Henri Alleg
in Hommage à Léo Matarasso, Séminaire sur le droit des peuples Cahier réalisé par CEDETIM-LIDLP-CEDIDELP, Février 1999
I had picked him up at the airport, in a beat-up old four-horse car… our cars, mine and those of our fellow journalists, had been seized – and I had apologized for not being able to offer him a vehicle worthy of his rank… This made him smile… but he bravely took his seat, and I marveled at seeing this great Parisian lawyer who impressed me so much, accept so willingly to be my passenger, with all the risks that this represented… and not only political… Especially since the engine, as soon as it was started, coughed like crazy, stopped at its own whim, and I had to lift the hood and, with a screwdriver, cause the spark that would make it start again. On the way to the airport in Algiers, this had happened several times, and Léo, perhaps worried but always smiling, saw in this incident only the poetic aspect: “You have to make the miraculous spark”, he joked, with all the humour and bonhomie that I had many times the opportunity to appreciate afterwards, and in much more dramatic circumstances, as we know.
– Doesn’t that scare you? I said.
You know, I like to live dangerously!
Such was Léo, so smilingly polite, always with a background of irony that endeared him to me from the very first moments of our meeting. Not at all the kind of cold, distant lawyer, concerned only with the cause, not with people… For example, when I had almost completely disappeared from the eyes of the world, which thought I was dead as well, Léo had sent Gilberte, my wife, flowers from me… It was a gesture that came from him… a very personal way of giving her back hope, of telling her that all was not lost…
I also had, on several occasions, the opportunity to admire the man of culture, discreet and profound, that he was, without ever showing it off… And for me, a journalist from a colonial country, a bit provincial, it was always a pleasure to discuss with him so many political, legal or literary subjects. And for his part, Léo discovered through me and my other militant and journalist comrades, all of whom were being prosecuted and some of whom had already been arrested, the colonial system of this country where the law was commonly violated, where torture was common practice, encouraged by corrupt and complicit magistrates and judges.
After that first meeting at Algiers airport, I went into hiding, then I was arrested, and it was in prison that I saw Léo again: in Barberousse prison, where he had obtained visiting rights. In the meantime, as I recounted in my book, I had fallen into the hands of the parachutists, had been tortured, left for dead, and then locked up in the Lodi camp: and, no more from the house of torture than from this concentration camp, one could not communicate with the outside world.
And that’s when a group of lawyers, including Léo, stepped in and took up the cause of the Algerian prisoners, communists or not, arrested and tortured for their convictions and their fight for an independent Algeria. It was a group of totally voluntary lawyers, with no protection; people who really risked their lives to save ours, and to denounce the abuses of which we were the victims. Léo was particularly known for his sympathy towards us, and the risks he ran at any time, we knew, and were infinitely grateful to him.
Especially since we had no Algerian lawyers to rely on; those who were on our side, from the FLN or the PCA, had all been arrested and thrown in jail; and the others, Europeans, supporters of French Algeria, would have rather sunk us than defended us, or else would have done so only for a large fee, and on dubious legal grounds; which, in any case, we would have refused.
So, in prison, we lived in a kind of permanent waiting, and Léo’s visits to the visiting room of the Barbarossa prison, it was more than a lawyer’s visit to his client – again, he was a volunteer – it was also a visit of friendship, and it gave us courage for a long time, because the information he gave me, I could pass it on to the other inmates, and that helped them, of course, to hold on.
And so, from visit to visit, I told Léo what had happened to me, the torture I had been subjected to, and Léo told me: “You must write it down, you must write it down”. And how? Three of us in a cell, no chair, no table, just a straw mattress on the floor, and a hole in the floor as a toilet… No paper … except toilet paper… We were constantly watched, searched… so how could we escape the vigilance of the guards? Léo told me: “You manage… you, you are a journalist, nine tenths of the other prisoners are illiterate, you are the only one who can do it. “.
So I went back to my cell with a task… to get from the inside to the outside, but that meant overcoming nameless difficulties. All the same, we finally got a notebook, a pencil, and I started to write, page after page, which had to be hidden as soon as I wrote it… So there was no time to proofread… And how to get them out?
In the visiting room, yes. Because in the lawyers’ visiting room, there were no gates or bars; it was a small glassed-in area, surrounded by guards, but with a table in the middle, which allowed things to be passed underneath… And as one was searched before and after, one had to find more or less safe hiding places… in one’s clothes, one’s shoes… small bills folded in quarters, in eights… And Léo could also be searched on his way out. So, in this eventuality, I always began my notes with a very neutral and official introduction, such as: “Dear Master, here are some new elements that may help you in my defense… “. Well, it was very risky all the same!
So these leaflets ended up in France, and Léo passed them on to Gilberte, my wife, and then to friends of the Party, who simply wanted to make a pamphlet out of them for distribution by the Party.
Léo spoke out against this: Léo wanted it to get out of the small circle – even if it was big at the time – of communists. A publisher had to be found, and it was Léo who fought to find one…
So finding it was easy, in a way… All the publishers recognized that it was a capital testimony, a document that absolutely had to be published… but none of them took the risk… and it was finally Jérôme Lindon who, courageously, published it with Editions de Minuit, in February 1958.
Léo was rightly very happy, very proud, of the result; and I didn’t realize then the repercussions that this book would have.
Then came the preparation for the trial! The “official” trial, where we were to be judged for “criminal association”. There were about ten of us, including Maurice Audin – absent, and for good reason, since he had died under torture, but whose authorities maintained that he had escaped, and that they had lost track of him! Because they were afraid of this trial, afraid of having to bring a dead murdered man before a court, the authorities kept the investigation going for more than three years, and finally the trial took place, but behind closed doors. Léo had fought against this in camera trial, telling the judges: “Everything that will be said here will be known in France and throughout the world, everything that you will prevent from being said will also be known, I swear it.
It was very strong, very moving, in front of the journalists present, and of an exemplary courage, which imposed itself on all.
(interview by Vera Feyder)