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

The Soummam conference in the Summer of 1956 resulted in the coming to leadership of
Ramdane Abane, and a new focus on the use of terror as a means of dividing the settler and Muslim
populations. In addition, the decision was made to extend the war into the cities, especially the capital
of Algiers. That terror could pay dividends to the FLN had been established by the Philippeville
massacre – although the FLN had killed 'only' 71 pieds noir (the rest had been moderate Muslims), the
French had responded with the deaths of 1,273 Muslims, according to the government – the FLN would
claim that 12,000 had been killed. (Rogers, p. 8) The result had been the destruction of the
moderate/liberal position among the Muslim leadership, and growing extremism among the settlers
themselves. A further casualty had been the proposed reforms announced by Resident Minister
Soustelle – a double victory for the FLN, since actual reforms (as represented particularly by the SAS
and the Centres Sociaux of Germaine Tillion) would have had the effect of leaching support away from
the FLN and towards a more moderate solution. Focusing the FLN's activities on urban terrorism had
the concurrent goal of bringing media (and in particular, international) attention on the Algerian
question. Abane himself made the point quite explicitly: “Is it preferable for our cause to kill ten
enemies in some riverbed in Telergma, which no one will talk about, or rather a single one in Algiers,
which the American Press will report the next day? Though we are taking some risks, we must make
our struggle known.” 79
Although the terror campaign was settled on at Soummam in 1956, the Autonomous Zone of
Algiers (ZAA) had seen considerable violence going back to that June. On the 19 th of that month, the
French military had executed by guillotine two captured members of the FLN. In response, the military
chief of the ZAA, Saadi Yacef, had been ordered to kill “any European between the ages of eighteen
and fifty-four. But no women, no children, no old people.” (Horne, p. 184) The resulting collective
violence over the next three days left 49 settlers dead. This indiscriminate violence was in turn
answered by a settler bomb exploded at the Rue de Thèbes at a safehouse used by the FLN – along with
the suspected FLN, another 70 unconnected Muslims had been killed, including women and children.
On the 30 th of September, the bombing campaign began in earnest, with two bombs exploded in the Mil
Bar and at a local cafeteria, killing 3 and wounding 50 – a third bomb, set at the Air France terminal,
failed to go off. The next several months would see a campaign of bombings and assassinations,
culminating in the murder of Amédée Froger, the ultra mayor of Boufarik, by Ali la Pointe on
79 “Directive no. 9” (Fall 1956), as quoted in Connelly, p. 228.
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