Under interrogation Castille admitted to setting up the “bazookas” and firing them; while Kovacs revealed that the object behind the plot was to replace the mistrusted bradeur de l’Indochine, Salan, by his former junior there, General Cogny. Following upon this, it was hoped, a “government of national unity” would then be brought to power in Paris. In his deposition Kovacs implicated the involvement behind the conspiracy of a Comité des Six of French politicians — among whom the name of Senator Michel Debré, close associate of General de Gaulle, Minister of Justice in 1958 and later prime minister, figures. After inexplicable delays the “bazooka” trial started in July 1958. Kovacs attended on a stretcher, then “disappeared” to Spain in what the Guardian at the time described as “preposterous circumstances”. He was sentenced to death in absentia; Castille to ten years’ hard labour, Fechoz to six years. Both were liberated by pieds noirs demonstrators during “Barricades Week” of January. Nobody more important was ever brought to trial; though to this day Salan, both in his Mémoires: Fin d’un Empire and privately, still insists on the involvement behind the scenes of Michel Debré and others, but no real evidence has ever been adduced.

QUESTION: Whether Debré was truly involved behind the scenes remains unproven despite Salan's claims.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 543