VS’It was under a blazing sun and to the patriotic songs of feminist and left-wing militants that Pierre Audin inaugurated the stele dedicated to his father, the communist militant Maurice Audin, in Algiers-center, on the square which bears the name of this disappeared from the “Battle of Algiers”.
© Adlene Meddi
Several dozen people, including young people, attended the brief ceremony on June 5, attended by officials on behalf of the Algerian government. ” What’s going on ? asks a passer-by intrigued by the gathering in a capital that has not seen crowd movements since the end of the hirak. “You don’t know Audin, this Frenchman who died so that Algeria might live? retorted a left-wing activist, who had just sung L’Internationale, fist raised, with her comrades, in French and Arabic. “I am very moved, testifies Ali, retired from the Post Office who has been waiting in the square since the morning. We must do justice to all those who have fallen on the field of honour. Ali raises his hands in the air while reciting a verse from the Koran on the martyrs, “those who remain alive with God”.
“Acts of torture”
“It is very important to make this kind of gesture, it is a strong way of revisiting our national story of the war of liberation. You have to explain to the younger generations that the fight at the time brought together Algerians and Europeans from Algeria, communists and liberals,” explains Fatma, a university professor. With her friends, when the official procession takes Pierre Audin and his delegation, they lay a wreath at the foot of the stele, repeating patriotic songs.
© Adlene Meddi
As a reminder, French President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged, on September 13, 2018, in a statement to the widow of Maurice Audin, Josette – who died in February 2019 – that the French State was responsible for the disappearance of her husband, in the part of a “system” resulting in “acts of torture”.
“It is important that this story be known, that it be looked at with courage and lucidity. It is about the appeasement and serenity of those it has bruised both in Algeria and in France, ”said the French head of state.
Death in custody
On June 11, 1957, in the midst of the “battle of Algiers”, the young French communist activist, committed to Algerian independence, then aged 25, mathematician and assistant to the faculty of Algiers, was arrested at his home. by General Massu’s paratroopers.
He was then tortured in a villa on the heights of Algiers. Ten days later, his wife, Josette, learned that her husband had escaped during a transfer to another detention centre. This official version will remain valid until former President François Hollande acknowledged in 2014 that “the documents and testimonies we have today are numerous and consistent enough to invalidate the thesis of the escape which was advanced at the time. Mr. Audin did not escape. He died while in custody.
Algiers is committed
This June 5, the Minister of Mujahideen (veterans) declared that he had given “instructions to undertake research on the places where the body of the chahid (martyr) could have been buried by his executioners”, according to Pierre Mansat, president of the Association Josette and Maurice Audin, present in Algiers. “The association will take steps to ensure that the French executive puts pressure on former soldiers to open their personal archives as well as those they have privatized”, also posted Pierre Mansat on social networks at the end of the ceremony this morning.
© Adlene Meddi
As a reminder, members of the Josette and Maurice Audin Association, who arrived in Algeria on May 28 to mark the 60e anniversary of Algerian independence, have multiplied meetings in universities in Constantine, Oran and Algiers, in particular with students, veterans sentenced to death, feminist activists, officials, etc. At the beginning of last May, Pierre Audin, who is also a mathematician like his father, obtained Algerian nationality.