PARIS, June 3 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A French daily newspaper said Monday, June 3, it had found new witnesses from Algeria’s war of independence who say they were victims of torture at the hands of France's far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen.

The left-leaning Le Monde published excerpts of interviews with four men - all former members or supporters of Algeria’s National Liberation Front (FLN) - who said Le Pen, then a lieutenant in a paratroop regiment, personally tortured them to extract information in February 1957.

Warned of the forthcoming publication, Le Pen formally denied the allegations Sunday, June 2, and said he would launch a libel suit against the newspaper.

According to Le Monde, the men decided to break their silence after 45 years because they were shocked by Le Pen’s success in France’s presidential elections, in which he won though unexpectedly into the second round against eventual winner Jacques Chirac.

Abdelkader Ammour, a 64 year-old former teacher, said Le Pen led a group of soldiers who burst into his home in the Algiers casbah on a weapons search on the night of February 2, 1957.

When he refused to give them information, Ammour said he was tied up and flung to the ground.

“They connected up electric wires directly to the plug and let them wander all over my body. I was screaming. Then they got dirty water from the toilets and by holding a floor cloth over my face forced me to swallow it.

“Le Pen was sitting on me. He held the cloth while another poured the water," he said.

Ammour told Le Monde that he knew it was Le Pen because he later recognized him from photographs.

Mohamed Abdellaoui, 62, said he was arrested around the same time and locked up in the paratroopers’ base in a fort overlooking Algiers. The next morning he was summoned to see Le Pen.

“My fellow prisoners had described [the torturers] to me the night before ... One was stocky, with white skin, a round face and a nasty smile. They told me that that one, who was always dressed in uniform, was Lieutenent Le Pen,” he said, also claiming to have suffered water and electrical torture.

According to Abdellaoui, Le Pen was referred to by other soldiers as “the deputy.”

At the time, Le Pen was the youngest member of France's National Assembly, and had come to Algeria, where the eight-year war was still in its early stages, as a volunteer.

Interviewed in the same newspaper, Le Pen, 73, issued a vehement denial.

“These witness statements are lies. Perhaps these people were persuaded to talk. Someone said to them: you know the guy you saw - that was Le Pen. But how would they have known? It is ridiculous,” he said.

“I do not know if these people suffered what they say they did, but they certainly didn’t because of any action of mine.”

Claims that Le Pen took part in torture in the Algerian war have surfaced repeatedly since he became a prominent figure as leader of the National Front, and in two recent cases the appeals court ruled that to make the accusation does not constitute libel.

The court based its decision on an article written by Le Pen in 1962 in the French journal Combat, in which he said, “I have nothing to hide. I tortured because it was necessary.

“When someone is brought to you who has planted 20 bombs that could explode at any moment and who will not talk, you use all the methods at your disposal to make him talk,” Le Pen had said then.

The controversy over France’s wartime use of torture was exposed in January 2002 when General Paul Aussaresses was convicted for writing a book in which he explained how he personally tortured and killed 24 Algerian prisoners of war.