The Trial

Ugliest aspect of the ugly war in Algeria has been the persistent reports of torture practiced in France's detention camps in Algeria. Though prominent Frenchmen of all political persuasions have protested in shock and shame, French army zealots argue that "a few moments of discomfort are justifiable if they lead to a confession that saves many lives." Last week two cases came before a military court in Algiers, raised serious question about the operation of French justice.

"Assassins!" Into a tiny military courtroom shuffled ten hard-core Communists, held for three years without trial on charges of conspiring with the rebels and secretly reconstituting the banned Communist Party. Prominent among them: Journalist Henri Alleg, 39, author of the international bestseller, The Question (TIME, June 9, 1958), a surreptitiously written and smuggled-out account of the tortures that he suffered at the hands of paratroops of General Jacques Massu's 20th Division. Conspicuously missing was an eleventh defendant: Communist Maurice Audin, a mathematics professor in whose home Alleg was captured in 1957. French authorities say he escaped. Audin's wife has filed charges that he was strangled during an interrogation by a French paratroop lieutenant, who has since been promoted and decorated.

The prosecutor, a major, began the trial by urging that it be held in secret. All ten defendants jumped up chanting "Murderers . . . You are all afraid." The court president, Colonel Rene Catherineau, ordered Alleg removed from the courtroom. At that moment, the fragile voice of a woman barely rose above the din: "I am Madame Audin," she cried. "They don't want me to speak, but I shall speak. My husband has been murdered." Said Court President Catherineau: "But Madame Au din is not accused of anything. You cannot speak." Madame Audin shouted back: "Assassins!" Then Colonel Catherineau announced: "The dignity of the court and concern for public order require that proceedings should take place in camera."

For the next two days the trial proceeded in secret; newsmen were denied admission by gendarmes with submachine guns. Then came the verdicts: ten years for Frenchman Alleg, 20 years for the secretary-general of the outlawed Algerian Communist Party and one other Moslem, five to 15 years for five others, acquittals for the last two. Then police picked up the chief defense counsel, handed him an expulsion order and packed him onto a Paris-bound plane.

"Brutalities." Two days later the court reconvened to hear the case of doe-eyed Djamila Boupacha, 22, a non-Communist government typist accused of placing a bomb (which did not go off) in an Algiers cafe last September. Djamila herself has filed countercharges that police and paratroopers tortured her. "I was taken to Hussein Dey," she charged. "This was, I was told, for the 'second degree' treatment. I soon learned what it meant: electricity torture. Since the electrodes placed on my nipples would not hold, one of the torturers stuck them on with Scotch tape --and I was burned in the same way on the legs, the groin, the sex and the face. After a few days of this treatment, I was given the bottle torture. It was the most appalling pain. After tying me in a special way, a bottle was thrust in me. I screamed and lost consciousness for, I think, two days . . ." Wrote Novelist Franchise Sagan, one of the many French intellectuals who have rallied behind the cause of Djamila: "There will be impartial gynecologists [at the trial] who will say what results are when a virgin is impaled on a bottle." Three doctors examined Djamila two months after she was interrogated. confirmed that she still carried the marks of "brutalities." During the interrogation, Djamila signed a "confession."

In court last week, Djamila appeared pale and drawn, but otherwise showed no outward signs of ordeal. Faced with a national uproar, the French prosecutor requested a delay "to gather further evidence." Her trial postponed, Djamila was led from the courtroom back to her cell --to wait.

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