Criminal
01-07-2003, 01:20 AM
Devils Island Imprisoned by the past.
Ian James
Associated Press
Once there was no escape from Devil's Island. Now there is no access.
The twist may be unintended but visitors to what used to be the world's most infamous prison are now warded off by a sign reading, "Access to Devil's Island strictly forbidden."
Year after year from the 19th Century and well into the 20th, inmates dreamed in vain of leaving the tiny island of palm trees and jagged volcano stone adn returninghome across the Atlantic to France.
Now the ruins of their stone houses lie crumbling, but the island remains a byword for cruelty immortalized in the memoirs of Henri "Papillon" Chariere and the notorious, anti-Semitism-driven miscarriage of justice against Alfred Dreyfus, a French Army Captain.
Devils' Island and its two sister islands are seperated by about 250 yards of water and lie 8 miles off the South American mainland. Until 1946, they were the most isolated penitentiary in the French Empire.
Today the Iles du Salut, or Islands of Salvation are the most popular tourist destination in French Guiana. Each year, thousands visit Royale, the largest island, once the administrative center. and the first stop for convicts.
The tourists step off ferry boats within sight of a channel where jailers threw dead prisoners to the sharks, not bothering to give them a proper burial.
Of the three islands that rise from the Atlantic Ocean in a snug triangle, Only Ile du Diable - Devil's Island - is closed to the public. There is no dock on the rugged shore that gave teh island its name, and the administrators say swift currents make boat landings too hazardous.
A Very Bad History
"I think its better nobody goes," tour guide Bernadette Harlepp says as she sails past the island on a catamaran. "It has a very bad history. Its out of respect for the past."
During nearly a century starting with 1852, some 70,000 convicts were sent to the bagnes - penal colony of French Guiana. Diseses such as yellow fever and dysentery killed thousands. Many died without ever seeing France again.
"Devils Island and the bagnes will always be remain a shameful, indelible stain on France's history," says Denis Seznec, whose grandfather, Guillaume Seznec, was imprisoned on Royale for 14 years. "The cruelist thing about the island was that they mixed the worst criminals with all the rest. Savage murderers were put together with petty theives and those arrested for being vagabonds."
His grandfather was convicted of murder but proclaimed his innocence until his death in France in 1954. Seznec, 55 says the history of the islands is "a reminder that the greatest countries - and the greatest ideas - can produce horrible monstrosities."
Charriere, called "Papillion" for the butterfly tatoo on his chest, recalled the horrors of prison life in his 1969 autobiography, which later became a movie "Papillon" staring Steve McQueen and Dustan Hoffman.
Dinner bell for the sharks
Papillon described sharks answering a ringing bell by rushing to the channel to devour convicts' corpses as they slid off the boat. The few burial plots were reserved for guards and their families.
Nowadays tourists bathe in the waters and sharks are seldom seen.
The French National Space Agency assumed ownership of the islands in 1971, and launches Ariane rockets from the mainland carrying satellites; infrared telescopes on Royale trackrockets as they arc toward space. As a safety measure, all 15 employees of the inn on Royale re evacuated to the mainland during launches.
There is no such uses for Devil's Island, which lies abandoned, thickly covered with coconut palms. And there are no plans to open it to tourism like that other famous island prison, Alcatraz in the United States.
Pierre Moskwa of the Guina Space Center says Devil's Island should sty off-limits to visitors and serve as a monument to the past.
"Its's a sanctuary," he said.
Across the water, on Royale, is a sanctuary of a different kind, where tourists sleep comfortably in jailers homes that have been converted into holiday cottages.
At Royale's prison compound, rust crumbles from cell bars and iron shackle rings. In a courtyard, four concrete blocksthat used to support a guillotine lie on earth once stained with blood.
At that time all of French Guiana was a penal colony, and many prisoners never left the South American mainland. But hundreds of serious offenders were sent to the island.
Devil's Island, the smallest of the three and most exposed to the waves and wind was for political prisoners. Many were free to move about the island, a 15-minute walk from end to end.
Incorrigable convicts were sent to St. Joseph Island for solitary confinement in a comnfinement compound that prisoners called "mangeuse d'hommes" or devourer of men.
Prisoners weren't allowed to speak a word and could only see guards pacing above them through barred ceilings. Sentences ranged from 6 months to 5 years. Some convicts went mad, others killed themselves.
Papillon described a 2 year stint in which he paced in his cell and lay still on his wooden bunk as poisonous centipedes crawed over him.
Trees haunt the halls
More than a half-century later, the roots of ficus trees as thick as thighs stretch through the corridors and down uneven stone steps. The air is eerily still inside the high walls that block the breeze.
Madeleine Calcagni, who runs the inn and resturant on Royale, stays away from St. Joseph.
"I couldn't do business over there because people there suffered a lot, and you can feel it," she says.
Perhaps the most famous of those held on Devil's Island was Dreyfus, a Jew falsely accused of spying for the Germans and imprisoned alone on the island from 1895 oto 1899. The victim of a parozysm of French anti-semitism and an army too proud to admit that it made a mistake, he was isolated in a small stone house, tormented by mosquitos, ravenous ants and lonliness.
"Impossible to sleep," Dreyfus wrote in his diary the night of April 14, 1895. "This cage, in front of which the watchman walks like a phantom that appears in my dreams, the itch of all the beasts taht run across my skin, the anger that roars in my heart."
Dreyfuss eventually returned to France when evidence pointed to another officer, and he was exonerated.
Ian James
Associated Press
Once there was no escape from Devil's Island. Now there is no access.
The twist may be unintended but visitors to what used to be the world's most infamous prison are now warded off by a sign reading, "Access to Devil's Island strictly forbidden."
Year after year from the 19th Century and well into the 20th, inmates dreamed in vain of leaving the tiny island of palm trees and jagged volcano stone adn returninghome across the Atlantic to France.
Now the ruins of their stone houses lie crumbling, but the island remains a byword for cruelty immortalized in the memoirs of Henri "Papillon" Chariere and the notorious, anti-Semitism-driven miscarriage of justice against Alfred Dreyfus, a French Army Captain.
Devils' Island and its two sister islands are seperated by about 250 yards of water and lie 8 miles off the South American mainland. Until 1946, they were the most isolated penitentiary in the French Empire.
Today the Iles du Salut, or Islands of Salvation are the most popular tourist destination in French Guiana. Each year, thousands visit Royale, the largest island, once the administrative center. and the first stop for convicts.
The tourists step off ferry boats within sight of a channel where jailers threw dead prisoners to the sharks, not bothering to give them a proper burial.
Of the three islands that rise from the Atlantic Ocean in a snug triangle, Only Ile du Diable - Devil's Island - is closed to the public. There is no dock on the rugged shore that gave teh island its name, and the administrators say swift currents make boat landings too hazardous.
A Very Bad History
"I think its better nobody goes," tour guide Bernadette Harlepp says as she sails past the island on a catamaran. "It has a very bad history. Its out of respect for the past."
During nearly a century starting with 1852, some 70,000 convicts were sent to the bagnes - penal colony of French Guiana. Diseses such as yellow fever and dysentery killed thousands. Many died without ever seeing France again.
"Devils Island and the bagnes will always be remain a shameful, indelible stain on France's history," says Denis Seznec, whose grandfather, Guillaume Seznec, was imprisoned on Royale for 14 years. "The cruelist thing about the island was that they mixed the worst criminals with all the rest. Savage murderers were put together with petty theives and those arrested for being vagabonds."
His grandfather was convicted of murder but proclaimed his innocence until his death in France in 1954. Seznec, 55 says the history of the islands is "a reminder that the greatest countries - and the greatest ideas - can produce horrible monstrosities."
Charriere, called "Papillion" for the butterfly tatoo on his chest, recalled the horrors of prison life in his 1969 autobiography, which later became a movie "Papillon" staring Steve McQueen and Dustan Hoffman.
Dinner bell for the sharks
Papillon described sharks answering a ringing bell by rushing to the channel to devour convicts' corpses as they slid off the boat. The few burial plots were reserved for guards and their families.
Nowadays tourists bathe in the waters and sharks are seldom seen.
The French National Space Agency assumed ownership of the islands in 1971, and launches Ariane rockets from the mainland carrying satellites; infrared telescopes on Royale trackrockets as they arc toward space. As a safety measure, all 15 employees of the inn on Royale re evacuated to the mainland during launches.
There is no such uses for Devil's Island, which lies abandoned, thickly covered with coconut palms. And there are no plans to open it to tourism like that other famous island prison, Alcatraz in the United States.
Pierre Moskwa of the Guina Space Center says Devil's Island should sty off-limits to visitors and serve as a monument to the past.
"Its's a sanctuary," he said.
Across the water, on Royale, is a sanctuary of a different kind, where tourists sleep comfortably in jailers homes that have been converted into holiday cottages.
At Royale's prison compound, rust crumbles from cell bars and iron shackle rings. In a courtyard, four concrete blocksthat used to support a guillotine lie on earth once stained with blood.
At that time all of French Guiana was a penal colony, and many prisoners never left the South American mainland. But hundreds of serious offenders were sent to the island.
Devil's Island, the smallest of the three and most exposed to the waves and wind was for political prisoners. Many were free to move about the island, a 15-minute walk from end to end.
Incorrigable convicts were sent to St. Joseph Island for solitary confinement in a comnfinement compound that prisoners called "mangeuse d'hommes" or devourer of men.
Prisoners weren't allowed to speak a word and could only see guards pacing above them through barred ceilings. Sentences ranged from 6 months to 5 years. Some convicts went mad, others killed themselves.
Papillon described a 2 year stint in which he paced in his cell and lay still on his wooden bunk as poisonous centipedes crawed over him.
Trees haunt the halls
More than a half-century later, the roots of ficus trees as thick as thighs stretch through the corridors and down uneven stone steps. The air is eerily still inside the high walls that block the breeze.
Madeleine Calcagni, who runs the inn and resturant on Royale, stays away from St. Joseph.
"I couldn't do business over there because people there suffered a lot, and you can feel it," she says.
Perhaps the most famous of those held on Devil's Island was Dreyfus, a Jew falsely accused of spying for the Germans and imprisoned alone on the island from 1895 oto 1899. The victim of a parozysm of French anti-semitism and an army too proud to admit that it made a mistake, he was isolated in a small stone house, tormented by mosquitos, ravenous ants and lonliness.
"Impossible to sleep," Dreyfus wrote in his diary the night of April 14, 1895. "This cage, in front of which the watchman walks like a phantom that appears in my dreams, the itch of all the beasts taht run across my skin, the anger that roars in my heart."
Dreyfuss eventually returned to France when evidence pointed to another officer, and he was exonerated.