18 Facts About Paul Aussaresses

Paul Aussaresses provoked controversy in 2000 when, in an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde, he admitted and defended the use of torture during the Algerian war.

Paul Aussaresses repeated the defense in an interview with CBS's 60 Minutes, further arguing that torture ought to be used in the fight against Al-Qaeda, and again defended his use of torture during the Algerian War in a 2001 book; The Battle of the Casbah.

Paul Aussaresses admitted to advising the CIA for the Americans' Vietnam era Phoenix Program, which utilized torture.

In 1941, Paul Aussaresses served a year as an officer cadet in Cherchell, Algeria.

Paul Aussaresses restarted his demi-brigade's intelligence unit, which had been disbanded during peacetime but was deemed necessary by the French Army, which wanted to quell the insurgency of the Algerian rebels.

Paul Aussaresses returned to Bone, Algeria in May 1956 to continue exercises with paratroopers on their way to the Suez Canal.

Paul Aussaresses reported for duty in Algiers on 8 January 1957.

Paul Aussaresses was the main executioner and intelligence collector under Jacques Massu during the Battle of Algiers.

France decreed that both deaths were suicides, but Paul Aussaresses admitted both assassinations in 2000.

Paul Aussaresses contends, in his book, that the French government insisted that the military in Algeria "liquidate the FLN as quickly as possible".

The French government has always claimed that it was not, but Paul Aussaresses argues that the government insisted upon the harsh measures he took against Algerians - measures which included summary executions of many people, hours of torture of prisoners, and violent strike-breaking.

Paul Aussaresses was quite candid in his interview in Le Monde forty years later :.

Paul Aussaresses justified the use of torture by saying how shocked he was by the FLN's massacre at the El Halia mine.

Paul Aussaresses suggested that torture was a small but necessary evil that had to be used to defeat a much larger evil of terrorism.

Paul Aussaresses claimed that he used these methods because it was a quick way to obtain information.

Paul Aussaresses defended its use by saying that the legal system was meant to deal with a peacetime France, not a counter insurgency war that the French army was faced with in Algeria.

Paul Aussaresses was condemned to a 7,500 Euros fine by the Tribunal de grande instance de Paris, while Plon and Perrin, two editing houses who had published his book in which he defended the use of torture, were sentenced each to a 15,000 Euros fine.

Paul Aussaresses located to Brazil in 1973 during the military dictatorship, where he maintained very close links with the military.