The Harragas of Algeria

In 2017, five men digging in an open pit found the third largest diamond ever unearthed in west Africa. It was dubbed the Peace Diamond, in memory of the brutal civil war that had ravaged large parts of the region in the 1990's – a war driven in part by factions competing for con ...  Show more

Nadia Marcinko, originally Marcinková, was born in Slovakia and met Jeffrey Epstein as an 18-year-old model. Later, she became a successful aircraft pilot. For seven years, she was Epstein’s main girlfriend. And she’s one of four women that US prosecutors named in a 2008 plea dea ...  Show more

Lucy Ash meets the Harragas of Algeria - the young people who burn their identity papers and head north across the Mediterranean leaving family, friends and stability behind. 

Hundreds of thousands of French people who'd been living in Algeria for generations fled for safety to France in the summer of 1962. It was in the last days of the war of independence in the North African nation. Known as the 'Pieds Noirs', the new arrivals were not generally wel ...  Show more

More than 200,000 Algerians fought for France during the war of independence, becoming known as Harkis. After Algeria's independence in 1962, the Harkis were treated badly by both the Algerians and the French. The FLN regarded the Harkis as traitors; while the French washed their ...  Show more

Sixty years after Algeria's independence from France, first-hand accounts of a traumatic 'birth of a nation': a female Algerian bomber who was part of the battle for Algiers; how the French military responded with brutal tactics; a massacre on the streets of Paris; and reprisa ...