Overview
- The National Assembly approved the law on December 24 with 340 of 407 members voting in favor as lawmakers chanted patriotic slogans and wore scarves in national colors.
- The text assigns France legal responsibility for harms under colonial rule and catalogs alleged crimes including nuclear tests, extrajudicial killings, torture and systematic resource plunder.
- Algeria formally demands a state apology and "full and fair" compensation, and it seeks restitution of property and archives, detailed nuclear test maps and the repatriation of resistance fighters’ remains.
- The law criminalizes glorification of colonialism with prison penalties, declares no statute of limitations for colonial-era crimes and frames compensation as an inalienable right of the Algerian people.
- Analysts say the law carries no international legal force, yet it intensifies a year-long rift tied to France’s stance on Western Sahara and follows a continental push for reparations reflected in the Algiers Declaration.