Translator: Patricia Moloney Reviewer: Denise RQ
At a certain time, a few years before that,
I was in a gloomy cell, in the detention center at Fresnes.
And I was pacing, in the cell,
because they took away our mattresses, then, so you had to stand.
In a corner of the cell, there are toilets,
I hear a few bubbles, so I lean over,
I go over and have a look, and what do I see?
I see a rat who sticks his head out, takes a breath, and goes back down.
I'm telling you, I didn't go to the toilet straight away.
So I said to myself that I was in quite a difficult situation.
But as I was alone, in complete isolation,
I was in in the dark, I saw no-one.
It had been a few days since I had spoken to anyone -
I said to myself, "I will share my bread with him."
I put a little piece of bread beside the toilets. I waited.
The next day, poof, he had gone.
Two days later, the same thing.
Finally the rat started to get a little bit bolder
A few days later, there I was, beside my friend the rat.
I shared a few little secrets, and told him a bit about my life.
And he was listening.
He was nibbling his piece of bread, but he was listening to me.
I was there. I had some company, I had some support, a sympathetic ear.
It was great.
Anyway, I get to the end of my 45 days of solitary,
and it's time to leave.
So we are sitting down, side by side,
we looked at each other, we said our goodbyes,
and I promise you, I saw a little tear, on both sides,
and I left solitary confinement.
I wondered to myself, "How did I end up here?"
And the story goes that in December 84,
I am with a friend, a girlfriend, my fiancé at that time,
and I am attacked by eight skinheads.
Back then, these were violent people, in fact, they still are, but anyway.
Unfortunately, I pulled out a gun,
and I shot, because I thought they were going to hurt her.
I shot, and one of them died, and one was injured.
Two days later, I am in a prison van,
on my way to the largest prison in Europe, called Fleury-Merogis.
I had never seen a prison, I had never seen a prison van, nor a cage.
I didn't know that they locked human beings in cages.
It came as quite a shock.
I wound up in reception, which is at the center of Fleury-Merogis,
where new arrivals are processed.
And that was the the first time I had to strip in front of anyone.
First humiliation.
Next, I go to the registry.
You hand over your things, your identity card, etc.,
and you're given a number.
And this number, you remember for the rest of your life.
138496Q.
Next, you are left in custody.
What is prison? It is not only the denial of freedom.
But it is also misery, it is also lack of hygiene, lack of care,
overcrowding, and a whole load of things which are really inhuman.
And most of all, violence.
You walk in, you have to fight, straight away.
It is a hard world, and you have to survive.
So I am in prison, I start my sentence.
At that time, it was the 80s, it was in 85,
a fairly widespread illness, is becoming an epidemic.
So the tests started, tests to see if you had AIDS.
And I have a test. And I find out that I am HIV positive.
So, not a good start in life.
From that point onwards, I have only one thing on my mind,
and that's to escape.
Because back then, it was thought you only had three years or five years max.
I was obsessed with one thing: to escape.
So I do four years in Fleury-Mérogis, then I am transferred.
I manage to get a mid-sentence day release,
because at that time, I had a ten year sentence,
and they knew that I had been assaulted.
I have no hope, I am ill, I know that I might die tomorrow,
and I can't bear prison any longer, the way it is.
I can't bear the inhuman way they treat people, any longer,
so I go on the run.
On the run, there aren't many options.
To survive on the run, you need money. You can't go to work.
So I start stealing, and I go back
to doing hold-ups, and I become a raider.
I get caught, I get another 2-3 years,
and in 93 I'm released at the end of my sentence.
And everything's still the same, no cure for the illness.
Prison had really broken me.
I mean it's a system which makes you violent, which changes you.
I am 28 when I finish my sentence.
And I relapse. I go back to guns, and to hold-ups.
I am in a very violent world;
I get caught in 94.
And I know that I will go down for years, and that I will die in prison.
And because I know it's the end for me, I go for broke.
9 October 1994, the anniversary of the abolition of the death penalty,
I chose this date to escape.
I get some weapons smuggled into prison,
I take some hostages, and I manage to get out.
I went on a violent rampage. with armed robberies, hold-ups.
Finally, in 95, I get caught by the serious crime squad,
and they incarcerate me.
I end up in solitary confinement.
because I have become dangerous and a threat to society.
It's true.
Five years in solitary confinement, seeing no-one, for all those years.
Complete isolation.
To survive in isolation, the only solution,
as there is nothing else, is to read.
And I discovered literature.
I started to read, and I found in the words, a way of traveling
and of discovering the world, of which I had been deprived.
The strength of the words was something powerful,
which could take me somewhere, to escape, actually.
After these years of isolation,
in 2000, 1995-2000,
I am finally released and I'm transferred to La Santé detention center.
And when I am there I meet people,
I touch them, to see if they are really human.
I start living again, and I enroll on some courses.
Teachers come to the prison. There is a university, Paris VII.
There is a section called the Section for Detainee Students,
which is for prisoners.
And there, I come across a teacher,
a philosophy teacher called François Chouquet.
We talk, and he tells me that words
are more powerful than weapons.
Obviously I laughed, in the beginning.
(Laughter)
He is very nice, but well...
But I continue studying, I started to write a little,
and he made me read Tolstoy, Céline, Camus,
"In Remembrance of things past," as if that was all I had to do;
but he gave me something, it was really a treasure.
Finally, I started to write, and I showed him my first script.
He encouraged me.
At last, I belonged somewhere in society,
I existed for someone, someone read my work.
I belonged.
In 2002, I am finally sentenced, and I get 30 years.
30 years is a long time.
(Laughter)
Enough to read three libraries, François Mitterand.
I get 30 years, 30 years.
To tell you the truth: when I got the sentence,
I was transferred straight away to a high security prison,
and I tried to escape once more.
(Laughter)
I got two more years, but it was a gamble.
And because I couldn't bear to be in this prison,
I started riots, I set fire to Clairvaux, it was terrible.
It was hard to accept this denial of freedom.
By then, I had already done about 20 years in prison.
Finally, in 2006, I said to myself
that it was my own harmful thinking from which I had to escape.
I had to become someone else, I had had enough of it.
In 2006, I end up in Poissy prison.
And there, I create the first prison blog
of a detainee, in the Nouvel Observateur.
The first.
Today, everyone has the Internet, but it was me who created the first.
In my column I described prison life, everything which I stood for,
how to fight against a system, which is destroying us.
and also the absurdity of this system.
And other articles: the disabled in prison, etc.
Obviously, the prison authorities were against it since it was against the rules.
Any communication was forbidden, unless it was censored first.
To this day, they don't know how I did it.
For four years, I got my articles on the Internet, without them knowing.
I also met Fabien Marceau, at a concert.
He comes with his crutch.
Fabien Marceau, sorry, I mean Grand Corp Malade.
I like the fact that because of his words, because of his Slam a disabled person,
could stand up and practice his art.
So you could say that the power of his words created this miracle.
No need to go to Lourdes, he did it with Slam,
and he managed to make a career of it.
We became mates, very friendly.
For me too, writing enabled me, thanks to my blog,
to publish my first book.
I was no longer dangerous, I was a writer.
and a freelance one, for the Nouvel Observateur.
The prison authorities, looked at me differently.
"Something strange is happening there."
"He must be planning another escape."
(Laughter)
I promise you it's true.
I can tell you that they took my computer, they confiscated it,
passed it to CLIS, to see if I had access, etc.
The prison governor came to ask me, "Is it really you?"
"No, it's a lunatic who pretends to be me, who writes this stuff.
I promise you."
(Laughter)
It happened.
(Laughter)
It was through one of my books that I met a young student.
We fell in love; with writing, anything is possible.
We fell in love, and after a few months, we decided,
to have a "visiting-hours" baby.
Because that's also part of being human.
So we made a baby during visiting hours.
And in March 2008, my little girl was born.
(Applause)
Two days after the birth,
- because I didn't go straight away, I couldn't -
I was in the maternity ward.
A criminal like me.
I end up in the maternity ward, and I go to see my baby.
They took off my handcuffs.
There was a window, and I had a good look, but...
(Laughter)
Sometimes it's stronger than us, but anyway.
I took my daughter in my arms
(Applause)
We called her Tilelli.
Tilelli means freedom in Kabyle,
as it was her who managed to get me out of prison, after 20 years.
All of that is to tell you, that I filed a case for parole.
It took 2-3 years, a rock-solid case,
because I was a father, I had responsibilities,
and at last the sentencing judge,
seeing that I had already done 25 years in prison,
he said, "He must be released,
because he is a journalist, and a father,
he has become this, he has become that."
And I managed to get my university qualification, from Paris VII.
(Applause)
All that was to tell you that today,
they think that serial offenders should be marginalized
that they must take a hard line, and that they shouldn't be let out.
But I have proved the opposite.
Even with my background, it's possible.
A return to real life is possible.
And it is possible, thanks to people and goodwill.
And finally, in all dictatorships
the first thing which goes away is culture.
It's destroyed.
Ignorance should even be seen as a crime against humanity.
It is through culture, that I managed to pull through,
through reading; and with teachers.
We must encourage this sort of thing.
I think back to Chouquet's quote,
who said that the pen was mightier than the sword.
It is because of the pen that my greatest escape succeeded.
Thank you.
(Applause)