Pierre Lagaillarde
Pierre Lagaillarde (French pronunciation: [pjɛʁ laɡajaʁd]; Courbevoie, 15 May 1931 – 17 August 2014) was a French far-right politician, and a founder of the Organisation armée secrète (OAS),[1] a clandestine terrorist organisation that sought to prevent Algeria's independence from French colonial rule.
Lagaillarde was a lawyer at Blida in Algeria, a reserve officer of the paratroopers, and an elected deputy of Algiers. He was president of the Association générale des étudiants d'Alger (General Association of Alger's Students) in 1957, and took part in the Alger insurrection of May 1958, which brought Charles de Gaulle back to power.
Lagaillarde was a member of the Comité de salut public which opposed Algerian independence, and occupied the Gouvernement général de l'Algérie (local colonial administration).
In January 1960, he became a leader of the insurrection during the week of the barricades. Lagaillarde was then detained in La Santé Prision in Paris, and while imprisoned, he was visited by Jean-Marie Le Pen. He took advantage of his parole to escape to Spain (along with Jean-Jacques Susini, Jean-Maurice Demarquet, Marcel Ronda and Fernand Féral Lefevre), where he was joined by Raoul Salan and co-founded the Organisation armée secrète on 3 December 1960. Deprived of his immunity as a deputy, he was sentenced in absentia to ten years of prison in March 1961.
In October 1961, he was arrested in Madrid, along with the Italian neofascist Guido Giannettini.[2] The Spanish dictator, Francisco Franco, later exiled Lagaillarde to the Canary Islands.[1]
Lagaillarde was pardoned by France through the 1968 amnesty law.[1]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c "L'ancien chef de l'OAS Pierre Lagaillarde est mort" (in French). liberation.fr. 17 August 2014. Archived from the original on 25 August 2014. Retrieved 25 September 2014.
- ^ René Monzat, Enquêtes sur la droite extrême, Le Monde-éditions, 1992, p.91. Monzat quotes François Duprat, L'Ascension du MSI, Edition les Sept Couleurs, Paris, 1972.
External links
[edit]- (in French) A picture of Pierre Lagaillarde
- (in French) Another picture (ref ALG-58-226-R44 on the monument first level left in battle dress) (ECPAD)
- (in French) Decision of the national assembly
- 1931 births
- 2014 deaths
- People from Courbevoie
- French people of colonial Algeria
- Deputies of the 1st National Assembly of the French Fifth Republic
- Members of Parliament for French Algeria
- French far-right politicians
- People of the Algerian War
- French military personnel of the Algerian War
- OAS members convicted in absentia
- OAS members who fled to Spain
- Prisoners and detainees of Spain
- Recipients of French presidential pardons