Muslim boy rounded up by French troops. Searching the Casbah for FLN militants. Ali-la-Pointès hiding place blown up by paras. FOR THE FIRST TIME for nearly Pontecorvo's film The anti-colonialist film ever ticular merit is the way in which it explores the oppressors.
the struggle, without and shootings of civilians, the film ultimately against a ruthless colonial power. The parallel with Ireland is of course obvious "The most favoured method of torture was the signals magneto from which elec trodes could be fastened to various parts of the body — notably the penis'. So says Alastair Horne in his classic book on the period savage War of Peac (Penguin). The torture by French paras the Algerian FLN suspects was routine.
- Henri Alleg, a Euro.
Jew whose family
nad settled in Algeria dur ing the Second V Torld War was the Communist editor of Alger Republicaine; he was interogated trode torture is instructive: In his first subjection to electric shock with electrodes merely attached -TO his ear and finger, he says: 'A flash of lightening exploded next to my ear, and I felt my heart racing in my breast The second time a large magnetc was used Instead of the sharp and rapid spasms that seemed to tear my ood in two. 1 was now a greater pair that took possession of al my muscles and tightened them in longer spasms.
The paras had many other forms of torture, of various kinds of water torture were the One use error. ture in the Battle of Algiers was deemed essential information about the FLN organisation of the organisation were told to resist torture for 24 hours they could talk.
During that time sufficient re-organisation could take place to make the information he FLN less organis- useless. FLin cellen three - - most didn't know one another. Only the central command of four had all the information in its hands When the paras arrived in Algiers their colonel Bigear (in the film Mathieu decided to LaCK down the central leaders by wringing as possible out of his captives In the face of the barbarities of the French forces the napalming of villages, the systematic torture, the execution of FLN by guillotine the FLN decided upon an offensive La decade of Algiers is showing in London. It is quite simply the best made. But its paruse of terrorist violence against the colonialist Without ever glamourising this aspect of attempting for minute to minimise the horror of bombings defends these methods as legitimate weapons The bombing of an Arab house in the Casbah district by pied noir terrorists. led to BLaf unleashing of the FLN squads led by Ali-la-Pointe and the Algiers operational com mander Saadi Yace remarkable thin about Battle of Algiers is that Saadi Yacef was coproducer and plays himself (Djafar) in the THM Using Yacef's knowledge it is filmed ir une cracocanoes wher the various incidents took film is the bombing campaign run by the FLN women volunteers. While the Casbah area was sealed off by the and everyone going in and out searched 1, the FLN womer dyed their hair and dressed in Western clothes.
September 1956 disguised FrenchAlgerian women, Yacef's volunteers got out of th Casbah with their bomb and hit the fashionable Cafeteria on the Rue Michelet, the Milk Bar on the Place Bugeand and th Air France terminus. were packed The film shows the bombings in all their horror. They were a -DOW morale of the FrenchAlgerian population and a There that parallels with the situation in Ireland come into play parallel is exact but nonetheless there are strik ing similarities. In Algeria colonial power wa fighting an insurgent peo ple, but the situation wa:
3E0G istence of a colonial-settler population which sided with the imperialists The parallel betweer the Protestant populatio in the north of Ireland an the pied noirs is tempting Of course in Algeria the population had been there a much shorter Presbyterian population in the north ot ireland and the cultural differences OCLWCCHI the Algerians and the French Algerians ane between much greater than Loyalists and Republicans in the six counties.
The Battle of Algiers, directed duced by Antonio Musa and Saadi Yacef, is showing at th Sque see, Brunswick Square WC/ Socialist Challenge 14 January 1983 page
Socialist
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m9sas for a whole month in His account of elec-