Aussaresses justified the use of torture by saying how shocked he was by the FLN's massacre at the El Halia mine. He suggested that torture was a small but necessary evil that had to be used to defeat a much larger evil of terrorism. Aussaresses also claimed that he used these methods because it was a quick way to obtain information. He also defended its use by saying that the legal system was meant to deal with a peacetime France, not a counter insurgency war that the French army was faced with in Algeria. In 2001, Aussaresses during an interview stated: