France announces opening Algerian war judicial archives
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France officially opens public archives related to acts committed in the Algerian war, which were hidden for 75 years.
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For 75 years, access to these documents was not allowed without permission.
France's Ministry of Culture announced Thursday the opening of public archives related to legal cases and police investigations about the Algerian war, according to the French Official Gazette.
The Ministry's decree allows access to all "public archives produced in the context of cases relating to acts committed in connection with the Algerian war between 1 November 1954 and 31 December 1966."
For 75 years, access to these documents was not allowed without permission.
French President Emmanuel Macron had promised to help historians unravel the hidden aspects of the French colonization of Algeria from the beginning of the Algerian revolution in 1954 until independence in 1962.
Early December, the French Minister of Culture, Roselyne Bachelot, announced the imminent declassification of the archive of the Algerian War's judicial investigations, 15 years before the legal time limit.
In the same context, a group of deputies in the French General Assembly announced introducing a bill under which the French authorities would recognize responsibility for the massacres of October 17, 1961, in which dozens of Algerians in Paris were martyred for protesting against a discriminatory curfew targeting Algerians in the French capital.
In October, a diplomatic crisis erupted between France and Algeria after French President Emmanuel Macron made several controversial, shocking, and unprecedented statements toward Algeria and its president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, whom he accused of being influenced by those around him despite the good relations Macron said he has with the Algerian president.
In an interview for German magazine Der Spiegel, the Algerian President said his French counterpart had 'humiliated' the Algerians.
Tebboune considered Macron's statements whereby he questioned the existence of an Algerian nation before French colonialism as "extremely dangerous".
