PARIS – A memorial honoring members of the terrorist group that tried to assassinate General Charles de Gaulle, l’Organisation de l’Armee Secrete, is to be erected in a French cemetery despite furious opposition.

The French government has joined local officials, ex-servicemen, and human rights and race-relations activists in condemning the initiative. The mayor of Marignane, Daniel Simonpieri, – who is a former member of France’s far right National Front – gave approval for a ceremony to unveil the granite memorial next week.

The prefect of the Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur region, Christian Fremont, has threatened to ban the event for fear it could provoke public disorder. But a base for the memorial is already in place, and the prefect’s intervention will not prevent it being unveiled.

France remains fascinated by the events of the early 1960s when the OAS launched a terror campaign in response to de Gaulle’s decision to push for a referendum on Algerian independence.

Echoes of the attempts to murder the president were found in Frederick Forsyth’s novel, “The Day of the Jackal,” later a film starring Edward Fox as an OAS hitman hired to kill de Gaulle. At one point in 1962, 100 OAS bombs a day were detonated in Algeria. Thousands of innocent people were killed as the group targeted civilians in an attempt to wreck a cease-fire.

Although the OAS is often described as a fascist group, sympathizers were drawn from many walks of French life and members included Jews and Arabs. The date of the memorial’s inauguration was chosen to mark the 43rd anniversary of the execution of the chief of the OAS’s sinister Delta commando, Roger Degueldre.

A bronze plaque will bear the names of Degueldre and three colleagues who were also executed by firing squad for their involvement in the campaign.

One of the four, Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry, was condemned for his part in the failed ambush of de Gaulle’s car at Petit-Clamart.