To the Guillotine

A chill rain whipped Rue Desfontaines at noon one day last week as a carload of plainclothes police pulled up at No. 25. The six-story building was barely distinguishable from dozens of other new, white apartment houses in the middle-class European quarter of Algiers--even to the crudely painted SALAN across one wall. But the plainclothesmen had made no mistake. Minutes later, they were inside a three-room, ground-floor apartment, their service revolvers leveled at ex-General Raoul Salan. In the heart of the city where his men boasted of being "as safe as fish in the sea," almost one year to the day since his arrival in Algiers to take part in the abortive Generals' Revolt, the head of the murderous Secret Army Organization had been captured at last. Said one jubilant gendarme: "He fell into the trap like a beginner."

The arrest was like a scene from a Simenon thriller. From informers' tips and details gleaned from a captured S.A.O. leader, special teams of security police in France and Algiers laboriously pieced together Raoul Salan's hour-to-hour movements, decided the best chance of taking him alive would be to catch him on an unguarded visit to Rue Desfontaines, one of many hideouts used by his wife Babiche and daughter (who were also arrested). After patient weeks of waiting, police learned that Salan was going to spend Easter weekend with his family, burst into the apartment before he had even removed his hat.

Shock for a Concierge. Pale, black-mustached, his silver hair dyed black, blue-suited Salan, 62, looked like a typical Paris businessman, which he claimed to be. From behind the desk where he was seated when they arrived, he wordlessly handed a police inspector an identity card in the name of Louis Carriere. (Methodical Raoul Salan took the name from the Paris street where he once lived.) After a studied silence, the cop pointed his revolver at the general's chest, drawled: "You are Salan."

Captured in the apartment with Salan was his aide, former Captain Jean Ferrandi. who had served under the general in Indo-China, came with him to Algiers for the April putsch. As police bundled them outside, one cop could not help identifying their catch to other residents in the hallway. When the concierge heard that M. Carriere was Raoul Salan, she fainted. Silent and deathly pale, Salan was taken with Ferrandi by helicopter to Reghai'a, French military headquarters 20 miles from town, where the S.A.O. chief huddled bleakly on a bench between two gendarmes. There he was spotted by an old comrade-in-arms, loyal Gaullist Gen eral Charles Ailleret, who was relieved last week as Algerian commander in chief. "You know who I am," barked Ailleret. "You are responsible for all the crimes committed by the S.A.O. in your name." Clenching and unclenching his hands, Salan stared silently at the floor.

Ailleret raced to Le Rocher Noir, the coastal fortress that houses the French and Provisional Algerian administrations, confirmed Salan's capture to newly appointed High Commissioner Christian Fouchet. As Fouchet called Charles de Gaulle to break the news, a military transport roared off the Reghaia's airstrip, taking the old soldier for the last time from the country for which Raoul Salan, after 44 years of fighting France's enemies, had himself become an enemy of France. Though he is already under sentence of death in absentia, by French law Salan must stand trial. Like ex-General Edmond Jouhaud, Salan's chief lieutenant who was captured a month ago, he is certain to be sentenced to the guillotine, barring last-minute clemency by De Gaulle.

In Paris, Salan was lodged with hundreds of other captured S.A.O. terrorists in grim Sante Prison. Breaking his silence, he told police: "It had to happen. I saw too many people for too many silly reasons. People that I didn't know. That is probably how I was captured. What difference does it make? Everything was collapsing around us."

Hope in the Bled. Even without Salan, the S.A.O. was still a force to be reckoned with. Bombs still rocked Algiers and Oran after his arrest. Warned the underground S.A.O. radio: "The struggle continues." Still at large are several leaders who are possibly more dangerous than their cautious, calculating commander: Paratroop Colonel Yves Godard, the S.A.O. chief of operations; Colonel Jean Gardes, ordnance chief; Jean-Jacques Susini, an avowed fascist, who formulates S.A.O. doctrine; and ex-General Paul Gardy of the Foreign Legion who proclaimed himself Salan's successor. Nonetheless, for Europeans who remained uneasily loyal to the underground army despite its infamy, Salan's arrest removes the last vestige of respectability from S.A.O. terrorism.

Determined to smash Salan's army, De Gaulle earlier last week flew in 5,000 additional troops to S.A.O.-dominated Oran, named Air Force General Michel Fourquet to succeed Ailleret as commander in chief. Hard-hitting Gaullist Fourquet set out to restore order before restive Moslem mobs got out of control in Oran and Algiers.

Most encouraging portent so far is that in the Algerian bled (the hinterland), where 7,000,000 of the country's 9,000,000 Moslems live, the vast majority are cooperating peacefully with the French army and their own leaders to prepare for independence. At Rhoufi, only a few miles from the spot where the Algerian rebellion broke out seven years ago, a veteran French administrator declared last week: "It's almost too good to be true."

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