Jacques Pâris de Bollardière

However, it was his opposition to torture during the Algerian War that made him famous. It was upon his return to France that he spoke publicly about torture on the occasion of the release of Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber's book Lieutenant in Algeria. His public position in the newspaper L'Express earned him a sixty-day fortress sentence on April 15, 1957, in La Courneuve. After his military career, he became an ardent defender of non-violence and campaigned for human rights.

Confronted with the Nazi atrocities committed in the Manises maquis where he was responsible for the Citronelle mission, it was there that he would have acquired the conviction that torture is the property of totalitarian regimes. Jacques de Bollardière is the only senior officer then in office to have openly condemned the use of torture during the Algerian War: he denounced to his superiors "certain methods" practiced by a part of the French army in the search for intelligence during the Algerian War.

He wrote a few years later: "I think with infinite respect of those of my brothers, Arabs or French, who died like Christ, at the hands of their fellow men, flogged, tortured, disfigured by the contempt of men". He supports Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber in his denunciation of torture.

Jacques Pâris de Bollardière is also known for his commitment to various social and humanitarian causes. He was involved in pacifist movements and took part in civil disobedience actions to protest against nuclear weapons.