The Emir has become an essential historical reference for independent Algeria, taught in schools alongside the war of liberation from 1954 to 1962.
However, at the time of independence and until the 1970s, no request for restitution had been made. It was only in the 1970s that claims were made for the archives, with the idea of finding in them the answers to some of the still unsolved crimes of the Algerian war.
For a long time, France resisted the very idea of removing the slightest item from its heritage. Everything was, according to French law, inalienable.
Right-wing parties in France oppose this sort of restitutions to Algeria.
