France will open secret archives on the 1961 massacre of more than 200 Algerians in Paris after the accused Nazi collaborator, Mr Maurice Papon, denied his police were involved.
The Culture Minister, Ms Catherine Trautmann, said yesterday she did not know what was in the archives, which were supposed to remain shut for 60 years, but the "exceptional character" of the issue prompted the Socialist-led government to open them to researchers now.
The massacre, which by coincidence occurred 36 years ago yesterday, has come back into public discussion after Mr Papon, who was Paris police chief at the time, denied any responsibility during his trial in Bordeaux.
Mr Papon (87) is charged with crimes against humanity for helping organise the deportation of Jews to concentration camps when he was a senior official in the wartime Vichy regime which collaborated with Nazi Germany.
"I decided to open the archives in accordance with the government's intention to shed light on the tragic repression of October 17th, 1961," Ms Trautmann said.
She announced she would also draft a law to shorten some of the periods for which official papers remain secret, saying these were "too long compared to other European countries."
Mr Papon surprised the court on Wednesday by blaming Algerian nationalists rather than police for the massacre, in which according to the official count only three people died.
"I have given the key to this false mystery. No [death] is attributable to the police," he said, contradicting most historians' accounts of police brutality after a street protest by the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN). Many of the bodies were later fished out of the Seine.
A police participant in the massacre contradicted Mr Papon's testimony on Thursday, saying the police chief had let officers know they would be protected against charges of any excesses.
Mr Raoul Letard, who as a young policeman took part in the killings, said: "We went to the upper floors of buildings and we fired on anything that moved. It was horrible, horrible.
"The manhunt went on for two hours. It was terrible, terrible, terrible." About 30 Paris policemen had been killed by the FLN in the three months before the protest, and Mr Papon had publicly said police would respond with 10 blows to every Algerian attack.
"This was the straw that broke the camel's back," Mr Letard said. "It put on formidable pressure because we knew that Papon would cover all police abuse."
On the night of October 17th, Mr Letard said, he and colleagues heard on the police radio that some colleagues had been surrounded by "little rats", as they referred to Algerians.
When they rushed to the site, they found hundreds of Algerians protesting against a curfew imposed on their community in Paris.
"There was no reason to hold back," Mr Letard said. There were so many bodies on the streets afterwards that police officers and their commanders argued over whether to leave them on the spot or try to get rid of them.
Historians say many bodies were later recovered from the Seine.
"Hate is horrible. It can make you kill someone," Mr Letard said he told his wife after the slaughter. The official death toll that night was three, with 64 wounded.
Mr Papon was Paris police chief between 1958 and 1967. He later rose to become a cabinet minister before the discovery of wartime documents detailing his role in the arrest and deportation of Bordeaux Jews to Nazi death camps.