Louisette Ighilahriz

FLN

Strongly anti-French, Ighilahriz joined the FLN under the codename Lila to work as a courier, smuggling information, weapons and bombs across Algiers in bread baked by her father.^[3] On 28 September 1957 while traveling with a FLN party, Ighilahriz was ambushed by the French paratroopers at Chébli, badly wounded and captured.^[4]

At the hospital, Ighilahriz was given the "truth drug" Pentohal to make her talk, which failed to achieve its purpose.^[5]

Military prison

At which point, Ighilahriz was taken to a military prison at Paradou Hydra where a French Army captain, Jean Graziani, cut her badges, prodded her wounds with a bayonet and then raped her in her words "with all sorts of objects" to make her talk.^[6] For months, Ighilahriz was tortured and raped into attempts to make her reveal what she knew about the FLN before finally breaking down in December 1957, telling her captors everything she knew about the FLN.^[7] During this time, Ighilahriz was not allowed to bath and spent months covered in her own blood, excrement and urine as she was held in a tiny cell.^[8] Ighilahriz remembered: "Mon urine s’infiltrait sous la bâche du lit de camp, mes excréments se mélangeaient à mes menstrues jusqu’à former une croûte puante” ("My urine passed through the sheet covering the camp bed, my excrement mixed with my menstrual blood, forming a stinking crust").^[9] To further degrade her, Ighilahriz was forced to live completely naked during her entire time at the military prison.^[10] Ighilahriz recalled:

"I was lying naked, always naked. They would come one, two or three times daily. As soon as I heard the sound of their boots in the hallway, I began to tremble. Then time became endless. The minutes seemed like hours, and the hours like days. The hardest thing was handling the first days, to get used to the pain. Then one would be detached mentally, as if the body began to float.

Massu was brutal, awful. Bigeard was not better, but the worst was Graziani. It’s unspeakable, he was a pervert who took pleasure in torturing. It was not human. I often yelled at him: “You’re not a man if you do not finish me! ” And he answered with a sneer: “Not yet, not yet!” During these three months, I had one goal: to kill myself, but the worst suffering, is to want at all costs to erase oneself and to not find the means."^[11]

Ighilahriz stated about Captain Jean Graziani: "Mais l’essentiel de ses tortures ne s’exerçaient pas à mains nues. Il était toujours armé d’ustensiles pour s’acharner contre mon plâtre” ("But he did not carry out most of his torture with his bare hands. He was always armed with implements to attack my plaster cast").^[12]

Ighilahriz's family also suffered as she recalled: "They arrested my parents and most of my siblings. My mother has undergone waterboarding for three weeks. One day, they brought before her the youngest of her nine children, my 3 years old little brother, and they hung him."^[13] Ighilahriz credited her survival to a doctor whom she knew only as "Richaud", who she called a most gentle and kind man who treated her injuries.^[14] At the time she first met "Richard", Ighilahriz recalled " “J’étais en train de devenir folle” ("I was losing my mind"), stating the effects of torture, rape and repeated injections of the "truth drug" Pentohal had pushed her to brink of madness.^[15]

"Richaud" told Ighilahriz that she reminded him of his daughter who was about her age, and to whom he was very close.^[16] "Richaud" played something of a surrogate father to Ighilahriz as she remembered him telling her: "Mon petit, vous êtes bien jeune pour le maquis. Je vous en prie, laissez ça aux autres. Aux hommes, par exemple!" ("My child, you are too young for the resistance. I beg of you, leave that to others, to men, for example!")^[17] The scholar Mildred Mortimer wrote that "Richaud" for all his tenderness and compassion towards Ighilahriz ascribed to the traditional French macho viewpoint that war was entirely for men, seeing her involvement with the FLN as something unnatural for a woman, and noted by contrast that Ighilahriz's father had encouraged his daughters to join the FLN.^[18] Mortimer also the irony that through "Richaud" saved Ighilahriz's life that he was a supporter of Algérie française, approving of the goals through not the methods of the French Army in Algeria.^[19]

After confessing, Ighilahriz was taken to France, where was held in prisons in Baumettes, La Roquette, Amiens, Fresnes, Toulouse and Bastia. In January 1962, Ighilariz escaped from prison, and was hidden by French Communists in Nice. Under the amnesty of May 1962, Ighilahriz was pardoned. Afterwards, Ighilahriz went to university where she obtained a degree in psychology.^[20] In Muslim Algeria, a woman must be a virgin in order to be married, and the subject of rape is strictly taboo, and upon Ighilahriz's return to Algeria, her mother made her promise never to speak of her ordeal lest it shame the family.^[21] After independence, the official language of Algeria became Arabic, but French remains the preferred language for the educated classes in Algeria with Algerian university students still studying all subjects except politics, theology and law in French while even today cabinet meetings in Algeria are conducted in French.^[22] One official at the Education Ministry was quoted as saying: "Arabisation was a mistake because it was motivated by this idea of revenge against French colonialism. We shouldn’t confuse the savage, barbaric colonialism of France with the French language, which is a universal vehicle of science and culture.”^[23]

Year 2000

Ighilahriz's story was unknown until 15 June 2000 when Le Monde newspaper published an interview conducted by the journalist Florence Beaugé with her.^[24] University-educated, secular, fluent in French and very fond of quoting Victor Hugo, Ighilahriz came across in her interview with Beaugé as more French than Algerian, which helped to make her a more appealing victim to the French.^[25] Shatz noted that "What made her interview particularly poignant was that she seemed to be moved less by rage at her jailers than by gratitude to the doctor who saved her."^[26] Ighilahriz stated her reason for going forward after remaining silent for decades as she was too ashamed of what had happened to her was she wanted to see "Richaud" one last time to thank him.^[27]

Interview

In her interview, Ighilahriz stated that both General Marcel Bigeard and General Jacques Massu had been present when she was raped and tortured.^[28] Bigeard stated in an interview that her story was a "tissue of lies" meant to "destroy all that is decent in France" and denied Richaud even existed.^[29] Massu told the French media that he was not present when Ighilahriz was tortured and raped, saying he could not remember her, but expressed "regret" that the paras had engaged in torture and used rape as an interrogation tool, saying that there were things that had happened in Algeria that he wished had never happened.^[30] Massu confirmed the existence of Richaud, saying that Ighilahriz must had been referring to Dr. François Richaud, who had been the doctor stationed at the prison in 1957.^[31] Dr. Richaud had died on 21 September 1997.^[32] A devout Catholic, Massu had written to Pope Pius XII in February 1957 to complain the Catholic archbishop of Algiers was not giving his men sufficient spiritual support as they went about the business of torture, and in March 1957 his conscience was greatly eased when the Catholic chaplain attached to his unit told him that God approved of torture as the only way to defeat the FLN.^[33] After Ighilarhiz had accused him of torturing her, General Massu visited his parish priest for confession, and afterwards announced that he changed his mind about torture, saying he not believed it was necessary to win the Battle of Algiers.^[34]

Year 2001

After the interview, Ighilahriz dictated her life story to the French journalist Anne Nivat which was published in 2001 as Algérienne, becoming a bestseller in France.^[35] Nivat stated about her first impression of Ighilahriz: "Dès la première seconde où j’ai croisé son regard, j’ai cru en cette femme...Je savais qu’elle parlerait, parce qu’elle avait beaucoup à raconter et souhaitait le raconter. Je n’ai pas été déçue" (From the moment our eyes met, I believed in this woman. . . . I knew that she would speak, because she had a lot to say and wanted to speak out. I was not disappointed).^[36] As Algeria is a Muslim nation, the subject of rape is taboo, and Mortimer wrote that it was significant that Ighilahriz's story was published in French rather than her native Berber or Arabic as the story of a Berber woman being raped is unpublishable in Algeria, even today.^[37] At the beginning of Algérienne, Ighilahriz stated that her decision to go forward with her story took place over the opposition of her family, her colleagues and the Algerian government, all of whom felt that the story of a Berber woman being raped was deeply shameful.^[38] Mortimer wrote through Ighilahriz suffered terribly, the purpose of her story is more to pay tribute to Dr. Richaud rather than to express rage at her torturers and rapists.^[39]

A key moment in Algérienne was when Ighilarhriz and her sister Ouardia visited the grave of Dr. Richaud to place flowers before his tombstone.^[40] On 21 September 2000, the Ighilahriz sisters and Nivat visited the tomb of Dr. Richaud, where the sisters offered him a symbolic cup of coffee as a way of thanks.^[41] The ritual performed by the Ighilariz sisters at the grave of Dr. Richaud was not Algerian at all, but rather Mexican as it is common in Mexico on 1 November, the Día de Muertos ("Day of the Dead"), for families to have picnics on the graves of deceased family members where drinks and food are symbolically offered to the dead.^[42] Mortimer wrote the Ighilariz sisters were nominally Muslim, but the two women chose to adopt a barely veiled pagan ritual from Mexico as a way to form a connection with the deceased Dr. Richaud.^[43] Afterwards, the Ighilahriz sisters met with Richaud's daughter to give her their thanks for her father's actions.^[44] On 31 December 2000, Ouardia Ighilahriz returned alone to Richaud's grave to place a plaque reading "Où que tu sois, tu seras toujours parmi nous. Louisette" ("Wherever you are, you will always be among us. Louisette").^[45] Attached to the plaque was a handwritten note with a drawing of a dove carrying an olive branch reading: "Avec toute ma gratitude.—Louisette" ("With all my gratitude.–Louisette").^[46]

Mortimer noted that the university-educated and independent-minded Ighilahriz was fluent in French, but chose not to write down her own story, instead dictating it to Nivat, and had to be accompanied by Nivat and her sister to Dr. Richaud's tomb, which for her was evidence of the extraordinary difficult nature of Ighilahriz's experiences.^[47] Mortimer further noted how much emotional support Ighilariz drew from fellow women as her sister Ouardia and Nivat played a key role in helping her confront her past, suggesting the story of Algérienne is actually the story of three women rather than one.^[48] Mortimer commented that it was striking that it came to dealing with the memory of almost unspeakable physical and sexual abuse that besides for Dr. Richuad, all of the emotional support that Ighilahriz drew upon came from other women.^[49]

General Maurice Schmitt of the French Army accused Ighilahriz of fabricating her entire story in a 2003 essay, making much of the fact that she described Captain Jean Graziani as having green eyes when in fact he had brown eyes.^[50] Rather more unexpectedly, Saadi Yacef, a leading FLN terrorist who is currently a senator in Algeria, attacked Ighilahriz in 2011, claiming she was never a member of the FLN and lied about being raped, stating she is "excellent dans l'art de faire de la comédie".^[51] In response to Schmidt, Ighilariz stated that after the passage of almost 50 years, she may have misremembered small details and the way in which Schmidt obsessively tried to discredit her over small mistakes suggested the French Army on an institutional level was still not willing to admit that it engaged in torture and rape during the Algerian War. In response to Yacef, Ighilariz accused him of breaking under torture when he was captured by the French and stated that as a Berber Muslim man, he was angry at her for breaking the taboo surrounding rape in Berber culture.^[52] Ighilariz also suggested that Yacef was jealous of the way that her story had come to overshadow his in the popular memory of the Algerian War. Finally, Ighilariz wrote that it was time for the story of the Algerian War to be written in Algeria by professional historians instead of the current situation where the FLN government dictated to historians a version of history that glorified the FLN.^[53]

The British historian Martin Thomas wrote that Ighilahriz's interview and her book generated a major "media storm" in France in 2000-2001 as her account of physical and sexual abuse while in the custody for three months in late 1957 of the 10th Paratroop Division resonated with the French people, making her into the face of victims of torture in Algeria.^[54] Thomas further noted that at the same time that Algérienne was a bestseller, another book about the Algerian War, namely Services spéciaux Algérie 1955-1957 by General Paul Aussaresses, was an even bigger bestseller in France.^[55] Thomas also noted that Services spéciaux Algérie 1955-1957 was translated into English as The Battle of the Casbah: Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism in Algeria, 1955-1957 while Algérienne still awaits its translation.^[56]

Thomas argued many people even today in the West still attach greater value to the lives of Westerners over non-Westerners, which explains why a book by a Frenchman, Aussaresses, describing and justifying torture as a legitimate counter-terrorism tactic in the Battle of Algiers attracts more attention and better sales than does a book by an Algerian woman describing her experiences of the said torture that Aussaresses ordered.^[57] Along the same lines, Thomas noted in regards to the Kenya Emergency, most people in Britain know of the 32 British settlers killed by the Mau Mau, but very few until recently have been aware of the thousands of Kikuyu killed by British security forces, suggesting there is a certain willful imperial amnesia in both France and Britain.^[58]