Louisette Ighilahriz

Louisette Ighilahriz (born 22 August 1936) is an Algerian writer and a former member of the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) who came to widespread attention in 2000 with her story of captivity by the French in 1957-62, becoming in the words of the American journalist Adam Shatz "a catalyst of a debate about the legacy of the French-Algerian war".
Ighilhriz was born in Oujda to a Berber family and her family moved to Algiers in 1948. Through born in Morocco, the Ighilhriz family originated from the Kabylie region of Algeria, whose Berber tribes had often been some of the most fiercest opponents of French rule in Algeria. When hearing upon the beginning of the Algerian War on 1 November 1954, her father who worked as a baker told her: "It is the end of the humiliation". 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. On 28 September 1957 while traveling with a FLN party, Ighilahriz was ambushed by the French paratroopers at Chébli, badly wounded and captured. At the hospital, Ighilahriz was given the "truth drug" Pentohal to make her talk, which failed to achieve its purpose. At which point, Ighilahriz was taken to a military prison at Paradou Hydra where a French Army captain 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. 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. 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. To further degrade her, Ighilahriz was forced to live completely naked during her entire time at the military prison. 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."

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." 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. Under the amnesty of 1962, Ighilahriz was released. Afterwards, Ighilahriz went to university where she obtained a degree in psychology. Ighilahriz's story was unknown until 15 June 2000 when Le Monde newspaper published an interview conducted by the journalist Florence Beaugé with her. 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. 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." 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. In her interview, Ighilahriz stated that both General Marcel Bigeard and General Jacques Massu had been present when was raped and tortured. Bigeard stated her story was a "tissue of lies" meant to "destroy all that is decent in France" and denied Richaud even existed. Massu stated 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 that he had wished had never happened in Algeria. 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. Dr. Richaud had died in 1997. 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. 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. 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, and 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. 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 describing and justifying torture as a legitimate counter-terrorism tactic in the Battle of Algiers attracts more attention than does a book by an Algerian woman describing her experiences of the said torture that Aussaresses ordered. 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 aware of the thousands of Kikuyu killed by British security forces, suggesting there is a certain wilful imperial amnesia in both France and Britain.