France has officially admitted that the mathematician Maurice Audin was killed in custody by torture during in colonial period in Algeria.

Macron visited on Thursday the 87-year-old widow of Maurice Audin, a French anti-colonial activist who disappeared from his Algiers home after his arrest. He asked for her pardon, announced the opening of French archives on the disappeared and expressed hope a new era would dawn for often-bitter French-Algerian relations.

A declaration Macron gave to Josette Audin, the 87-year-old widow of Maurice Audin, during his visit spelled out the method used by French soldiers to legally eliminate people like Audin, who clandestinely worked for the liberation of Algeria from the French.

Security forces were allowed to arrest, detain and interrogate all “suspects” through special powers accorded by parliament to the French Army that gave them carte-blanche to re-establish order.

“This system was the unfortunate ground for acts, sometimes terrible, including torture that the Audin affair has highlighted,” the declaration says, adding that it made torture a “weapon considered legitimate.”

France massacred 1.5 million Algerian

After seven years of bloody war, Algeria gained independence from France. The war, in which 1.5 million Algerians died, ended the 130-year colonial rule.

France censored newspapers, books, and films that warned that torture exposed during wartime.

ILKHA