ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar (AP) — Madagascar on Tuesday received three skulls of Indigenous warriors returned from France, including one believed to be of a king killed by French troops 128 years ago. It’s the first use of a 2023 French law regulating the return of human remains to its former colonies.

One skull is believed to belong to King Toera, the ruler of the once-powerful Sakalava kingdom on Madagascar’s west coast. French colonial troops took the skulls during violent clashes in 1897 and brought them back to France as trophies. They were then kept in a Paris museum alongside hundreds of other human remains from the former French colony, an island country off the southeastern coast of Africa.

Nearly 130 years after their forced transfer to France, the skulls were flown to Antananari

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