PARIS (AFP) -- France acknowledged on Thursday that it instigated a "system" that facilitated torture during Algeria's independence war, a landmark admission about a conflict that remains hugely sensitive six decades on.
Emmanuel Macron - the first president born after the conflict - went further than any of his predecessors in recognizing the scale of abuses by French troops during the 1954-62 war.
He made the announcement as part of an admission that the French state was responsible for the torture and death of mathematician Maurice Audin, a French Communist pro-independence activist who disappeared in Algiers in 1957.
Visiting Audin's widow, Macron also announced that France would open up its archives on the thousands of civilians and soldiers who went missing during the war, both French and Algerian.
In a statement, the presidency said the special powers given to the army in Algeria "laid the ground for some terrible acts, including torture".
During the bloody war, which claimed some 1.5 million Algerian lives and ended 130 years of colonial rule, French forces cracked down on independence fighters and sympathizers, with a French general later admitting to the use of torture.
Independence fighters also mistreated prisoners during a complex conflict characterized by guerrilla warfare, which left deep scars in the national psyche.
France censored wartime newspapers, books and films that claimed it was using torture, and atrocities by its troops have remained a largely taboo subject.
But on Thursday, the government declared, "There can be no liberty, equality and fraternity without the search for truth."
Previous presidents of the left and right had taken cautious steps to acknowledge French wrongdoing in Algeria, without openly apologizing.
In 1998, Jacques Chirac acknowledged the massacre of civilians in the town of Setif in 1945, and in 2012 Francois Hollande recognized the "suffering" caused by the colonization.
But by acknowledging that France instituted a system that facilitated torture, and deciding to open the archives, Macron broke new ground, historian Patrick Garcia told AFP.
"Beyond the symbolic case of Maurice Audin there is a much bigger and important gesture," he told AFP, calling it a "milestone".
But he stressed that what Macron had announced was "a policy of recognition, not of repentance".
"It's not about beating ourselves up about it, it's about recognizing what took place."
Macron had sparked controversy on the campaign trail last year by declaring that France's colonization of Algeria was a "crime against humanity".
He later walked back the comments, calling for "neither denial nor repentance" over France's colonial history and adding: "We cannot remain trapped in the past".