Louisette Ighilahriz (born 22 August 1936) is an Algerian writer, former Conseil de la Nation member, 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 from 1957 to 1962, becoming, in the words of the American journalist Adam Shatz, "a catalyst of a debate about the legacy of the French-Algerian war".
Childhood and early life
Louisette Ighilahriz was born in Oujda, then part of the French Protectorate in Morocco, to a Berber family originally from the Kabylie region in northeastern Algeria. The Ighilahriz family relocated to Algiers in 1948. Although born outside Algeria, Ighilahriz maintained strong cultural and political ties to her ancestral homeland. Kabyle communities were historically among the most active opponents of French colonial rule in Algeria.
She later described her background as deeply nationalist, referring to her mother as "illiterate but hyperpoliticised" and stating that her maternal grandfather clandestinely manufactured firearms for Algerian resistance fighters. According to Ighilahriz, when news of the outbreak of the Algerian War reached them on 1 November 1954, her father, a baker by profession, remarked: "It is the end of the humiliation."Thomas, Martin. Fight or Flight: Britain, France, and their Roads from Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, p. xi.
FLN involvement
Revolutionary work and capture Strongly anti-French, Ighilahriz joined the FLN under the codename Lila in late 1956 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" Pentothal to make her talk, which failed to achieve its purpose.
Conditions for women in the FLN Ighilahriz wrote in her memoirs that the other members of her unit viewed her with suspicion as the only woman, explaining that, "for them I remained a woman of the town who, horror of horrors, even knew how to use a pen." Furthermore, Ighilahriz wrote that during this period, "I was no longer really a woman. The war had transformed me, I had become lacking in all feeling and had basically forgotten my femininity."
Military prison
Ighilahriz was taken to a military prison at Paradou Hydra where a French Army captain, Jean Graziani, cut her bangs, 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 in 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.Thomas, Martin Fight or Flight: Britain, France, and their Roads from Empire, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014 pages xi-xii. During this time, Ighilahriz was not allowed to bathe and spent months covered in her own blood, excrement and urine as she was held in a tiny cell.Cohen, William "The Algerian War, the French State and Official Memory" pages 219-239 from Réflexions Historiques, Vol. 28, No. 2, Summer 2002 page 233 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"). 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 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").
Family Ighilahriz's family also suffered: "They arrested my parents and most of my siblings. My mother underwent waterboarding for three weeks. One day, they brought before her the youngest of her nine children, my three-year-old little brother, and they hanged him."
Dr. Richaud
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. 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" Pentothal had pushed her to the brink of madness.
"Richaud" told Ighilahriz that she reminded him of his daughter who was about her age, and to whom he was very close.Mortimer, Mildred "Tortured Bodies, Resilient Souls: Algeria's Women Combatants Depicted by Danièèle Djamila, Amrane-Minne, Louisette Ighilahriz, and Assia Djebar" pages 101-127 from Research in African Literatures, Volume 43, No. 1, Spring 2012 page 109. "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!") The scholar Mildred Mortimer writes that "Richaud" for all his tenderness and compassion towards Ighilahriz subscribed 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. Mortimer also noted the irony that though "Richaud" saved Ighilahriz's life he was a supporter of Algérie française, approving of the goals though not the methods of the French Army in Algeria.
After confessing, Ighilahriz was taken to France, where she was imprisoned 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, she was pardoned. Afterwards, Ighilahriz went to university, obtaining a degree in psychology. In Muslim Algeria, a woman must be a virgin in order to be married, and the subject of rape is taboo, and upon Ighilahriz's return to Algeria, her mother made her promise never to speak of her ordeal lest it shame the family.Mortimer, Mildred "Tortured Bodies, Resilient Souls: Algeria's Women Combatants Depicted by Danièèle Djamila, Amrane-Minne, Louisette Ighilahriz, and Assia Djebar" pages 101-127 from Research in African Literatures, Volume 43, No. 1, Spring 2012 page 110. Decades after this promise, Ighilahriz broke it to publicize her experience, encouraging "other Algerian women and men to discuss their experiences publicly as well".
Publicization Ighilahriz's story was unknown until 15 June 2000, when Le Monde newspaper published an interview by the journalist Florence Beaugé. 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 notes 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 that her reason for coming forward – after remaining silent for decades, as she was too ashamed of what had happened to her – was that she wanted to see "Richaud" one last time to thank him.
Interviews regarding the war In an interview with Le Monde in 2000, Ighilahriz stated that both General Marcel Bigeard and General Jacques Massu had been present when she was raped and tortured in 1957. Bigeard stated in an interview that her story was a "tissue of lies" meant to "destroy all that is decent in France" and denied that Dr "Richaud" existed.Cohen, William "The Algerian War, the French State and Official Memory" pages 219-239 from Réflexions Historiques, Vol. 28, No. 2, Summer 2002 page 234 By contrast, 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. Massu confirmed the existence of "Richaud", saying that Ighilahriz must have been referring to Dr François Richaud, who had been the doctor stationed at the prison in 1957. Dr Richaud had died on 21 September 1997. A devout Catholic, Massu wrote to Pope Pius XII in February 1957 to complain that the Catholic archbishop of Algiers was not giving his men sufficient spiritual support as they went about the business of torture. In March 1957 his conscience was eased when the Catholic chaplain attached to his unit told him that God approved of torture as the only way to defeat the FLN, who were all Muslims.Reid, Douglas "Re-Viewing the Battle of Algiers with Germaine Tillion" pages 93-115 from History Workshop Journal, Volume 60, Autumn 2005 page 107. After Ighilahriz had accused him of torturing her in 2000, General Massu visited his parish priest for confession, and afterwards announced that he changed his mind about torture, saying he now believed that torture was not necessary to win the Battle of Algiers.
In 2014, Ighilahriz spoke of her wish that France would recognize the events of the war in Algeria. In particular, she mentioned that General Bollardière, who had protested against the torture of Algerians by the French, had not had his reputation restored following his arrest in April 1957 for discussing the torture with the French press. She said that his rehabilitation would essentially equate to France admitting to large-scale torture and rape during the Algerian War. Ighilahriz explained, "Le viol, c'est ce qu'il y a de pire pour une femme : c'est la négation d'elle-même" [rape is the worst for a woman; it is the negation of her very self].
Book publication