On December 8, 2020, I was one of 9 people arrested by the DGSI for a so-called terrorist association, without any fact having taken place and without the existence of any project. On April 4, 2023, one year to the day, after the end of my 36-day hunger strike, which almost ended in death, a hearing is taking place at the Administrative Court of Versailles on two of my numerous appeals (made every 3 months) against this torture regime. During my entire preventive incarceration, the “justice” refused to rule on them urgently. These clearly political refusals, as I learned, had as only interest to continue the pressures on my person, without having to respect their law.
The United Nations defines torture as: “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person; by or with the consent of a public official; for the purpose of obtaining information or a ‘confession’, punishing, intimidating or coercing that person.”
This is exactly what happened when I was placed in solitary confinement, even more so when this solitary confinement is imposed in pre-trial detention and in an illegal manner.. Yet the circular of April 14, 2011 states, in summary, that one cannot be placed in isolation for the facts that one is accused of (or for which someone has been convicted). The reason must be a behavior called “inappropriate” or “dangerous”. In spite of this, the management of the prison (MA) imposed me for sixteen months in solitary confinement by saying very clearly that it was based only on the facts of the accusation, while recognizing that my behavior was not a problem. I was also able to learn from the mouth of the director of detentions of the MA of Yvelines that my placement and my maintenance in solitary confinement had been decided since the first day by very high ranking persons and that whatever I said or he said or did, nothing would make it, that it was beyond him, that I would remain in the solitary confinement. So, without any embarrassment, a person’s rights are violated and so-called “white torture” is applied. Without my hunger strike, I might still be there today.
I was able to see the violence of this process and to feel the desire for annihilation as its end. It was only when I felt the nothingness absorbing me that, as a last burst of life, I put it in the balance by starting a hunger strike to get out of it. The situation was such that I had nothing left to lose, my life was already unraveling.
I cannot define the inhuman reality of solitary confinement any better than I did before in my letters, including those of April 2021, June 2021 and February 18, 2022, which I invite you to read to better understand the hell of this condition of confinement.1 At this time, it is still very painful for me to read them, so much this violently traumatic experience is incrusted in me.
Isolation should not be confused with loneliness. No! Isolation is to solitude what lobotomy is to meditation. Isolation is not a physical torture existing by a fact or an act, but a more pernicious, invisible, permanent torture existing by this continuous absence.
From one day to the next, I found myself without any social relations, only able to leave my cell accompanied by a senior officer and two guards, with palpations and security gates (at least five times a day). At the end of each visit, without exception, there was also a strip search. The only “exits” are into the anxiety-provoking space that is the individual walk, a concrete box, where the 20m2 of concrete above our heads is covered with multiple fences and barbed wire.
I could observe the real walks, I could see the inmates exist, I could see that they were so free. Imagine the violence of the isolation to consider people locked up 24 hours a day as being free. They couldn’t see me because of the quadruple dose of bars and grating on my window. I was once again non-existent.
I think we construct our vision of ourselves by what others reflect back to us. But then, how can we exist when there are no others? When others don’t even see us? Would isolation have for goal the annihilation of oneself? Before I am even judged, should I cease to exist? These are some of my questions at the time.
Checks are carried out every two hours, day and night. At night the control is inevitably accompanied by the switching on of the lights, thus preventing one from having a real sleep. The opening of the door locks is noisy and being surprised by this sound makes you jump, gives a jolt to the heart, a rise of stress.
In isolation, many disorders appeared and increased over the months: concentration problems, difficulties in constructing one’s thoughts, daze, loss of temporal reference points, headaches, dizziness, loss of memory, visual disorders, thoracic pressure, cardiac pain, joint pain, problem of access to one’s own brain, fear of the disappearance of one’s knowledge, etc.
But worst of all, it was the brain that was going off the rails, the thought not being transformed into speech and therefore not receiving any feedback, no longer managing to modulate itself, to materialize, it became elusive, like a confused fog, the impression of being dumbed down, as if in a state of shock, of being paralyzed by thought. My brain was functioning in slow motion, thoughts were not renewed and were looping without really evolving.
The most pernicious thing about isolation is that it makes the real unreal. Since one is permanently alone with oneself, with one’s own thoughts as the only interaction, the real world does not materialize. During visiting hours, these unique moments of social interaction, are as much a pleasure as they are an upheaval; one goes, without transition, from lethargic cerebral stasis to human “contact” without any time to adapt! The relatives relate a world that seems imaginary during moments that, once over, seem to have been only a dream.
Apart from short medical visits (often less than a minute) to the isolation ward, without guaranteeing any semblance of medical confidentiality, getting an appointment is not always easy, but even harder is being taken there. And when this happens, all our ailments are considered “normal in view of these conditions of detention”. I have never, despite my repeated requests, been able to see a psychologist. What is interesting to see is that being in solitary confinement creates psychic and physical disorders that cannot be properly followed up due to the fact that one is in solitary confinement. It’s such nonsense that it’s hard to believe it’s an accident.
On top of all this, the isolation prevents any activity within the prison, impossible to work, impossible to follow courses or trainings.
The prison administration (AP) imposes a balance of power and an arbitrary operation. The respect of our rights is not acquired, it is won by an internal legal struggle. I wonder how a person who is not supported by a lawyer, who does not speak the language well, can have his rights respected.
[The Sequels]
In isolation, I didn’t even have the leisure to do nothing, to let myself go and talk with other humans. It was a question of survival to occupy my time, this time that had become infinite and antagonistic. After this stay out of the world and out of time, coming back to the world of the living and their frantic rhythm disrupted my functioning, I no longer had any reference point, no notion, no habit. Since my release, almost a year, I still haven’t readapted, I feel like I’m swimming against the current, I’m running but I’m not accomplishing anything, I’m exhausted struggling in a race against the clock, lost in advance. I feel like a Don Quixote fighting against the windmills in time.
I am well aware that in our so-called modern society, many people complain about not having enough time to do everything they want. Concerning my release from isolation, I went from an antipode -where this time, by its immobility, is a torture- to its opposite extreme. This upheaval of such amplitude impacts me without measure whereas I find a semblance of real life.
The memory problems that arose and amplified during this period of isolation did not disappear when I got out. Information continued to flow out of my head as quickly as it had flowed in. How many times have I asked the same question three or four times in the same conversation? Although today I sometimes surprise myself and enjoy remembering things that didn’t distract me, I am still far from having recovered my memory faculties. Will I find them one day?
One of the most damaging after-effects is my relationship with others. I like to define myself as a social individual, but I find myself struggling to interact with my fellow human beings. I am now unable to find myself with a large number of friends. Beyond five or six people, I feel overwhelmed, caught in a whirlwind of words, facial expressions, body language, too numerous to be deciphered at once. I find myself uncomfortable and tend to fade away. But even with a smaller number, other difficulties surface. I find it difficult to differentiate between what is private thought and what is for discussion, for sharing. I often turn my thoughts over and over in my head, unable to express them and unable to start a conversation. I have become a poor conversationalist.
So, in this situation, how can I meet new people? How can I make new friends when my friends are outside the only department I am assigned to? I am still fond of humor (if not funny), but alas, there is a thorn in my side… How can I allow myself to make jokes freely when I know that many of these jokes, decontextualized, are incriminating in our file? When we are worried about the serious consequences that a harmless joke can have, how can we keep a carefree attitude? Concerned, I am permanently, without any respite. What social relationships are we capable of building when we only have our own problems in mind, in our mouths?
Sixteen months without human contact, with only physical contact, the palpations of the supervisors, this considerably changes the relationship to affect. An ambivalent relationship is created. Like an insatiable need for affection that can become suffocating for the others and, at the same time, not really conceiving physical contact as communication. Feeling, if not attacked, at least uncomfortable when a friend gently puts a hand on your arm, when a friend puts their head on your shoulder for two seconds. Wanting too much or too little, or both, again, is a balance that is broken.
When we are violently forced to leave the world, by placing us in isolation, we find ourselves as strangers to it. Leaving does not mean returning to normal. No, there are the others, the living and this deeply traumatized being who must, but does not know how, heal his wounds. Not knowing what to say, how to say it, how to behave, or where to be is a continuity of the confinement even outside. The feeling of being locked up in one’s head, in one’s carcass. A need to exult which alas never arrives.
Of course this is nothing like the suffering undergone in isolation, in the caves of the republic.
I may be undergoing psychotherapy, but I don’t see the benefit of it. It just sends me back, by reformulation, by removing the denials and euphemisms used as a defense mechanism, the odious torture suffered and the v(i)ol of my being. Let’s hope that the next phases will bear some fruit.
On April 4, 2023, the French state, through its “justice” will have to answer for this illegal act of torture, repressed by its own law. I am not worried about the outcome. France is well known by the European human rights authorities for its non-respect in this matter. It has the habit of paying, as if it were washing its hands, and continuing its unacceptable practices, supposedly “in the name of the French people”. I hope that this hearing will be, on its modest scale, like a stone removed from the edifice of prison violence.
Libre Flot
March 30, 2023
https://solidaritytodecember8.wordpress.com/
1 https://soutien812.blackblogs.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/1922/2023/03/LibreFlot_IsolementGreveFaim.pdf
THE DECEMBER 8th CASE. 