French ex-general: Killings justified

Aussaresses: 3,000 disappeared was "not a lot"

PARIS, France -- A retired French army general has told a court torture and executions during Algeria's war of independence were justified.

But the killings were carried out "without pleasure," Paul Aussaresses, 83, told a court in Paris.

He also said that for 3,000 prisoners to disappear out of a total of 24,000 detained was "not a lot."

Aussaresses is charged with justifying war crimes and faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a FF300,000 ($41,000) fine.

He went on trial on Monday following revelations in his recent book, "Special Services, Algeria 1955-57."

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He told the court that his superiors knew of the torture and summary executions in Algeria.

"My actions appeared justified," a frail but fiesty Aussaresses testified. "I did this work without pleasure, without pleasure."

He said that Gen. Jacques Massu, hero of the bitter 1957 Battle of Algiers, was also aware of the practice.

He implied, as he has done in interviews, that former President Francois Mitterrand, then justice minister, had to have known, too. Mitterrand was French president from 1981-1995.

Massu "didn't give me the order, but he reminded me that the government said we must eradicate the terrorists," Aussaresses testified.

However, torture was never "formulated explicitly," he said.

Aussaresses recounted for the court an episode in his book describing how he watched as his men stabbed, then hanged Algerian war hero Larbi Ben M'Hidi -- and covered it up as a suicide.

Asked if he regretted having ordered such torture and executions, Aussaresses said, "I have regretted being implicated in the circumstances."

But he said that if he had refused to use all means to eliminate the Algerian fighting force, the National Liberation Front, "all I could have done is say I'm leaving the army."

"It may sound scandalous to say this," Aussaresses testified, "but 3,000 people disappeared" out of 24,000 arrests. "It appears like a lot, but it's not."

Ahead of the trial in interviews, he drew parallels with the U.S-led campaign in Afghanistan and the hunt for Saudi-born Islamic militant Osama bin Laden.

"I would do it again today if it were against bin Laden," he said, in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the United States.

The publication of the book, in May, provoked outrage in France and the book became a best-seller.

While it had been widely assumed that atrocities were committed during the war, the former general's lack of remorse shocked the country.

The general, on trial for "complicity in justifying war crimes," entered the Paris court Monday flanked by his two editors.

Olivier Orban, head of the Plon publishing house, and Xavier Batillat, of Perrin publishers, faced related charges.

The 1954-1962 war ended with Algeria's independence from France after 132 years of colonial rule.

The lawsuit has been filed by France's League of Human Rights and several other human rights groups.

In Algiers, a sister of an Algerian war hero who perished at the hands of Aussaresses said it was time everyone in France who endorsed what went on was tried for crimes against humanity.

"Aussaresses is not the only one," Drifa Hassani, sister of independence activist Larbi Ben M'Hidi, told Reuters. "There are also all the other generals and politicians of the time who ordered the torture and who should pay for their crimes."

Shortly after the publication of his book, the decorated general was stripped of his army rank, and President Jacques Chirac revoked Aussaresses' Legion of Honour.

The charge of justifying war crimes carries a four-year maximum penalty, much less than a charge of committing them, but Aussaresses is protected by a 1968 amnesty for Algeria veterans.

French law also limits war crimes convictions to acts committed during World War II or after 1994, the date when the present war crimes statute took effect.