Overview
- Parliament approved the measure unanimously on December 24, with Speaker Ibrahim Boughali saying Algeria’s national memory is neither erasable nor negotiable, according to the APS agency.
- The law assigns France legal responsibility for its colonial past and catalogs nuclear tests, extrajudicial killings, physical and psychological torture, and systematic resource plundering as crimes.
- It declares full and fair compensation for material and moral damages an inalienable right of the Algerian state and people and formally demands a state apology.
- Scholars note the statute has no binding effect on France under international law yet represents a clear break in how the two countries confront colonial memory.
- The move comes during a diplomatic crisis linked to France’s support for Morocco’s Western Sahara autonomy plan and the April arrest of an Algerian diplomat in Paris, with French officials declining substantive comment.