The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has formally recognised that the French state was responsible for the death of a dissident mathematician in Algeria in 1957, admitting for the first time the French military’s “system” of torture during Algeria’s independence war.

Macron paid a visit on Thursday to the widow of Maurice Audin, a French communist mathematician and anti-colonial activist. Audin was arrested in 1957 by the French military during the battle of Algiers. His body has never been recovered. Macron told the widow: “The only thing I am doing is to acknowledge the truth.” Audin has become the symbol of France’s abuses during the war in its former colony in the 1950s and 1960s. Macron’s predecessor, François Hollande, had acknowledged Audin didn’t escape – contrary to the official version – but died in jail.(theguardian)…[+]