Algeria Torture Doctrine
Systematized torture as a method of empire
During the Algerian War the French army made torture a routine intelligence tool, later codified and exported as counterinsurgency doctrine. Commanders defended it openly, and the state avoided reckoning for decades.
Damage
French army normalized torture as counterinsurgency doctrine during the Algerian War.
Lives lost
Thousands tortured and killed in doctrine practice (order-of-magnitude within war totals)
Record Points
- During the 1957 Battle of Algiers the army used electric shock, waterboarding, and beatings as standard practice.
- General Massu and others publicly justified torture as a legitimate wartime necessity.
- Detainees disappeared under the euphemism corvee de bois, killed and logged as escapees.
- French officers later taught these methods to militaries in Latin America and elsewhere.
- France admitted only in 2018, in the Audin case, that torture had been state policy.
Perpetrator(s)
Victims
Algeria