Death Squadrons, the French school

Following last September’s presentation on ARTE, Idéale Audience is proud to release the DVD edition of Marie-Monique Robin’s documentary which is at the origin of the repeal of an amnesty granted years ago to Argentinian generals.

The DVD contains 73 minutes of extra interviews, completely exclusive and previously unreleased, as well as the full text of Bernard Stasi (France’s then Médiateur de la République)’s speech given when the film received the French Senate’s Political Documentary award last year.

DEATH SQUADRONS, THE FRENCH SCHOOL reveals methodically, through interviews of ex-military officers, how French army specialists, working as official envoys of their government, taught Latin-American dictatorships how to infiltrate, torture and eliminate political dissidents. Some of these specialists, experts in « antisubversive » warfare techniques learned during France’s colonial wars in Algeria and Indochina, even appear in the film and openly recount their experiences. This unique document is reinforced by the confession of former US military intelligence officers, who shed light on the assistance these French specialists provided to US Special Forces in the sixties., which led to several bloody operations in Vietnam and Latin America.

Acclaimed by the world press as a remarkable investigation, full of suspense and revelations, the film is complemented on the DVD by 73 minutes of interviews which were left out of the documentary at the post-production stage. The masterpiece in this bonus is a long confession by three Argentinian generals.