This honest man, this good man, this man who never did wrong to anyone, who devoted his life to the public good, and who was one of the greatest writers in Algeria, has been murdered. . . . Not by accident, not by mistake, but called by his name and killed with preference. So wrote Germaine Tillion in Le Monde shortly after Mouloud Feraoun s assassination by a right wing French terrorist group, the Organisation Armee Secrete, just three days before the official cease-fire ended Algeria s eight-year battle for independence from France.

However, not even the gunmen of the OAS could...