Wanderlust

Tag: french

  • Algerian War: Macron in rare torture admission

    This file photo taken circa 1950 shows Maurice Audin, who went missing after being arrested in 1957 during the Algerian War Image copyright AFP

    France has admitted responsibility for the torture and killing of a communist activist in Algeria over 60 years ago.

    Maurice Audin, 25, was working as a mathematician at the University of Algiers when he was arrested in 1957.

    In a rare admission on Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron said Audin had either been tortured to death or tortured and executed during French colonial rule.

    Algeria gained independence from France in 1962 after a bloody seven-year war.

    Audin was one of the few Europeans in the country to support Algerian calls for independence when he disappeared during the Battle of Algiers. He was married with three children.

    President Macron is due to pay a formal visit to Audin’s widow on Thursday, as well as to open the archives “on the subject of disappeared civilians and soldiers, both French and Algerian”.

    Long shadow

    In a visit to Algeria in February 2017 while still a presidential candidate, Mr Macron described colonialism as “a crime against humanity”. Later the same year, however, he ruled out reparations for any crimes committed under colonial rule.

    The Algerian war has left a long shadow in both France and Algeria. Over 1.5 million Algerians are thought to have died and it is only in recent years that Paris has begun to acknowledge some instances of abuse from the conflict.

    In September 2016, then President François Hollande admitted France’s role in the suffering of tens of thousands of Algerian soldiers who fought for France, known as harkis, and who were left without protection at the end of the war. Many of those who remained were brutally killed in reprisal attacks.

    He specifically mentioned the “responsibility of French governments in the abandonment of the harkis, the massacres of those who remained in Algeria and the inhumane reception of those transferred to France”.

    Eleven years earlier, France’s ambassador to Algeria apologised for the Sétif and Guelma massacre in 1945, when French police killed at least 1,000 Algerians after deadly attacks on settlers in the area. It is seen by some historians as a key moment leading to the war that broke out nine years later.

  • Guillotine bought to French millionaire collector

    A guillotine is pictured in its auction room in Nantes, western France, on March 25, 2014. Image copyright AFP/Getty Image caption This real guillotine was positioned to auction in 2014 however didn’t promote

    A guillotine has fetched €EIGHT,008 (£7080) at a controversial public sale in Paris.

    The A HUNDRED AND FIFTY-yr-antique reproduction of a device used for executions used to be purchased on Wednesday by means of a French millionaire and collector of surprising objects.

    France’s auction watchdog was against the sale, in spite of the public sale house insisting that the 3m (10ft) device in query had never been used.

    The guillotine was once final used to behead a convict in 1977. France abolished the dying penalty in 1981.

    The replica, which has a couple of dents at the blade, was once on show at a museum of torture in Paris. It was a part of a chapter sale of a jazz club that took over the museum’s premises.

    Row over ‘tasteless’ auction of Nazi items Jack the Ripper caution card fetches £22k Serial killer’s documents sell at auction

    “they need to now not be selling this guillotine,” a spokesperson for the French auction regulators instructed the Parisien newspaper.

    “Items just like the clothes of people who were deported to the (Nazi death) camps and tools of torture are delicate.”

    Alternatively, the auction watchdog was once not able to dam the auction, which lasted only mins. Industrialist Christophe Février doubled the beginning price of €4,000 (£THREE,535).

    Real guillotines had been placed to auction within the earlier. One sold for €220,000 in Paris in 2011. Some Other, to start with valued at €40,000, did not promote in the western city of Nantes in 2014.

    The guillotine was first used throughout the French Revolution, with 16,000 other people beheaded among 1973 and 1794, such a lot notably King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette.

  • Al Qaeda-associated workforce claims duty for attack on French troops in Mali – The Globe and Mail

    Open this photo in gallery

    A nonetheless symbol taken from a video displays soldiers standing protect as smoke rises within the distance after a automobile bomb assault in Gao, northern Mali, on July 1, 2018.

    REUTERS TELEVISION/Reuters

    An al Qaeda-linked Islamist crew in Mali has claimed duty for an attack on French troops in the northern the city of Gao, the U.S. WEB SITE tracking staff said on Monday.

    Four civilians have been killed and 4 French infantrymen had been wounded in Sunday ’s raid.

    The Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen group said the assault was once a message to French President Emmanuel Macron ahead of his consult with to Mauritania on Monday, SITE mentioned, mentioning a journalist who frequently gets direct news of claims.

    Story maintains under commercial

    Macron mentioned on arrival in the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott on Monday that several French soldiers who had been wounded in Gao were being airlifted to France.

    He stated he might meet at the sidelines of an African Union summit with the presidents of Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mauritania, members of the G5 Sahel nearby pressure created to fight Islamist militancy.

    “We ’ll meet this afternoon to take concrete choices at the redeployment of our forces,” Macron mentioned.

    Western powers, including France and the America, have provided investment to the G5 to tackle the jihadists. however the pressure has been slow to get off the bottom, hobbled via delays in disbursing the cash and co-ordinating among the five nations.

    Violence by Islamist militants has proliferated in the carefully-populated Sahel in contemporary years, with teams linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State using significant and northerly Mali as a release pad for assaults around the region.

    Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen has claimed responsibility for 3 deadly assaults in Mali since Friday as the u . s . a . prepares for a presidential election on July 29.

    Including the attack on French forces on Sunday, WEBSITE said the gang had claimed responsibly for the attack on the G5 process pressure headquarters in Sevare on Friday, and an attack on Malian troops on Saturday that killed five.

    Tale maintains below commercial