Brother Luc, from the Tibhirine monastery, whose abduction and tragic end in 1996 are well known, had already experienced capture. It was on July 1, 1959, in the midst of the Algerian War. The armed men who had kidnapped him only released him five weeks later. In Algeria, against all expectations, the FLN took prisoners—military but also civilians.
Brother Luc, from the Tibhirine monastery, whose abduction and tragic end in 1996 are well known, had already experienced capture. It was July 1, 1959, in the midst of the Algerian War. The armed men who had kidnapped him only released him five weeks later. In Algeria, against all expectations, the FLN took prisoners—military but also civilians, men and women—to internationalize the conflict through the actions of the International Red Cross. Many died. Their story, which is also that of the first attempt to apply the Geneva Conventions in a conflict, had never been told before. This book aims to bring them back to life, to reinstate them in our memory, and to recount as closely as possible the experience of these prisoners of the guerrilla war, strange witnesses to a war whose meaning has largely been lost.
