The Torturer's Dilemma: Analyzing the Logic of Torture for Information

time, the government in Paris was controlled by the Popular Front, and prospects for reform in order to
address some of the larger injustices of colonialism seemed strong. The proposal would have allowed
educated Algerian Muslim men, as well as veterans of the military (a small minority of around 25,000
out of nearly 9,000,000) to obtain French citizenship without surrendering the right to recourse to
Islamic law for civil matters. (Horne, p. 37) This proposal sparked serious divisions in the nationalist
movement, with the liberals (including Ferhat Abbas) siding with the reforms, and the Messalist
People's Party of Algeria (PPA) denouncing the bill as a class-based means of divide and conquer.
(Horne, p. 41) This optimism on the part of the Liberals would not be rewarded, however – strenuous
lobbying by the settler lobby effectively delayed the bill until the collapse of Blum's government. The
result was a nationalist movement that had been split along class-lines, with the liberals marginalized to
a considerable degree, and increasingly convinced that “assimilation” was an impossibility.
The schism between the liberals and nationalists would be papered over during the second
World War: after Charles de Gaulle's speech at Brazzaville in 1944, announcing the eventual end of
colonization in black Africa and the integration of the Maghreb into a French Union that offered some
hope of autonomy, both would join forces in the umbrella organization Amis du Manifeste et de la
Liberté. This cooperation would be shattered however by the events of May 8 th , at a victory parade in
Sétif for the German surrender that same day. Attempts by the local police to confiscate nationalist
banners led to violence against the settler population that left 104 pieds noir dead, and 100 wounded.
The repressions that followed by the French military and settler militias killed somewhere between a
low of 1,500 (according to the French military) and a high of 50,000 (according to the nationalists
themselves), with “moderate” historians putting the estimate at around 8,000 – that is, a ratio of around
80 Muslims for each settler. (Talbott, p. 22) This massacre marked the final end of assimilation as a
political goal in Algerian Muslim politics – from then on, autonomy would be the minimum solution
for Muslim nationalists.
With the passage of the Statut Organique in the aftermath of Sétif, Muslims found their political
aspirations once again blocked. This new framing law had created an Algerian Assembly with limited
powers under the French Governor General (responsible to Paris), but had split representation into two
colleges – one for the settlers, and one for Muslim men. Each would be apportioned 50% of the
assembly's seats, but a motion of 25% of the members of either college could any law from being
passed without a 2/3 rds super-majority – in other words, one half of the settler community – representing
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