Captain Alfred Dreyfus is up for posthumous promotion
Two bills, one shared goal. On Monday, June 2, France's Assemblée Nationale will review a bill put forward by former prime minister Gabriel Attal to posthumously promote Alfred Dreyfus to the rank of brigadier general. The head of the Socialist senators, Patrick Kanner, has meanwhile submitted an identical bill in the other chamber of Parliament. The symbolic bills come 90 years after the death of the French artillery officer's death.
The bill's main objective is to correct a mistake. In 1894, Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer, was wrongly sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island, off the coast of French Guiana, for espionage. He spent more than four years there before his innocence was restored by the highest court of appeals in 1906. Yet there was still an injustice: Dreyfus rejoined the army at a lower rank than he would have achieved had he not spent years in prison.
"The Dreyfus affair is absolutely foundational in France's history. Addressing a point of this affair that remains unresolved is fundamental for the Republic," said Charles Sitzenstuhl, the bill's rapporteur, and lawmaker for President Emmanuel Macron's Renaissance party.
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