Louisette Ighilahriz
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 Ighilahriz was born in Oujda to a Berber family and her family moved to Algiers in 1948. Though she was born in Morocco, the Ighilahriz family originated from the Kabylie region of Algeria, whose Berber tribes had been some of the fiercest opponents of French rule in Algeria. Ighilahriz "describes herself as coming from a whole family of nationalists," calling her mother "illiterate but hyperpoliticised" and saying that her maternal grandfather clandestinely manufactured guns for "revolutionaries." When hearing about 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". 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. 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. 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