PARIS (AP) — President Emmanuel Macron has met with four grandchildren of an Algerian independence fighter to tell them that Ali Boumendjel had been tortured and killed by French soldiers in 1957. It was a further step in Macron’s efforts to reconcile France with its colonial past while offering an outstretched hand to Algeria, which France occupied for 132 years. In a statement late Tuesday, the presidential office said Macron wants to give families of the disappeared “the means to learn the truth.” Macron, the first French president born after the seven-year war between France and Algeria in 1962, has promised to reckon with France’s colonial-era wrongs.
