1960s Timeline

May 23, 1962 - European Secret Army Organization (OAS) terrorists killed a special security policeman and wounded four others today in a gun battle in the center of Algiers. The incident was one of 33 acts of terrorist violence that cost the lives of 23 persons and left 29 wounded. Nineteen of the dead and twenty-two of the wounded were Moslems. The high number of attacks was attributed to a decision by the Right-wing OAS to exact blood toll from Moslems after the discovery y

May 21, 1962 - A plot to assassinate President de Gaulle (pictured) of France was reported today to have been foiled by the police. Police sources said two men and a woman, sent from Algeria by the Right-Wing Secret Army Organization (OAS) to kill President de Gaulle, had been arrested. About 15 others belonging to an OAS underground network were also arrested. The OAS has been trying to block the Algerian peace accords and destroy the regime in France by terror and by inciti

Apr. 21, 1962 - Raoul Salan (pictured in 1958), captured in Algiers as the head of the Secret Army Organization (OAS), was indicted by civilian authorities in Paris today for crimes against the security of the state. The former general, once top commander of French forces in Indochina and later in Algeria, was reported to be a resigned figure in an isolated cell of the Santé Prison on the Left Bank. Detectives who interrogated Salan in his cell described him to their superior

Apr. 20, 1962 - Former General Raoul Salan (pictured), his wife and daughter, and an aide were arrested in Algiers today. Salan was flown to imprisonment in Paris for trial and a probable death sentence. Salan, the commander of the Secret Army Organization (OAS), which is seeking to block Algerian independence by force, was surprised by plainclothes men in a three-room apartment in the center of the city. Salan’s arrest is the biggest psychological blow suffered by the Europe

Apr. 13, 1962 - Edmond Jouhaud, second in command of the terrorist Secret Army Organization (OAS) in Algeria, was condemned to death today by a high military tribunal in Paris. The verdict against the former air force general was handed down by five civilian jurists, three lieutenant generals, and a vice admiral. There is no appeal from the tribunal’s sentence. Only President de Gaulle can commute it, and Jouhaud’s attorneys said today that the former general’s “honor” would

Apr. 8, 1962 - The French people approved the peace settlement with the Algerian nationalist rebels by a heavy majority today. More than 90% of those casting valid ballots voted “yes” in a popular referendum designed to give President de Gaulle the means to carry through the accords reached with the rebels’ Provisional Government March 18. In ratifying the President’s efforts to end France’s last colonial war, the nation showed massive disapproval of attempts by Right-Wing el