It was hardly news that the French had relied on atrocities to grind down urban guerrillas; as early as 1955, a French magazine referred to “Our Gestapo in Algeria.” But as part of their 1962 peace negotiations, both France and the leaders of newly independent Algeria agreed to play down the ugliness.

In 1968, France granted a blanket amnesty to those who served in Algeria, no matter what crimes they may have committed there. And it was only in 1999 that France officially recognized the combat with Algeria as a war; until then it had been called an operation to maintain order.

By then, for many French, the war was a distant memory or a chapter in a history book. But in 2000 the past returned. In July, an Algerian woman, Louisette Ighilahriz, wrote in Le Monde of being tortured, raped and kept in filth for three months by her French captors. In December, Le Monde published General Aussaresses’s interview. Then came his book and an admission by General Massu that he, too, had employed torture regularly.

General Aussaresses’s assertions and the sheer brazenness with which he made them set off a furor. The president at the time, Jacques Chirac, said he was “horrified.”

“The full truth must come out about these unjustifiable acts,” he said. “Nothing can justify them.”

The president stripped General Aussaresses of his rank and his Legion of Honor medal and forbade him to wear his military uniform. Though the amnesty protected him from being tried for his acts, he was nonetheless convicted of “trying to justify war” and fined $6,500. The European Court overturned the conviction, partly on free-speech grounds.

Paul Aussaresses Jr. was born in St.-Paul-Cap-de-Joux, France, on Nov. 7, 1918, only days before World War I ended. At the time, his father was serving in the French Army. Paul Jr. began his military service as a recruit in North Africa, then volunteered to parachute into France behind German lines, where he organized local resistance.

Information about his survivors was not immediately available.

In an article in Soldier of Fortune magazine in 2001, General Aussaresses recounted the first time he tortured a prisoner, in 1955. The prisoner had killed a man with an ax, he said, and the victim, before dying, identified his assailant. General Aussaresses tortured the prisoner to death.

“I thought of nothing,” he recalled. “I had no remorse for his death. If I regretted anything, it was that he refused to talk before he died. He had used violence against a person who was not his enemy. He got what he deserved.”