Declassified files expose lies of French nuclear tests

The radioactive spread from French nuclear tests in Algeria in the 1960s was much larger that the French army admitted at the time, stretching across all of West Africa and up to southern Europe, according to recently declassified documents.

The documents were released in 2013 following appeals from military veterans who say their current ill health is linked to exposure to dangerous levels of radiation.

One map shows that 13 days after France detonated its first nuclear device - "Gerboise Bleue" (Blue Jerboa) - in February 1960, radioactive particles ranged from the Central African Republic to Sicily and southern Spain.

Gerboise Bleue, more than three times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945, exploded in the sky above the Sahara Desert in southern Algeria. The test took place at the height of the former French colony’s independence struggle.

At the time, the French military authorities said the fallout from the explosion was limited to the desert and that radiation levels were “generally low”....