PARIS, Nov. 6 (UPI) -- A minister who served under French President Charles de Gaulle reportedly is to be accused of "crimes against humanity" in the deaths of 100,000 Algerians.
The London Independent said the Algerians were massacred after taking France's side in the colonial war of the 1950s and '60s.
The newspaper said Pierre Messmer, 87, the last senior survivor of the governments of the period, is expected to be formally accused of complicity in a conscious decision by De Gaulle to "sacrifice" the so-called harkis, rather than allow them to settle in France. Messmer was the French Minister of the Army from 1960 until 1969.
The Independent also said it learned a legal action will be brought against him by surviving harkis and their families and also by French settlers, thousands of whom were also murdered after France surrendered control to Algerian rebels in 1962.
