WEBVTT

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At a certain time,
a few years before that,

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I was in a gloomy cell,
in the detention center at Fresnes.

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And I was pacing, in the cell,

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because they took away our mattresses,
then, so you had to stand.

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In a corner of the cell,
there are toilets,

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I hear a few bubbles, so I lean over,

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I go over and have a look,
and what do I see?

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I see a rat who sticks his head out,
takes a breath, and goes back down.

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I'm telling you, I didn't go
to the toilet straight away.

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So I said to myself that I was
in quite a difficult situation.

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But as I was alone, in complete isolation,

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I was in in the dark, I saw no-one.

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It had been a few days
since I had spoken to anyone -

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I said to myself,
"I will share my bread with him."

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I put a little piece of bread
beside the toilets. I waited.

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The next day, poof, he had gone.

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Two days later, the same thing.

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Finally the rat started
to get a little bit bolder

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A few days later, there I was,
beside my friend the rat.

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I shared a few little secrets,
and told him a bit about my life.

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And he was listening.

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He was nibbling his piece of bread,
but he was listening to me.

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I was there. I had some company,
I had some support, a sympathetic ear.

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It was great.

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Anyway, I get to the end
of my 45 days of solitary,

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and it's time to leave.

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So we are sitting down, side by side,

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we looked at each other,
we said our goodbyes,

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and I promise you, I saw
a little tear, on both sides,

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and I left solitary confinement.

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I wondered to myself,
"How did I end up here?"

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And the story goes that in December 84,

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I am with a friend, a girlfriend,
my fiancé at that time,

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and I am attacked by eight skinheads.

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Back then, these were violent people,
in fact, they still are, but anyway.

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Unfortunately, I pulled out a gun,

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and I shot, because I thought
they were going to hurt her.

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I shot, and one of them died,
and one was injured.

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Two days later, I am in a prison van,

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on my way to the largest prison
in Europe, called Fleury-Merogis.

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I had never seen a prison, I had
never seen a prison van, nor a cage.

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I didn't know that they locked
human beings in cages.

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It came as quite a shock.

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I wound up in reception,
which is at the center of Fleury-Merogis,

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where new arrivals are processed.

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And that was the the first time
I had to strip in front of anyone.

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First humiliation.

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Next, I go to the registry.

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You hand over your things,
your identity card, etc.,

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and you're given a number.

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And this number, you remember
for the rest of your life.

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138496Q.

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Next, you are left in custody.

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What is prison? It is not
only the denial of freedom.

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But it is also misery, it is also
lack of hygiene, lack of care,

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overcrowding, and a whole load
of things which are really inhuman.

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And most of all, violence.

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You walk in, you have
to fight, straight away.

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It is a hard world,
and you have to survive.

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So I am in prison, I start my sentence.

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At that time, it was
the 80s, it was in 85,

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a fairly widespread illness,
is becoming an epidemic.

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So the tests started,
tests to see if you had AIDS.

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And I have a test.
And I find out that I am HIV positive.

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So, not a good start in life.

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From that point onwards,
I have only one thing on my mind,

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and that's to escape.

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Because back then, it was thought you only
had three years or five years max.

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I was obsessed with one thing: to escape.

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So I do four years in Fleury-Mérogis,
then I am transferred.

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I manage to get
a mid-sentence day release,

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because at that time,
I had a ten year sentence,

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and they knew that I had been assaulted.

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I have no hope, I am ill,
I know that I might die tomorrow,

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and I can't bear prison
any longer, the way it is.

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I can't bear the inhuman way
they treat people, any longer,

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so I go on the run.

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On the run, there aren't many options.

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To survive on the run, you need money.
You can't go to work.

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So I start stealing, and I go back

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to doing hold-ups, and I become a raider.

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I get caught, I get another 2-3 years,

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and in 93 I'm released
at the end of my sentence.

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And everything's still the same,
no cure for the illness.

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Prison had really broken me.

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I mean it's a system which makes
you violent, which changes you.

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I am 28 when I finish my sentence.

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And I relapse. I go back
to guns, and to hold-ups.

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I am in a very violent world;

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I get caught in 94.

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And I know that I will go down for years,
and that I will die in prison.

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And because I know
it's the end for me, I go for broke.

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9 October 1994, the anniversary
of the abolition of the death penalty,

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I chose this date to escape.

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I get some weapons smuggled into prison,

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I take some hostages,
and I manage to get out.

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I went on a violent rampage.
with armed robberies, hold-ups.

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Finally, in 95, I get caught
by the serious crime squad,

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and they incarcerate me.

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I end up in solitary confinement.

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because I have become dangerous
and a threat to society.

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It's true.

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Five years in solitary confinement,
seeing no-one, for all those years.

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Complete isolation.

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To survive in isolation,
the only solution,

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as there is nothing else, is to read.

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And I discovered literature.

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I started to read, and I found
in the words, a way of traveling

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and of discovering the world,
of which I had been deprived.

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The strength of the words
was something powerful,

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which could take me somewhere,
to escape, actually.

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After these years of isolation,

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in 2000, 1995-2000,

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I am finally released and I'm transferred
to La Santé detention center.

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And when I am there I meet people,

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I touch them, to see
if they are really human.

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I start living again,
and I enroll on some courses.

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Teachers come to the prison.
There is a university, Paris VII.

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There is a section called
the Section for Detainee Students,

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which is for prisoners.

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And there, I come across a teacher,

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a philosophy teacher
called François Chouquet.

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We talk, and he tells me that words

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are more powerful than weapons.

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Obviously I laughed, in the beginning.

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(Laughter)

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He is very nice, but well...

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But I continue studying,
I started to write a little,

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and he made me read
Tolstoy, Céline, Camus,

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"In Remembrance of things past,"
as if that was all I had to do;

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but he gave me something,
it was really a treasure.

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Finally, I started to write,
and I showed him my first script.

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He encouraged me.

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At last, I belonged somewhere in society,

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I existed for someone,
someone read my work.

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I belonged.

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In 2002, I am finally sentenced,
and I get 30 years.

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30 years is a long time.

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(Laughter)

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Enough to read three libraries,
François Mitterand.

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I get 30 years, 30 years.

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To tell you the truth:
when I got the sentence,

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I was transferred straight away
to a high security prison,

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and I tried to escape once more.

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(Laughter)

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I got two more years,
but it was a gamble.

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And because I couldn't bear
to be in this prison,

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I started riots, I set fire
to Clairvaux, it was terrible.

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It was hard to accept
this denial of freedom.

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By then, I had already done
about 20 years in prison.

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Finally, in 2006, I said to myself

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that it was my own harmful thinking
from which I had to escape.

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I had to become someone else,
I had had enough of it.

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In 2006, I end up in Poissy prison.

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And there, I create the first prison blog

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of a detainee, in the Nouvel Observateur.

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The first.

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Today, everyone has the Internet,
but it was me who created the first.

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In my column I described prison life,
everything which I stood for,

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how to fight against a system,
which is destroying us.

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and also the absurdity of this system.

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And other articles:
the disabled in prison, etc.

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Obviously, the prison authorities were
against it since it was against the rules.

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Any communication was forbidden,
unless it was censored first.

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To this day, they don't know how I did it.

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For four years, I got my articles on
the Internet, without them knowing.

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I also met Fabien Marceau, at a concert.

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He comes with his crutch.

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Fabien Marceau, sorry,
I mean Grand Corp Malade.

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I like the fact that because of his words,
because of his Slam a disabled person,

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could stand up and practice his art.

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So you could say that the power
of his words created this miracle.

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No need to go to Lourdes,
he did it with Slam,

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and he managed to make a career of it.

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We became mates, very friendly.

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For me too, writing enabled me,
thanks to my blog,

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to publish my first book.

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I was no longer dangerous, I was a writer.

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and a freelance one,
for the Nouvel Observateur.

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The prison authorities,
looked at me differently.

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"Something strange is happening there."

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"He must be planning another escape."

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(Laughter)

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I promise you it's true.

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I can tell you that they took
my computer, they confiscated it,

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passed it to CLIS,
to see if I had access, etc.

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The prison governor came
to ask me, "Is it really you?"

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"No, it's a lunatic who pretends
to be me, who writes this stuff.

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I promise you."

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(Laughter)

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It happened.

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(Laughter)

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It was through one of my books
that I met a young student.

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We fell in love; with writing,
anything is possible.

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We fell in love,
and after a few months, we decided,

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to have a "visiting-hours" baby.

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Because that's also
part of being human.

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So we made a baby during visiting hours.

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And in March 2008,
my little girl was born.

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(Applause)

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Two days after the birth,

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- because I didn't go
straight away, I couldn't -

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I was in the maternity ward.

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A criminal like me.

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I end up in the maternity ward,
and I go to see my baby.

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They took off my handcuffs.

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There was a window,
and I had a good look, but...

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(Laughter)

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Sometimes it's stronger
than us, but anyway.

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I took my daughter in my arms

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(Applause)

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We called her Tilelli.

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Tilelli means freedom in Kabyle,

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as it was her who managed
to get me out of prison, after 20 years.

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All of that is to tell you,
that I filed a case for parole.

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It took 2-3 years, a rock-solid case,

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because I was a father,
I had responsibilities,

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and at last the sentencing judge,

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seeing that I had already
done 25 years in prison,

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he said, "He must be released,

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because he is a journalist, and a father,

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he has become this, he has become that."

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And I managed to get my university
qualification, from Paris VII.

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(Applause)

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All that was to tell you that today,

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they think that serial offenders
should be marginalized

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that they must take a hard line,
and that they shouldn't be let out.

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But I have proved the opposite.

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Even with my background, it's possible.

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A return to real life is possible.

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And it is possible,
thanks to people and goodwill.

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And finally, in all dictatorships

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the first thing 
which goes away is culture.

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It's destroyed.

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Ignorance should even be seen
as a crime against humanity.

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It is through culture,
that I managed to pull through,

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through reading; and with teachers.

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We must encourage this sort of thing.

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I think back to Chouquet's quote,

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who said that the pen
was mightier than the sword.

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It is because of the pen
that my greatest escape succeeded.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)