France Ready For Feared Revolt

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29739, 5 February 1962, Page 13

France Ready For Feared Revolt

(N.Z. Press Asm. —Copyright)

PARIS, February 3.

France stood ready today to put down a feared revolt by the terrorist Secret Army Organisation which threatens to embroil the nation in fratricidal war, the Associated Press reported. Tanks were poised at posts outside Paris, where more than 25,000 riot forces are ready to repel any uprising. In Algeria, where bloody anarchy rolled on in Oran and Algiers—its two principal cities—troops and riot police anxiously awaited the outcome.

It is now an open secret that the French and rebel negotiators have reached bread agreement on the eventual independence of Algeria for which Moslem forces have fought for seven dreary years.

Reinforcements of 5000 troops and riot police were moved into Algiers this weekend to ensure order in the city during President de Gaulle’s televised address to the nation on Monday. They will join between 12.000 and 15.000 troops and police already in Algiers. Eighteen persons were killed and 14 wounded in extremist and insurgent attacks throughout Algeria today. Riots In Prison Riot police armed with tear gas rushed to the grim Sante Prison in Paris today to quell the second successive days of riots among gaoled European extremists. Detainees overpowered a warder and used bis keys to free other prisoners, who dismantled iron beds to use as weapons.

Authorities later said order had been restored after two hours of disturbances but gave no details.

Meanwhile, 32 tanks and 70 armoured cars ringed the city ready for action in case of rebel sabotage when President de Gaulle addresses the nation on Monday. The Paris police force has been reinforced to a total 28.000 men, many of whom took part in road checks on

more than 5000 cars in the streets last night. A plastic bomb exploded outside the Paris home of Senator Gaston Defere. a

sworn enemy of the extremist organisation 0.A.5., but caused no casualties.

Yesterday, a military tribunal sentenced in absentia Cohonel Yves Godard, a leader of the Algiers revolt last

year, to 20 years’ imprisonment for attempting to overthrow the regime. Colonel Godard already has been sentenced to death.

There have been reports that he has been operating as an organiser of the Secret

Army Organisation in metropolitan France since the revolt, the British United Press reported.