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Algeria may resort to arbitration to restore colonial archive from France

October 28, 2020 at 11:59 am

The Algerian president’s advisor, Abdelmajid Al-Sheikhi, said on Tuesday that his country is considering resorting to international arbitration against France to restore the archives of the colonial period.

Al-Sheikhi, who was appointed Algeria’s representative in negotiations with France, said in an interview that his country’s efforts to restore its historical archive are facing resistance from France.

“Nothing prevents us from resorting to international arbitration or submitting the case to international judicial bodies in the future, because Algeria has not done it before.”

The Algerian authorities said that during the colonial period (1830-1962), the French forces smuggled hundreds of thousands of maps and historical documents, including materials that date back to the Ottoman era (1518-1830), while the French authorities confirmed that the documents of the colonial period in Algeria are part of the country’s sovereignty heritage.

READ: France’s love affair with decapitation

For four years, Algeria and France have been negotiating over four pending historical files. The first concerns the Algerian archive, which the French authorities refuse to hand over, and the second file corresponds to the retrieval of the skulls of the leaders of the Algerian War of Independence.

The third issue is agreeing financial compensation for the victims of the nuclear tests that France conducted in the Algerian Sahara between 1960 and 1966, and the fourth file deals with the 2,200 Algerians who went missing during the war of liberation (1954-1962), according to Algerian authorities.

Calls for boycott of French products - Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

Calls for boycott of French products – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]