The numbers of Muslim suspects passing through the hands of the paras as a result of the D.P.U. and the other forms of intelligence collection ran into enormous figures, with Edward Behr reckoning that between thirty and forty per cent of the entire male population of the Casbah were arrested at some point or other during the course of the Battle of Algiers.

QUESTION: The scale of arrests raises questions about how French intelligence distinguished civilians from insurgents, and what proportion of arrests were actually militarily justified.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 589