Franco-Algerian memory has long been a source of tension. President Emmanuel Macron makes a gesture: he acknowledged, Tuesday, March 2, that the lawyer and nationalist leader Ali Boumendjel was “Tortured and murdered” by the French army during the Algerian war in 1957, announced the Elysee, a murder at the time disguised as suicide.
This recognition “In the name of France”, which the Head of State himself announced to Ali Boumendjel’s grandchildren when he received them on Tuesday, is one of the calming gestures recommended by historian Benjamin Stora in his report on colonization and the war of Algeria, in order to resolve the tensions between the two countries around the memory of this conflict.