Torture: from Algiers to Abu Ghraib

The treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq focused worldwide media attention on the US practice of torture. Underlying such a practice was not only a self-serving debate in US political circles, academia and entertainment media on how a liberal democracy could justify such methods but also a history of counter-insurgency techniques which owed much to French warfare in Algeria. Yet while the lessons of the torturer have been assiduously learnt, what has been ignored is the recent open debate in France on the profound damage done by such institutionalised barbarity both to the victims and to the individuals and regimes that deploy it.