The occasion was a march calling for independence for Algeria. Paris police chief Maurice Papon wanted it suppressed. Police charged and beat up and fired on the demonstrators. About 10,000 were arrested, crammed into vans and taken to makeshift detention centres. Hundreds of statements afterwards described extreme violence and a number of deaths in the centres, but no inquiry was ever launched. (Papon was to be convicted in 1998 of crimes against humanity for his participation as police chief in Bordeaux in the deportation during German occupation of more than 1,600 Jews to the concentration camps.)
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