Massacre of October 17, 1961: a witness recounts

Massacre of October 17, 1961: a witness recounts

In Paris, the new mayor Bertrand Delanoë inaugurated a commemorative plaque in tribute to the victims of the demonstration organized by the Algerian FLN on October 17, 1961 and repressed very violently by the police then under the orders of the prefect Maurice Papon. If the official toll is about fifty victims, other toll reports more than two hundred dead, thrown into the Seine. A sober ceremony that the Paris municipal councillors of the opposition did not want to attend. Images of the unveiled plaque, a copy of a photo brandished by a participant with the phrase painted in 1961 on a Parisian bridge "Ici on noie les Algériens". Interview with René Dazy, journalist and witness of the police repression against the Algerian demonstrators, which evokes the prefect Maurice Papon.

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File : 17 October 1961

Publication date : 17 October 2001