Interview de Jean-Marc Rouillan par Herv MONZAT, La Dpche du midi 13/11/02 .

After the liberation of Maurice Papon, did you hope that that reason of health would apply for your girlfriend Nathalie Menigon but also of Georges Cipriani? The liberation of Mauric Papon for the reason of health conformed with the eternal nature of justice in this country. Depending on whether you would be powerful or miserable, the judgments that the court renders of you are white or black The magistrates submit for humanitarian reasons when it references a criminal of war, a large hand of the state, but not when it is the life of a small thief who is simply detained. And speaking of that when it references a revolutionary prisoner, an enemy! It has been almost ten years since the psychiatrists of the HP of Villejuif concluded that the health of my friend Georges Cipriani was incompatible with detention. Though after only two months of a hunger strike in 2001, they found it necessary to move Jolle Aubron from the central prison to be hospitalized. And Nathalie Mnigon? Nathalie, meanwhile, remains detained while she has already undergone two severe strokes and the doctors fear for a third that would be fatal. She has practically lost the use of her left arm and her left leg. Today, what is the contact that you have with her? The establishments were created for those married detainees at Bapaume and Joux-la-Ville, but the connection is always exceptional. A number of couples wait in vain for years. In our case, Nathalie is in the Pas-de-Calais and I am in the Bouches-du- Rhne! On the contrary, we had the possibility to telephone each other for a half an hour every fortnight. Does she hope for liberation for the reason of health? Following the Papon case, her lawyer engaged an identical procedure. But we have no illusions. In our cases, commissioning an implementation of punishment refuses just to release the prisoners who have completed their sentence, so imagine one of four of Action directe under which crystalized just to bring to climax their hatred of revolutionary combatants. What are your conditions of imprisonment? During my last hunger strike, I was detained in an establishment that is not classified with the seal of isolation or discipline. And unless some controls and particular censures under my particular nature of political prisoner, I suffered the same treatement of the other prisoners. How do you resist isolation? Do you take medication to reduce anxiety, to sleep ? I have never taken the little pink pill, the chemical straight jacket that the prison administration deals for the soul purpose to accept the unacceptable and to try to reduce the dramatic rate of self-harm and of suicide. This legal traffic adds to the disintegration of individuals and the disintegration of the general conditions in the prisons. And deepens the situation of death and the psychiatric treatment in what must be called today the simple eliminatorium. Some find it necessary to not break

I do not condemn those that need these reliefs. They may face destructive and inhumane conditions. For my part, I believe that I will never find it necessary because I know why I was imprisoned and what the meaning of my struggle is. Nevertheless, I am free, they can do whatever they want, a part of me remains free because I never despair of the struggle for genuine freedom. What of the night, do you sometimes dream ? My dreams and my nightmares as a prisonerI try to give them shape and wring their necks in writing, for example in the novel Paul des Epinettes that I have just published or will be released soon. Writing has been an element of my resistance in face of the alienating machine of imprisonment. It has become destitute in the endings of the days and nights. Today, it is in me, in a continuous stream, and it changes my relation with prison guards and the other inmates. I am the one who reflects, not the witness of the passage, but one who sees and lives, who denounces the terrible interior machine grinding men, the terror that must accept the social norm. Do you follow the news and how ? First, it is necessary to agree on what is the news and information and what is not, but to remain in the system of propaganda, advertising and news items, I can assure you that we are connected in live. In Arles for example, in each corridor, there is at least one TV on the channel LCI. As soon as something happens, we are informed quickly that an editorial is dispatched. For the newspapers, we pay for a number of newspapers and weeklies, probably more that you can read. You see, we are citizens as well, ultimately we are equally intoxicated by the " Vulgate " and other catechumenate of right-thinking. A little of a year after the attack of September 11, what do you think of the combat against Bin Laden ? I know that confusion still reigns, but still, supposing for an instant how can I be close to the struggle of a former CIA agent, a blessed ass, a feudalist? I defend a cause, since Auguste Blanqui and maybe better and earlier than he, that has been without god and master. I do not care if it is moral, the fact that the bands of supplementary dressed, fed and armed by the Western governments with attempts at liberation and progress in the Third World and in the cities and other slums, today betray their masters and they bite. On the contrary, I regret that it is for the immense crowds misery, an important part of 90 % of the world population is exploited and oppressed by the jaws of imperialist globalization, these characters have become the heroes of the struggle. They usurp that which must be the true struggle of liberation against the dictatorship of social inequalities. In this sense, the system won two times. We measure this false alternative between two bloody barbarities, the path to be traversed by revolutionaries to straighten the flag of the exploited. Laguillier/ Besancenot: Despite their reluctance to shop, they will never by my enemies. If you could vote in the last presidential election, the revolutionary vote was what ? There exists perhaps a useful vote, a defensive vote, but there is surely no revolutionary vote in a situation of no-rights and mascarade. None. The revolutionary vote constitutes the gathering of a base, transnational networks of resistance, the direct actions workers and in neighborhoods, the conscientious opposition, direct democracy and sabotage. The mounting rise and power of the resistance of the oppresse dis antithetical to the dullness of electoral jokes ; even if to feel less

stupid, some wear bright red makeup. In your eyes, what represents Arlette Laguillier and Olivier Besancenot? I know that sectarianism is the national sport of leftism, but for me, I think both are comrades. Even if I do not agree with their haggling, at the edge of collaboration, with their reluctance to shop, but they will never be enemies to me. The struggles of our class of men with thousands of different practices, and there is a place for sincere revolutionaries. On the contrary, I criticize these headliners that trivialize the order of revolutionaries with their insipid discourse which discolors the true position of the class in their struggle to gain recognition of the workers in place of the PC. Many revolutionaries of the 1970s transitioned brilliantly into politics, business or journalism. What regard do you carry for them? I remember this quote by Brecht, Someone who fights one day, this is good, someone who fights one month, this is great, someone who fights three year, this is rare, but those who fight their entire life, these are essential. They fought and it was sometimes great, but today, they reentered the ring and have careers. This is their problem, not mine. I remark always how those who in their time were the worst of dogmatic leftist remained equally dogmatic, but today are the vulgate reactionaries. They call for bombing Americans or they still claim left! Prisons: "I am of those who denounce the terrible machine that grinds men. In hindsight, do you ever think your fate could have been different? All changed in the choice of violent actions? Regrets There is no revolutionary fight without violence; I quickly realized this in May of 68 and during my years of fighting against the dictatorship of Franco. In these hours of fire, we recall the sentence of Malcom X, one who rejects violence crosses out the word revolution in his vocabulary. Either one is consistent, or one wallows in the mascarade. There are few credible alternatives. For my part, I have always tried to stay faithful to our commitments, in the moments where we had tens of thousands or just a few hundred. And I believe that I have no personal regret because I have preserved that faithfulness and honesty that goes with it. I have paid with two decades in prison maybebut I was not for treason or collaboration. And I believe that I always knew, since the first barricade at the corner of rue des Lois in Toulouse and the first meetings with them, former anti-Franco guerrillas. The prison, the deaththe death, the prisonI will go to the end, I will do my part. "The power does not exit from prison if we abjure. You are condemned to life but your sentence comes to an incompressible term in 2007. If you could get out, will the fight continue and in what form? Every day in prison is a fight. Our liberation will be a struggle for sure. The power does not exit from prison if we abjure. To give one single example, in the coming months, the judge of application of punishment of the Centrale de Moulins refused the release of a comrade on the pretext that he was still secured to struggle of the people of Palestine! After 16 years, our detention was designed to break us politically, psychologically, and physically. If they do notand they will not succeed- I am afraid that we subsist under the perpetual real.

. After-68 in Toulouse : the years of embers, Jean-Marc Rouillan Jean-Marc Rouillan, 55 years old, co-founder of Action Directe (AD) is now on parole after 21 years in prison. In prison at night, he works as a secretary at the publishing house for the editor Agone Marseillais during the day. In From Memory (1) (Agone Editions, 2007), Jean-Marc Rouillan recounts the beginnings of his revolutionary commitments in Toulouse in 1970. First friends, first loves, first comrades, and first arms. But also descriptions of a city and an era. These are the only facts that his parole allow him to describe. He is forbidden to explain the facts which drove his double life sentence conviction with 18 years of safety in 1989 and 1994 for complicity in the assassination of Rene Audran, general engineer, and of the CEO of Renault, Georges Besse. The verb bright, the space solid, the man does not seem to carry the weight of years of isolated imprisonment from the first to the last day. This grace through writing, he said. For LibToulouse Jean-Marc Rouillan remembers the days of the beginning : autumn 1970 in Toulouse. LibToulouse : Was telling the story of the years of embers in Toulouse so important for you? Jean-Marc Rouillan : In Toulouse, the year 70 was without a doubt the most contentious period. And I was always of the idea to revive the ambiance. After the death of Henry Martin, the last old friend of our house on the rue dAquitaine, I told myself that it was time to get to work. As a number of the participants in the revolt of May 1968, I have tired of hearing that the old fighters chanted a fictious anecdote. No! May had not ended miserably when they returned from their vacations at the end of the summer of 1968. In the factories, in the universities, in the streets, the rebellion against authority lasted for years. And May 1968 does not boil down to a societal phenomenon born in a college dorm room in Nanterre. The insurrection of the youth was against imperialist agggression of the people of Vietnam against the daily drudgery of metro, work, sleep, the daily grind, that of the mass consumption against the lost life to winMay 68 in this country restituted their cause most imperatively to solve the vast problems of the exploited and oppressed people internationally. What were your reasons for involvement in early September 1970? Before then, I was too young and just followed the movement. I demonstrated and I joined up. My adolescence was inseparable from the ambient revolt. But over the months, I accumulated experience and read a lot. And after educating myself, I realized the fundamental difference between protest and dissent. Between the convoluted verbiage and direct action. Between the principled position of the leftist neighbor and the actual development of a practical position to break the system. Since much of the continents youth was of the same mind in this era, I asked myself the question, What now? What to do to leave behind the ritual of protest and of elections trapping a con? In the month of May, the song greatly desired registered at the Sorbonne so busy, responded to our questioning with this refrain: Thousand of guns, guns and riles in the hundreds and thousands. Because contrary to what commentators say, since the beginning, arms have plagued the movement. And in the first volume of From memory, I wanted to describe the climate which forced us to declare: Never without a gun! Why and how was it oriented as a fight against Franco ? In Toulouse, the last republican capital of the Spanish, it was very natural. The two big themes of the extreme left of the time claimed that we would take up arms that as traitors, we had stolen in 1945 and that we were about to face the new fascism. In our city, their translation could not be put into action on the other side of the Pyrnes. We lived 80 kms as the crow flies from the true heir of fascism of the 1930s. A dictatorship linked to

the names of Mussolini and Hitler and who was converted in the unconditional support of American imperialism. It was well thought out politically because in the peninsula existed a real revolutionary situation that incidentally became a reality in Portugal a few months later. In 1970, our small network began to act with the Basques ETA and with the autonomy of Barcelona. From Memory (1) takes place in Toulouse just after 1968. What are your memories of the city in that era? The city had not experience the urban transformation that it would undergo of the last decade. The neighborhoods garded still their proper character, I speak of their given autonomy. And the center of the city beat like a bare heart. We lived in Minimes and we fused to its collective pulse in entering through Arnaud Bernard of the Chalets. We had to cross a series of invisible borders. When we met a friend at the foot of the bridge over the canal, we addressed him : And where are you going? He invariably replied : Hebe! Im here in town. Our neighborhood was neither in the city nor in the countryside. The countryside was taking its ease after the neighborhood of Salade when the executions took place in feudal times. In the streets, we said often Hello and Good Evening even if we knew just the persons visage. I well recall a lively city with a human dimension and still profoundly marked with the nature of Occitan, grammatically speaking, and with passion of the verb. A popular nature. Did the large population of Spanish refugees in your opinion make the city of Toulouse apt for protest? I know that for the very young, it is impossible to imagine a Toulouse of popular protest. But the decades of neoliberalism had not yet been there. The fear does not cloud understanding. At this time, during a robbery turned bad on the boulevard Lascrosses, the CRS were not called in to surround the bank but to contain the crowd providing support for the hostages. They also had the applause of many inhabitants of the neighborhood. Of course the presence of thousands of refugees of the Spanish revolution affected the climate. We are only 150 km from Barcelona, one of the major cities of revolutionaries of the 20th century which had experience 3 major uprisings. With the refugees, the city was, in some ways, a legacy of that experience. In 1968, we knew the extraordinary phenomenon of two generations in the streets, the father with the daughter and the mother with the son. The Reds as we were called at the age of the refugees, without distinction, whether communists or anarchist, were the direct witnesses of the true Revolution. When they spoke to us, the small, they invariably addressed the problems with all the concrete required for such an event. You were sent with the refugees, ultimately ? They taught me that the preparation of the revolution was not to dream or to idealize, but it was indeed a task to perform and assume practically. They had known the barricades, the Aragon front, the resistance in France and also the guerilla wars against Franco. Their generation was one of revolutionary wealth, often unheard of. Sometimes, I regret not having asked for their testimony. I would have won without a doubt even more time in my experience. Anyway, they taught me a lesson that was to dominate my life as an activist. It can be summarized as follows. The bourgeois will not allow themselves to be dispossessed of their power or their wealth without a fight. Early or late, the proletariat must employ arms. From the beginning of the revolutionary process, the combatants must accumulate concrete experience with arms and their uses.

An old Argonese experiencing the armed struggle of the 1920s and 1930s smiled and explained to me: We must not be afraid to fight a little, or to fail 20 times, we are living proof because our experience was decisive when it came to Barcelona to wrest military insurgents What periods will future books cover of De memoire? Volume II describes the last day of our guerilla group in Barcelona in September 1973. Where everything is achieved in the shooting in which Salvador Puig Antich was wounded and captured. Salvador was the last tortured on the withers of Iberian history. A number of books have been written of the MIL, the Iberian Liberation Movement. Yet not one of the actors was spoken to directly in that experience. But again, I will not just recount simply the facts or retell the story according to the official version, I just cling to the atmosphere of the city and the resistance. When we thought that the revolution was truly the end of our arms around the corner. The volume concludes the trilogy returns to Toulouse, the Toulouse of the summer of 1974, the summer of the GARI (internationalist revolutionary groups). The book strives to keep our group of friends, those of the Comites dAction Lyceens of 1968, the high school north of Berthelot, a group comprised after the guerillas of Barcelona. It is a book of friendship and of camaraderie extremely happy (almost light) that contradicts the sinister claims of speech describing the armed struggle as the existence of dark monk soldiers.