French President Emmanuel Macron has admitted the nation's military carried out torture as he accepted France's responsibility for the death of a dissident mathematician in Algeria in 1957.
Macron visited the 87-year-old widow of Maurice Audin, a French anti-colonial activist who disappeared after his arrest in Algeria.
He asked for her pardon, announced the opening of French archives on the war and expressed hope a new era would dawn for often bitter French-Algerian relations.
Audin, a French communist mathematician, was arrested in 1957 by the French military during the battle of Algiers.
His body has never been recovered but historians widely believe he was tortured, which Macron acknowledged - a major break with France's official version of the war.
"The only thing I am doing is to acknowledge the truth," Macron told Josette Audin on Thursday.
A declaration Macron gave to Audin during his visit spelled out the method used by French soldiers to legally eliminate people like her husband, 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".
Historians have studied the disappearance of Audin and widely concluded he was tortured after his arrest at his home on the evening of June 11, 1957.
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