The decision was announced ten days ago. Without this, the first documents would not have been available until 2029.
France opened Thursday, December 23 its archives relating to judicial affairs and police investigations in Algeria at war against colonization, under a text published in the Official Journal. The decree of the Ministry of Culture makes all “public archives produced in the context of cases relating to acts committed in connection with the Algerian war between November 1, 1954 and December 31, 1966“.
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This concerns “documents relating to cases brought before the courts and the execution of court decisions” and “documents relating to investigations carried out by the judicial police services“. These archives are “kept in the National Archives, the Overseas National Archives, in the departmental archives services, in the archives service of the police prefecture, in the archives services under the Ministry of the Armed Forces and in the Archives Directorate from the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs», Specifies the decree. All these archives were non-consultable by right for 75 years, except by obtaining a dispensation.
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For twenty years, successive French governments have facilitated access to archives relating to sensitive periods in the country’s history: first the Second World War and the Occupation, then the end of the Empire. colonial after war. President Emmanuel Macron has promised to help historians shed light on the gray areas of France’s action in Algeria, from the start of the independence insurgency in 1954 until independence in 1962. In September 2018, he recognized that the disappearance of the mathematician and communist activist Maurice Audin, in 1957 in Algiers, was the act of the French army and opened the archives on this affair. Then in March 2021, he announced a simplification of the procedure for access by exemption to classified archives over 50 years old.
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