Stanislas Hutin

<cite index="9-1,3-1">Stanislas Hutin died on Wednesday 2 September 2026 in Arradon, in the Morbihan department, in his ninety sixth year.</cite> No cause of death has been disclosed by his family or by the associations that announced his passing, and the page will be updated if that information becomes public.

His death was first reported by the association of former conscripts 4ACG, of which he was a longstanding member, and was covered soon afterward by Le Monde and by several Algerian outlets that had long followed his testimony about the war. <cite index="9-1">A death notice named his brother Gonzague Hutin and his sister in law, the widow of his brother François-Régis Hutin, along with a large number of nephews, nieces and their descendants, as those announcing his death, with no wife or children of his own listed among the mourners.</cite> This is consistent with his path as a former seminarian who devoted much of his adult life to public testimony and associative work rather than to a family of his own, though the page notes this as an inference from the funeral announcement rather than a confirmed biographical fact.

<cite index="9-1">A religious funeral service was held on Monday 7 September 2026 at 2.30pm at the church of Notre-Dame en Saint-Melaine in Rennes, followed by burial in a private family ceremony.</cite>

Tributes came from historians of the Algerian War and from campaigners on both sides of the Mediterranean. Researchers connected to the 4ACG and to the Josette and Maurice Audin Association, both groups he belonged to, described him as one of the last living conscripts to have documented the use of torture as it happened. Algerian commentators who wrote about his death emphasised that his testimony, coming from within the French army itself, had helped corroborate accounts given by Algerian victims and historians of the systematic nature of the abuses.

As a recalled conscript in 1955-56 with the 21st Colonial Infantry, Hutin taught Algerian children by day and wrote at night. His spring notebook recorded torture including the electric-shock interrogation of teenager Said Boutout, language he later said reversed the moral meaning of the French Resistance.

Extracts reached L'Action populaire in 1956, then Robert Barrat's Des rappeles temoignent (1957) and Pierre-Henri Simon's Contre la torture. Pierre Vidal-Naquet kept citing him. The complete Journal de bord appeared in 2003.

From 2004-05 he helped build 4ACG, spoke in lycees, and in 2013 searched Algeria for Boutout. His 2019 INA interview remains a primary audiovisual record of a quiet Christian humanist who refused official silence.

Son of Ouest-France founder Paul Hutin-Desgrees and brother within a Brittany press family, he died in Arradon aged 95. Funeral Mass was held 7 September 2026 at Notre-Dame en Saint-Melaine, Rennes.