Algeria: a month (almost) like any other

I thought I was lucky to be sent to prison. At that time, people in my situation were more often eliminated than imprisoned, so arriving in prison was not a tragedy – quite the opposite, in fact.
I spent a year in solitary confinement in El-Harrach. My cell measured around two metres by two point five metres. There was a squat toilet and two blankets but no window, bed or mattress. The sanitary conditions were atrocious: we were only allowed to shower once every two weeks. There were lice and rats everywhere. I couldn’t see my fellow prisoners, who were sentenced to death, but we could communicate through the wall after the guards had finished their rounds. I also learnt Arabic grammar and conjugation thanks to one of the other prisoners, Nadir H., who was an architect. Coincidentally, he was one of my clients before my arrest. Not long before, I had promised him that I would come visit him very soon. When he realised that I was now in one of the neighbouring cells, he said to me: “You promised that you’d come see me, but you didn’t tell me you’d go that far!” He was happy to see me because he’d thought I was dead. I owe him a lot.

My cell in El-Harrach adjoined the “office”, a sort of anteroom before the cells where prisoners were beaten before they were locked up. Between 8am and 6pm every day, I could hear people being beaten with rubber hoses, crying and begging. In the end, I got used to it.

I then spent two years in Tizi Ouzou, around a hundred kilometres from Algiers. There, I wasn’t in solitary confinement. It was more modern than El-Harrach. The cells, which measured around six square metres, were designed for one person but in reality, more often held four. There was also a little courtyard of around a hundred square metres. It was a little cramped for 150 people, but we could still move in it.

Every experience is different. Living conditions can vary considerably depending on the prison system, the area and the individual. When I was in solitary confinement, my fellow prisoners and I were freer than other prisoners: the fact that we were wrongly imprisoned meant that we didn’t feel as though we were in prison.

No matter how bad the prison conditions are, people can get used to them.

Of course, we were imprisoned in the worst possible conditions, but that also meant that the prison authorities had no power over us. This was not the case for other prisoners. For example, some people were in the prison infirmary in much better conditions, but the guards were constantly threatening to move them to solitary confinement, so they were not free. We were luckier than them.

Not much changed during Ramadan: things were just a bit more difficult than usual. In El-Harrach, the food was generally very bad. In the mornings, the guards brought us a drink in great basins, from which they would fill the pot we left by the door. We were also allowed some bread. It was always a few days old because it had to be quite elastic to fit between the bars.

For lunch, we had a ladleful of lentils, rice, pasta or beans, and in the evenings, we had a ladleful of soup (or at least something that looked like soup).

During Ramadan, the menu was the same; the only difference was that the two meals during the day were served at the same time, very early in the afternoon. We had plastic boxes to cover the food, but that wasn’t enough: if it was a cold day, the food was frozen by nightfall. In the end, I learnt that wrapping the plastic boxes in the blankets would keep them warm. I found myself facing a bit of a dilemma, because I didn’t like eating cold food, but I didn’t have anything else to keep me going.

At Tizi Ouzou, things were no different: we had the same meals and the same system for distributing them. However, we could reheat the food in the evenings thanks to a system involving a tin can. We obviously weren’t allowed pans or utensils!

In El-Harrach, we were allowed to receive one package per month, although these were often stolen by the guards. During Ramadan, we never received anything because all the packages were stolen.

The worst days were the celebration days. We were only allowed bread, and the guards took the day off so the cells remained locked all day.

There were no prison visits by chaplains in Algeria. Everyone who worked with the authorities was seen as complicit. Nobody wanted to talk to them, not even the prisoners who had been sentenced to death and were awaiting execution.

Visits by loved ones were complicated. In El-Harrach, I was allowed one visit per month. It lasted around ten minutes and took place over the phone, behind a plexiglass screeInterview by Clémence Bouchart and Camille Laassiri.n. In Tizi Ouzou, there were two visiting days per month. I could see my loved ones through the bars, but it was difficult to hear them because there were a lot of people, so it was very noisy. I think the families suffer a lot more than the prisoners themselves. They imagine awful things, especially the children. Visiting times are very complicated: ten minutes go by very quickly;, we don’t have the time for a proper conversation and the moment when we have to say goodbye is very painful. Sometimes I even wished that my loved ones wouldn’t come to visit me.