president, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, former French premier Pierre Messmer, former French ambassador to Buenos Aires Françoise de la Gosse, and all officials in place in the French embassy in Buenos Aires between 1976 and 1983 be brought before the court. Robin also argued that a 1959 agreement between France and Argentina instaured a "permanent French military mission" which was located in the offices of the chief of staff of the Argentine Armed Forces. However the argument is questionable as Robin argued that the mission consisted of veterans of the Algerian War, which would have been extremely unlikely at the onset of the purported mission (since the war in Algeria was ongoing) and remains an undocumented claim even after 1962.

The French role in spreading torture to Latin America appears modest, in terms of geographic scope and seniority of the officers involved, relative to local and other foreign sources. During the 1960s, the U.S. started spreading the use of torture to its allies in Latin America, specifically torture using electrical generators, with Brazil and Andean cone countries first. The training of Latin American officers, including a number of future tortionists and leaders who ordered torture, was conducted on a large scale via the formal education programs of the School of the Americas. This U.S. pathway leads directly to SOA graduate Leopoldo Galtieri, the Argentine dictator and commanding officer of Luis María Mendía. It is under Galtieri's regime that the use of torture became systematic in Argentina; other countries where SOA graduates were accused of involvement in torture or political murders include Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia, Panama and Haiti.

The French and U.S. pathways have a common root, as the use of electrical generators for torture was invented in America in 1908, spread in Asia during World War II, and passed to both French and U.S. forces during their respective involvement in the First Indochina War and the Vietnam War (or Second Indochina War).

John McGuffin's book "Beating the Terrorists" (Penguin) also alleges that French advisors were seen at Fort Morbut in Aden during the independence war. In that case, regardless of the correctness of this allegation or the mission of these advisors, their role was minute relative to that of the British forces trying to ensure a peaceful transfer of power during Aden Emergency.