Jean-Jacques Susini, Right-Wing Extremist in Algeria, Dies at 83
By RICHARD SANDOMIR
New York Times
JULY 14, 2017
Jean-Jacques Susini in 1972 in Marseille, France. Credit Jean-Claude Deutsch/Paris Match, via Getty Images
Jean-Jacques Susini, a fiery leader of a right-wing terrorist group that opposed Algerian independence from France who was twice condemned to death in absentia for plots to assassinate President Charles de Gaulle of France, died on July 3. He was 83.
His death was widely reported by the French news media, but neither the cause nor the location was specified.
Mr. Susini was a so-called pied noir, an Algerian with European roots, who came of political age when the National Liberation Front, known as the FLN, began its insurgent revolt against French colonial rule in 1954. Even as the FLN battled France for nearly eight years in a savage war for independence, Mr. Susini could not fathom Algeria as a sovereign state.
“The hour to overturn the regime has struck,” Mr. Susini said during a weeklong demonstration in Algiers in 1960 against the de Gaulle government — which rightists felt had betrayed French Algerians — at which protesters set up barricades and seized government buildings. “The revolution will start in Algiers and go to Paris.”
He was arrested and tried for helping to organize the so-called Week of the Barricades, which turned to bloody rioting. He fled to southern France during a court recess and later to Spain, where he joined the Secret Army Organization, an underground band of right-ring military and civilian extremists that used terrorism tactics to fight against Algerian independence.
Raoul Salan, the group’s commander, was a highly decorated French general who had turned against de Gaulle and participated in a failed military coup in Algeria in April 1961. Paul Henissart wrote in his book “Wolves in the City: The Death of French Algeria” (1970) that Mr. Susini regarded Mr. Salan as a “tactician rather than a strategist,” who was better at exploiting circumstances than creating them.
“This seemed a welcome state of affairs to Susini, whose limitless ambition was to create, himself, an entirely new set of circumstances, as part of what he believed was a revolution,” Mr. Henissart wrote.
When Mr. Salan was captured in Algiers nearly a year later, The New York Times reported that Mr. Susini was believed to control of “a number of terrorist groups operating against Moslems in the streets of the city. He is believed to be the exponent of the most ruthless wing of the organization.”
Mr. Susini was a compelling speaker and propagandist for the Secret Army, as well as a staunch advocate of bombings and murders to preserve French control of Algeria.
“We sought to mobilize the population and the army for a new coup,” he said, according to an English translation of an interview he gave in 2008 to the French journalist François Malye. “To convince them that this time we can succeed, we must appear in the eyes of all as an army of fighters, a revolutionary party capable — there are precedents — to change the course of history.”
Skinny and fair-haired, Mr. Susini was described by a United Press International correspondent as having “little time for things physical,” adding, “He has managed to maintain a sickly pallor in a country where everyone has a tan.”
Independence finally came to Algeria in 1962, but Mr. Susini was nonetheless involved in plotting to kill de Gaulle later that year and again in 1964. Details of the first attempt — in which de Gaulle’s Citroën was raked by machine gun fire outside Paris but he was unharmed — were used by the novelist Frederick Forsyth to open his 1971 thriller, “The Day of the Jackal.” The film adapted from the novel two years later opened the same way, with de Gaulle and his motorcade attacked by gunmen.
Asked by Mr. Malye why he tried to assassinate de Gaulle even after the war in Algeria had ended, Mr. Susini said it was to hold him responsible for the massacre of people “slaughtered like rabbits” and for the exodus of one million European Algerians. Mr. Susini had separately said that the Secret Army first began plotting de Gaulle’s murder in late 1961.
De Gaulle pardoned him in 1968, sparing him the death sentence.
Asked if he had regrets, Mr. Susini cited an attack in 1962 on the townhouse in Paris where the novelist André Malraux lived. Mr. Malraux, who was France’s minister of cultural affairs at the time, was not at home, but the bomb blast maimed a 4-year-old girl who also lived in the building. The Secret Army was believed to have detonated other bombs in Paris that day, injuring several other people. “The rise of anxiety,” Mr. Susini told Mr. Malye, “nourished the most radical decisions.”
Jean-Jacques Susini was born in Algiers on July 30, 1933, to Corsican parents. According to various accounts, his father was a Communist railway worker. Mr. Susini was very close to his maternal grandmother — whose political leanings rested with the Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini. Mr. Susini studied medicine at schools in Lyon and Strasbourg, France, but returned to Algeria to attend the University of Algiers, where he became a student activist.
Well after Algeria became independent, Mr. Susini took up permanent residence in France. He served prison sentences in the 1970s for robbery and kidnapping. He ran unsuccessfully for office in Marseille on the right-wing National Front ticket in 1997. Among those who praised him after his death was Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the National Front.
“An affectionate thought for the death of our comrade,” Mr. Le Pen said in a Twitter post.
Mr. Susini’s second wife, Micheline Susini, also a pied noir, wrote a novel, “Of Sun and Tears” (1982), about her participation in the Algerian war. Complete information on survivors was not available.
New York Times
JULY 14, 2017
Jean-Jacques Susini in 1972 in Marseille, France. Credit Jean-Claude Deutsch/Paris Match, via Getty Images
Jean-Jacques Susini, a fiery leader of a right-wing terrorist group that opposed Algerian independence from France who was twice condemned to death in absentia for plots to assassinate President Charles de Gaulle of France, died on July 3. He was 83.
His death was widely reported by the French news media, but neither the cause nor the location was specified.
Mr. Susini was a so-called pied noir, an Algerian with European roots, who came of political age when the National Liberation Front, known as the FLN, began its insurgent revolt against French colonial rule in 1954. Even as the FLN battled France for nearly eight years in a savage war for independence, Mr. Susini could not fathom Algeria as a sovereign state.
“The hour to overturn the regime has struck,” Mr. Susini said during a weeklong demonstration in Algiers in 1960 against the de Gaulle government — which rightists felt had betrayed French Algerians — at which protesters set up barricades and seized government buildings. “The revolution will start in Algiers and go to Paris.”
He was arrested and tried for helping to organize the so-called Week of the Barricades, which turned to bloody rioting. He fled to southern France during a court recess and later to Spain, where he joined the Secret Army Organization, an underground band of right-ring military and civilian extremists that used terrorism tactics to fight against Algerian independence.
Raoul Salan, the group’s commander, was a highly decorated French general who had turned against de Gaulle and participated in a failed military coup in Algeria in April 1961. Paul Henissart wrote in his book “Wolves in the City: The Death of French Algeria” (1970) that Mr. Susini regarded Mr. Salan as a “tactician rather than a strategist,” who was better at exploiting circumstances than creating them.
“This seemed a welcome state of affairs to Susini, whose limitless ambition was to create, himself, an entirely new set of circumstances, as part of what he believed was a revolution,” Mr. Henissart wrote.
When Mr. Salan was captured in Algiers nearly a year later, The New York Times reported that Mr. Susini was believed to control of “a number of terrorist groups operating against Moslems in the streets of the city. He is believed to be the exponent of the most ruthless wing of the organization.”
Mr. Susini was a compelling speaker and propagandist for the Secret Army, as well as a staunch advocate of bombings and murders to preserve French control of Algeria.
“We sought to mobilize the population and the army for a new coup,” he said, according to an English translation of an interview he gave in 2008 to the French journalist François Malye. “To convince them that this time we can succeed, we must appear in the eyes of all as an army of fighters, a revolutionary party capable — there are precedents — to change the course of history.”
Skinny and fair-haired, Mr. Susini was described by a United Press International correspondent as having “little time for things physical,” adding, “He has managed to maintain a sickly pallor in a country where everyone has a tan.”
Independence finally came to Algeria in 1962, but Mr. Susini was nonetheless involved in plotting to kill de Gaulle later that year and again in 1964. Details of the first attempt — in which de Gaulle’s Citroën was raked by machine gun fire outside Paris but he was unharmed — were used by the novelist Frederick Forsyth to open his 1971 thriller, “The Day of the Jackal.” The film adapted from the novel two years later opened the same way, with de Gaulle and his motorcade attacked by gunmen.
Asked by Mr. Malye why he tried to assassinate de Gaulle even after the war in Algeria had ended, Mr. Susini said it was to hold him responsible for the massacre of people “slaughtered like rabbits” and for the exodus of one million European Algerians. Mr. Susini had separately said that the Secret Army first began plotting de Gaulle’s murder in late 1961.
De Gaulle pardoned him in 1968, sparing him the death sentence.
Asked if he had regrets, Mr. Susini cited an attack in 1962 on the townhouse in Paris where the novelist André Malraux lived. Mr. Malraux, who was France’s minister of cultural affairs at the time, was not at home, but the bomb blast maimed a 4-year-old girl who also lived in the building. The Secret Army was believed to have detonated other bombs in Paris that day, injuring several other people. “The rise of anxiety,” Mr. Susini told Mr. Malye, “nourished the most radical decisions.”
Jean-Jacques Susini was born in Algiers on July 30, 1933, to Corsican parents. According to various accounts, his father was a Communist railway worker. Mr. Susini was very close to his maternal grandmother — whose political leanings rested with the Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini. Mr. Susini studied medicine at schools in Lyon and Strasbourg, France, but returned to Algeria to attend the University of Algiers, where he became a student activist.
Well after Algeria became independent, Mr. Susini took up permanent residence in France. He served prison sentences in the 1970s for robbery and kidnapping. He ran unsuccessfully for office in Marseille on the right-wing National Front ticket in 1997. Among those who praised him after his death was Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the National Front.
“An affectionate thought for the death of our comrade,” Mr. Le Pen said in a Twitter post.
Mr. Susini’s second wife, Micheline Susini, also a pied noir, wrote a novel, “Of Sun and Tears” (1982), about her participation in the Algerian war. Complete information on survivors was not available.
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