"You are releasable!" " These three words spoken over the intercom by a supervisor picked Willtide - the nickname this inmate chose for himself - when he left the promenade. "I didn't believe it, but I was happy," says the 19-year-old young man released a week ago from Fleury-Mérogis, in Essonne.
Time to gather his things, two hours after Willtide crossed the doors of the remand center. Fifteen days before his lawyer, Myriam Baghouli had nevertheless filed the same request for release. It had been rejected. "It was clearly the sanitary situation that brought her client out of prison," she said. But also solid guarantees and impeccable behavior in detention.
While the French find themselves slammed in their apartments, this taste of freedom nevertheless has a particular flavor. Willtide is free, but confined. Strange situation that looks like a house arrest dictated by a devious virus.
Fear of contagion
"Confinement is not welcome, but it's better to be outside," says the young man who has just spent 16 months in pre-trial detention in a 9 square meter cell, which he shared with a fellow prisoner. For any horizon "bars 22 hours a day".
The fear of contagion had become an obsession there. "There was a case in my building that has spread," says Willtide. I have a steel mind, I'm young, but on TV we talked about it all the time. It was his first incarceration. He had been implicated in a property crime case still under investigation for which he denies his participation. He still does not know when he will be tried in correctional.
His new life is also happening between four walls, but these are warmer. Willtide is hosted by his brother, in Ile-de-France. He was able to find his girlfriend, hug his mother in his arms. While in prison, the visiting rooms had just been suspended, again due to sanitary measures.
"I only go out for shopping"
If he wants, now he can go outside. But he does not abuse it. "I only go out to shop," he says. He follows the advice of his lawyer: "You're not going out," she repeated to him.
There was of course a time of acclimatization. "It made me weird to see everyone lugging around with masks," he says. He was caught up by the new constraints: “I had forgotten the paper (the derogatory exit certificate, note) . I told the police that I was leaving prison. They understood. "
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During this dotted freedom, Willtide follows a routine similar to that which he followed in prison: “I watch the same TV channels, I play on the console and I do push-ups. He is even less active than at Fleury, where he had returned to school and passed his first aid diploma.
For the moment, he cannot count on his delivery job which he had won before his release from prison. In the meantime, he keeps "his mind": "This whole story will have an end", he says, philosopher. In a month he will celebrate his 20th birthday. In complete freedom, he hopes.
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