Contradictory accounts shroud the true cause of Ben M’hidi’s death

Evidence

What seems to be fact is that Bigeard himself interrogated M’hidi after his capture; was told that the F.L.N. was bound to win eventually, but no other useful details; was impressed by the dignity and courage of the F.L.N. leader; treated him with the respect due to a captured enemy commander, and left him alive and unharmed. According to a F.L.N. spy in Algiers police headquarters, who reported to the C.C.E. on 4 March, Bigeard then “was unable to prevent Ben M’hidi being handed over to men of a ‘special section’ of the paratroops. These interrogated him on their own initiative, and killed him last night.” Admitting that M’hidi had had to be transferred to another prison, at Maison Carrée, for administrative reasons, Massu claims that he hanged himself with an electric flex that night but was “still breathing” when taken to the Maillot hospital — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 579

Categorization

• XREF: The unresolved death mirrors the reader’s theme of how the revolution created martyrs that countered French rule.