What were the 'crevettes Bigeard' in the 1957 Battle of Algiers?

The term crevettes Bigeard — Bigeard's shrimps — was the name given by French soldiers to Algerian prisoners who were thrown alive from helicopters into the Mediterranean Sea during the 1957 Battle of Algiers. After executioners discovered that some corpses were resurfacing in the harbour, they began casting their victims' feet in quick-setting concrete before each flight. The name derived from Lieutenant Colonel Marcel Bigeard, the commander most closely associated with the practice.

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A City Handed Over to Paratroopers

In January 1957, the French civilian government took a decision with consequences that would haunt France for decades. Governor-General Robert Lacoste handed full civil and military police powers over the city of Algiers to General Jacques Massu, commander of the 10th Parachute Division. The division, 5,000 men strong, had just returned from the Suez campaign. Its officer corps was thick with veterans of the First Indochina War. Among them was Lieutenant Colonel Marcel Bigeard, who commanded the 3rd Colonial Parachute Regiment and had previously fought — and been captured — at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.

The mandate given to Massu was straightforward in intent if not in law: eliminate the FLN from Algiers by whatever means necessary. The civilian authorities stepped back. Massu's paratroopers moved in. What followed was a systematic campaign of raids, mass arrest, interrogation under torture, and a programme of extrajudicial killing that France would not formally acknowledge for more than sixty years.

For anyone who wants to understand the full scope of what the Algerian War meant — for France, for Algeria, and for the history of counter-insurgency — Alistair Horne's definitive account of the conflict remains the standard work. Originally published in 1977, it has lost none of its force.

The Mechanics of the Death Flights

The practice that came to be known as crevettes Bigeard was not improvised on the margins of the campaign. It was a method of disposal, used after interrogation, to eliminate prisoners without trace. Detainees were thrown from helicopters into the Mediterranean, their bodies intended to sink and never be recovered. When it became clear that corpses sometimes resurfaced in the port of Algiers, the procedure was modified: victims' feet were set in basins of rapid-setting concrete before they were put onto the helicopter.

Paul Teitgen, the secretary-general of the Algiers police prefecture, later described the method precisely. He was not a distant observer. As the senior civil official responsible for police oversight in Algiers, Teitgen was theoretically the civilian check on military excess. In practice, he watched the system operate around him and was nearly powerless to stop it.

Paul Teitgen: The Man Who Counted the Names

Paul Teitgen was not an ordinary bureaucrat. Born in 1919, he had joined the French Resistance, been arrested by the Gestapo, and survived deportation to Dachau. He knew what state-sanctioned torture looked like. He had felt it himself.

Appointed to the Algiers police prefecture in August 1956, Teitgen found himself occupying a strange position once Massu took control of the city. He was formally responsible for signing the military's detention orders — the assignations à résidence — which gave legal cover to the arrest of suspects. This made him the best-informed civilian in Algiers about what was happening to those taken in. He says he signed 24,000 such orders. Of those detainees, he counted 3,024 whose fate he could not account for — men and women who had been arrested and never appeared again.

On 24 March 1957, Teitgen wrote to Resident Minister Lacoste asking to be relieved of his duties. He said he had recognised on the bodies of detainees the same marks of torture he had carried from his time under the Gestapo. His resignation was refused. He was kept in post until 12 September 1957, when he was finally allowed to leave. In later testimony preserved by France's Institut National de l'Audiovisuel, he named the practice and the man associated with it directly.

If you are visiting Algiers today, the Casbah where much of this history played out can still be walked. This highly-rated guided tour of the Casbah takes you through the narrow streets where the Battle of Algiers was fought, with local guides who know the quarter's layered past.

Bigeard and the Question of Responsibility

Marcel Bigeard was one of the most decorated soldiers in French military history. His record from Indochina was extraordinary. At Dien Bien Phu he fought until capture. In Algeria he was regarded within the army as a figure of almost mythic competence. He was also, by the testimony of every serious historian of the period, deeply implicated in what the 10th Division did in Algiers.

Bigeard never admitted it. When allegations surfaced publicly in 2000 following testimony by a survivor named Louisette Ighilahriz, he called them a tissue of lies. He denied to the end that troops under his command had engaged in the practices described. His commanding general, Massu — who was 94 years old by the time he spoke — took the opposite view. In an interview with Le Monde, Massu said that torture had not been necessary and that he regretted it. The two men's final positions on what happened in Algiers were diametrically opposed.

The 2001 Confession That Broke the Silence

For more than forty years, the French military maintained a collective silence about the methods used in Algeria. That silence ended, partly and uncomfortably, in 2001, when General Paul Aussaresses — the 10th Division's chief intelligence officer — published his memoir The Battle of the Casbah. In it, he confirmed that torture had been systematic and had been conducted under direct orders from the government of Prime Minister Guy Mollet. He also confessed to having personally executed 24 Algerians without trial.

The book was received in France with fury. President Jacques Chirac ordered that Aussaresses be stripped of his army rank and expelled from the military reserve. His Légion d'Honneur was subsequently revoked. A French court convicted him of complicity in justifying war crimes. Aussaresses remained unapologetic. He argued that what he had done had been necessary, lawful under the circumstances, and sanctioned from the top.

What made his confession so damaging was not simply what it described — much had been alleged for decades — but who was saying it and how. Aussaresses offered no remorse. He presented the systematic torture and killing of Algerian prisoners as a rational, state-authorised policy. The effect was to collapse any remaining claim that the practices had been the work of rogue units or individual bad actors.

France's Long Delay in Acknowledging What Happened

On 13 September 2018, President Emmanuel Macron visited the widow of Maurice Audin — a 25-year-old mathematician tortured and disappeared by French forces in 1957 — and issued a formal statement. It was the first time a French head of state had acknowledged that the military's use of torture in Algeria had been systematic and state-authorised. Macron's statement cited the legal framework that had enabled it: the arrest-detention system created under special powers granted by the National Assembly to the armed forces.

It had taken sixty-one years.

France has never issued a formal apology. The archives were opened for researchers following Macron's 2018 statement, though historians have noted that many records relating to the prefectural police in Algiers were destroyed after May 1958, likely by military personnel who considered Teitgen a traitor for having documented what he had seen.

Why Was the Practice Named After Bigeard?

Bigeard did not personally pilot helicopters or push prisoners from doors. The name attached to him because, within the argot of the 10th Division, he was the officer most associated with the harshest interrogation and disposal methods. His regiment was among the most active in the Battle of Algiers. Teitgen named him directly in testimony. Massu, in an interview recalled after his 2000 statement, had described observing Bigeard using electric shock torture on a prisoner and asking him what he was doing — to which Bigeard replied that they had done the same in Indochina.

The name crevettes — shrimps — was a soldiers' joke about the curled posture of a body sinking feet-first through water. That joke, and the practice it describes, is documented in Teitgen's testimony, in Aussaresses's confession, in the French Wikipedia entry on the subject, and in the academic record. Bigeard disputed it his entire life. The evidence does not support his position.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many people disappeared during the Battle of Algiers?

Paul Teitgen, the secretary-general of the Algiers police prefecture, documented 3,024 forced disappearances across the five regions of Algiers during his tenure. His figure was derived by subtracting from the 24,000 detention orders he had signed those cases where he could account for the detainee's subsequent fate. The number has been discussed by historians as a minimum estimate rather than a precise count.

Was General Massu ever punished for what happened in Algiers?

No. Massu was never prosecuted or formally sanctioned. In 2000, aged 94, he acknowledged publicly to Le Monde that torture had occurred under his command and said he regretted it. He died in 2002. French law at the time provided no mechanism to prosecute military officers for acts committed during the Algerian War, and successive governments chose not to pursue the question.

What happened to Paul Aussaresses after his 2001 confession?

Aussaresses was stripped of his army rank, expelled from the military reserve, and had his Légion d'Honneur revoked. A French court convicted him of complicity in justifying war crimes and fined him. He was never prosecuted for the killings themselves. He died in 2013, having never expressed remorse for any of his actions in Algeria.

Did Marcel Bigeard ever face justice for the death flights?

No. Bigeard denied the allegations throughout his life. He died in June 2010 at the age of 94. No criminal proceedings were ever brought against him. He remained a celebrated figure within parts of the French military establishment, having been promoted to general and awarded the Grand Cross of the Légion d'Honneur.

When did France officially acknowledge the use of torture in Algeria?

On 13 September 2018, President Emmanuel Macron formally acknowledged for the first time that the French military's use of torture in Algeria was systematic and enabled by a state-authorised legal framework. The acknowledgment was made in the context of the case of Maurice Audin, a mathematician disappeared in 1957. France has not issued a formal apology.

Who was Paul Teitgen and why did he resign?

Teitgen was the secretary-general of the Algiers police prefecture, appointed in August 1956. A Resistance member who had himself been tortured by the Gestapo and deported to Dachau, he recognised the marks of torture on prisoners he encountered at military detention camps. He submitted a first resignation in March 1957 after visiting the camps at Béni Messous and Paul Cazelle. It was refused. He left his post on 12 September 1957, having documented 3,024 disappearances and signed 24,000 detention orders.

Can you visit the Casbah of Algiers today?

Yes. The Casbah of Algiers — a UNESCO World Heritage Site — is the neighbourhood where the Battle of Algiers was largely fought. It remains inhabited and walkable, its Ottoman-era architecture still intact in places despite decades of neglect. Guided tours run by local experts cover both its history as a pre-colonial city and its role in the war of independence. For anyone reading deeply into the period, walking those streets gives the history a physical weight that no book fully provides.