Paris (AFP) — France on Tuesday returned three colonial-era skulls to Madagascar, including one believed to be that of a Malagasy king decapitated by French troops during a 19th-century massacre.

The skull, believed to belong to King Toera, was handed over in the first restitution of human remains since France passed a law facilitating their return in 2023, along with those of two other members of the Sakalava ethnic group.

French troops beheaded King Toera in 1897, with his skull then taken as a trophy to France.

It was placed in Paris’s national history museum alongside hundreds of other remains from the Indian Ocean island.

“These skulls entered the national collections in circumstances that clearly violated human dignity and in a context of colonial violence,” said French Culture M

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