2000s Controversies
General Jacques Massu, military chief of Algier, had defended the use of torture in his 1972 book, The True Battle of Algiers (La vraie bataille d'Alger). He later declared to Le Monde in 2000 that "torture was not necessary and that we could have decided not to use it".
Two days after the visit to France of Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Louisette Ighilahriz, a former Armée de Libération Nationale activist, published her testimony in Le Monde on 20 June 2000. At the age of twenty she had been captured in September 1957, during the Battle of Algiers, and raped and tortured for three months. She named General Massu as the responsible of the French military at the time. Massu, 94 years old, acknowledged Ighilahriz's testimony and declared to 'Le Monde' that "Torture isn't indispensable in times of war, and one can very well do without it. When l look back on Algeria, it saddens me... One could have done things differently." To the contrary, General Bigeard (then Colonel) called her remarks a "tissue of lies", while Aussaresses justified it
Read more about this topic: Torture During The Algerian War