He'd be happy to tell you how he joined Gen de Gaulle in London, where British officers trained him in special operations. He'd boast about parachuting behind German lines, his later service at NATO headquarters and his civilian career as an arms salesman for the French firm Thomson. Gen Aussaresses is an apologist for torture in a country that claims to be the land of human rights. He made some shocking revelations about the Franco-Algerian war in an interview with Le Monde last autumn. But now he has gone much further.
Most people crack up and talk.
Then, most of the time, we finished them off. President Chirac said he was horrified. French Communists and Greens demanded a parliamentary inquiry. Three human rights and anti-racism groups filed lawsuits against Gen Aussaresses for apology for crimes against humanity and crimes against humanity. So did Josette Audin, the widow of the Communist mathematician, Maurice Audin, who was arrested by French paratroopers in Algiers in 1957 and never seen again.