Overview
- The National People’s Assembly adopted the measure unanimously on December 24, assigning legal responsibility to the French state for the colonial period.
- It demands official apologies, financial compensation, restitution of property and archives, and decontamination of former nuclear test sites in the Sahara where France conducted 17 tests.
- The text declares certain acts imprescriptible, including extrajudicial executions, widespread torture and the systematic plunder of resources.
- It criminalizes advocacy or denial of colonization as a crime and designates collaboration by harkis as high treason under Algerian law.
- The French Foreign Ministry declined substantive comment, while experts stress the law has no international force even as it deepens an ongoing bilateral crisis linked to Western Sahara.