From the « Quarter of the Executed » to the « Martyrs’ Quarter »: Political Stakes and Memorial Implications of Repatriating the Bodies of Mujahidin from France to Algeria
Abstract
In the Algerian War of Independence, both the colony and metropolitan France were in the arena of conflict. Nearly four thousand Algerians died in France, victims of the civil war between the National Liberation Front (NFL) and the National Algerian Movement, (MNA), of French police brutality during demonstrations and violent arrests, and of judiciary repression. The issue of the ‘war dead’ became important during the hostilities and especially after independence, when their bodies were finally repatriated to Algeria. Drawing on new archival sources and interviews with former independence fighters, this article examines the posthumous trajectory of Algerian militants killed in France. It describes their eventful political and memorial afterlives from the anonymity of the French cemeteries where they were first buried, to their prominent incorporation into the Algerian national pantheon and subsequent significance in the construction of a transnational memorial space that includes museum projects, books and commemorations in both Algeria and France.