Emmanuel Macron calls Paris massacre of Algerians 'inexcusable'

French President offers most fulsome apology to date for the 1961 slaughter under the city's police chief Maurice Papon

Paris police prefect Didier Lallement pays his respects on the Saint Michel bridge in Paris during a ceremony to mark the 60th anniversary of a deadly operation by Paris police on a protest by Algerians. AFP

A wreath of flowers signed by Police Prefecture on the Saint Michel bridge in Paris during a ceremony to commemorate the brutal repression of the 1961 demonstration by Algerians. AFP

At least 120 Algerians were killed in 1961 during a protest to support Algerian independence, near the Pont Neuf bridge. AFP

The Pont Neuf bridge is illuminated in red to commemorate the brutal repression of a1961 demonstration by Algerians. AFP

Dominique Sopo, head of the SOS Racisme anti-racist NGO, speaks during a ceremony to commemorate the brutal repression of a1961 demonstration, near the Pont Neuf bridge. AFP

French President Emmanuel Macron lays a wreath near Pont de Bezons during a ceremony to mark the 60th anniversary of the Paris massacre. Reuters

French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday condemned as "inexcusable" a deadly operation by Paris police on a 1961 protest by Algerians, disappointing activists who hoped for an even stronger recognition of responsibility.

Mr Macron told relatives of victims on the 60th anniversary of the bloodshed, the scale of which was covered up for decades, that "crimes" were committed on the night of October 17, 1961 under the command of the notorious Paris police chief Maurice Papon.

He acknowledged that several dozen protesters had been killed, "their bodies thrown into the River Seine" and paid tribute to their memory.

The number of victims has never been made clear and some activists fear several hundred could have been killed.

Mr Macron "recognised the facts: that the crimes committed that night under Maurice Papon are inexcusable for the Republic", the Elysee said.

"This tragedy was long hushed-up, denied or concealed."

Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune said there was "strong concern for treating issues of history and memory without complacency or compromising principles, and with a sharp sense of responsibility", free from "the dominance of arrogant colonialist thought", his office said.

The deadly 1961 crackdown revealed the horror of "massacres and crimes against humanity that will remain engraved in the collective memory", he said.

Bachir Ben-Aissa Saadi took part in the rally and was 14 years old at the time.

"There were bodies on all sides, I was very afraid," he said.

The rally was called in the final year of France's increasingly violent attempt to retain Algeria as a north African colony, and in the middle of a bombing campaign aimed at mainland France by pro-independence militants.

Papon was in the 1980s revealed to have been a collaborator with the occupying Nazis in the Second World War and complicit in the deportation of Jews. He was convicted of crimes against humanity but later released.

Macron offers frankest apology to date

Mr Macron, the first French president to attend a memorial ceremony for those killed, observed a minute of silence in their memory at the Bezons bridge over the Seine on the outskirts of Paris where the protest started.

His comments that crimes were committed went further than predecessor Francois Hollande, who acknowledged in 2012 that the protesting Algerians had been "killed during a bloody repression".

The president, France's first leader born after the colonial era, has made a priority of historical reconciliation and forging a modern relationship with former colonies.

However, with an election not far down the track, he is wary about provoking a backlash from political opponents.

His far-right electoral opponents, nationalists Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour, are outspoken critics of efforts to acknowledge or show repentance for past crimes.

Historian Emmanuel Blanchard told AFP that Mr Macron's comments represented "progress" and had gone "much further" than those made by Hollande in 2012.

But he took issue with the decision to pin responsibility on Papon alone, saying that then prime minister Michel Debre and president Charles de Gaulle had not been held to account over the ensuing cover-up or the fact Papon would remain Paris police chief until 1967.

The statement "is progress but not complete. We hoped for more," Mimouna Hadjam of the Africa93 anti-racism association told AFP.

"Papon did not act alone. People were tortured, massacred in the heart of Paris and those high up knew," Hadjam added.

Domonique Sopo, the head of SOS Racism, said while the comments were welcome, Mr Macron was showing a tendency of taking "small steps" on such issues by reducing responsibility to Papon alone.

The 1961 protests were called in response to a strict curfew imposed on Algerians to prevent the underground FLN resistance movement from collecting funds following a spate of deadly attacks on French police officers.

A report commissioned by the president from historian Benjamin Stora earlier this year urged the convening of a truth commission over the Algerian war but Macron ruled out issuing any official apology.