The total or partial reproduction of this book is not allowed, nor its incorporation into a computer system, nor its transmission in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, by photocopy, by recording or other methods, without prior writing permission from the editor. The violation of the aforementioned rights may constitute an offense against intellectual property (Art, 270 et seq. of the Penal Code).

Please contact CEDRO (Spanish Reproduction Rights Centre) if you need to photocopy or scan any fragment of this work. You can contact CEDRO at the website www.conlicencia.com or by the phone at 91 702 19 70/93 272 04 47.

PROLOGUE

No one could have told me, and if they had, I would not have believed them, that I would be a writer, considering how difficult it was for me to read as a child.

Despite this, circumstances had forced me to this profession, since having as much time as I had now, locked up for life, I wouldn’t have much else to do.

It is true that some prisoners were engaged in exercising in the yard, and besides studying in the library, the weakest of them took training courses, but all of them have something that I do not have, an ideal to fight for and move forward.

With a sentence of a few months or even years, it is easy to think that the preparation will serve them well for something, and that it will be easier to make a living outside this prison, but in my case, with the certainty that I will never step outside again, what’s the point of getting ready?

Dedicated to my parents

Chapter 1. Dreams of Liberty

Chapter 2. Nothing makes sense

Chapter 3. Travel to Johannesburg

Chapter 4. The value of a life

Chapter 5. The deal

Chapter 6. Doctor Brain

Chapter 7 Flight to Johannesburg

Chapter 8 The interview

Chapter 9 The Sentence

Chapter 10. The kidnapping

Chapter 11. The new future

Chapter 1. Dreams of Liberty

Life always begins

every morning at sunrise

and whatever your circumstances are

you can enjoy its heat.

Day after day goes by

and meaningless it seems

for some people the morning

a punishment is how it seems.

It all depends on the focus

this some say

the meaning of life

and how you want to live it.

No one could have told me, and if they had, I would not have believed them, that I would be a writer, considering how difficult it was for me to read as a child.

Despite this, circumstances had forced me to this profession, since having as much time as I had now, locked up for life, I wouldn’t have much else to do.

So much has been written about me, pouring out all kinds of conjectures about my ideology and the political motivations that led me to that, and they even argued and gave opinions about my mental health, that I have decided to write my own version, perhaps it is not the truth that some could hope, very far from the conspiracy theories that so many like, but it is my truth, it is just how I lived it and it was what led me to the sad situation that I am now, condemned for life, confined and away from everything and of all, without more than a small cabin with a few belongings.

Fortunately, in this state there is no death penalty, so I have escaped certain death, since I would have been sentenced to die in a painful way, perhaps through a lethal injection, but sometimes I even wish that end instead of spending the life imprisioned.

The popular jury sentenced me to life imprisonment, as if that could somehow compensate what I did, perhaps they would hope that I would reflect and regret my actions as time passed, but these were not committed in a moment of outburst, nor carried by no kind of ideology or fanaticism.

Although I have never doubted my mental health, after months leading the same life, locked up here, knowing that the rest of my life will be exactly the same, with the same schedule day after day, I am no longer so sure of my strength mentally as this would take a toll on anyone’s health.

Also, my neighbors, if they can be called that, are not what is called an example of civility, so I cannot make any kind of friendship with these inmates, serial killers, rapists or terrorists. They are the worst of the worst, sentenced to life in this maximum security institution where there is no privacy whatsoever.

Yes, even if they had only assigned me to a normal jail, at least there I could have some life and privacy.

Here everything could be seen, and we never stopped being scrutinized by the guards, who seemed to be determined to know everything about us, as if the countless interrogations they had subjected me to at the time had not been enough for me to tell them everything I knew.

Now with time, I have doubts about some dates, or events that happened, that is why I have decided to tell my story from the beginning.

It is not that I want to justify myself or anything like that, I know that what I have done is, at the very least, unforgivable, and I am sure that the sentence I have is fair, only that the same routine becomes unbearable every day.

I don’t know how others do it, a lot has been heard from those who try to flee, or from those who end up taking refuge in a religion, but in my case I have no hope of salvation for my soul.

When one runs over someone while intoxicated, or has an accident by overturning the vehicle that he is driving carrying a score of passengers, causing the death of some of them, one can come to repent and ask for forgiveness to the victims, One can even justify oneself that it was not intended, and that, if the circumstances had been different, none of it would have happened, but it is not my case, it never was.

Nor is it that I consider or compares myself with one of those psychopaths, serial killers or terrorists, capable of killing in cold blood, without feeling any kind of remorse, or with those who seem to enjoy hurting others.

I am just a normal man who has made a decision, I do not know what to call it, perhaps the right word is “drastic”, but I am sure that anyone else in my place would have made it.

Some may see me as a kind of vigilante, as some newspapers have described me, or perhaps as enlightened, as others have described me, but I do not feel either one or the other.

If they asked me, I would say that I am a normal man doing what my conscience dictated, it is true that this may not be the best, nor the most appropriate, but it was the only thing I could do.

Now with time, I think that I could have other opportunities, other methods and ways of doing things, that did not lead to this end, but in those moments, perhaps due to pressure, it can be that, led by the circumstances, I had not seen any other option.

Many media have judged and condemned me, even before knowing my version, so in the trial on several occasions the judge had to silence those who wanted to recriminate my actions, with insults and even threats.

To tell the truth, this jail may not be so bad after all, since it protects me from such an agitated mass that wanted to take justice into their own hands, seeking to end my life, for an act of a few seconds.

I do not try to justify what I did, not even the consequences of my actions, although sometimes I doubt that my sentence is fair, since there are worse people who spend just a few months locked up and are released, as if they had already been redeemed from their sins.

The certainty that those are worse than me, is that in a short time they return to prison for a new crime.

On the other hand, I have only committed a single crime in my life, if it can be called that, a fact that has changed everything I had thought about my future.

Although they call me a lone wolf, I once had a house, family and friends, and I have nothing left of that now.

The only memory of my past are those newspaper clippings, which call me a cold and calculating murderer, one of the worst in history, compared to the anarchists, who have tried to change the history of a country based on guns or bombs.

And of course, my number, the one I wear on my clothes and by which they call me when a guard wants to address me, as if I had no name.

All my life I have been called by that name my parents gave me, and suddenly, since I came here, no one has ever called me that again.

Only my lawyer has ever called me by my name, well, I say my lawyer not to mention my lawyers, given the many that I have had and that have not lasted.

Public lawyers obliged by the bar association to give legal attention to even to the worst people, who, in my case, precisely because of what I had done, no one wanted to represent me and they looked for any excuse to leave the case.

Nobody wanted to see their professional career tainted with my case on their resume, something that bothered me a lot at first, since I live in a country where even prisoners are supposed to have the right, but I learned to accept it over time.

On the other hand, and to my surprise, there are other cases, equally despicable like mine, that due to the notoriety they arouse in public opinion, they even fought to defend them, whether they were multiple murderers or rapists, all for a good headline.

In my case, it is not that my crime is one of the worst, or maybe it is, but what I did not have was what is called good press, on the contrary, the media had primed me, they had scrutinized my intentions, my life, my relationships and even my history, and everything had been presented in a twisted way so that it seemed that I was born to commit that act.

Even when I had given an interview to explain my reasons, they had only uttered those phrases or words that supported my guilt, not letting the general public hear my version.

Hence, I have decided to write my memoirs, so to speak, that is, my version of the events that led me to be the media center of the country, as well as the most hated man of the moment, if this is something that could be measured somehow.

In my years in prison, I have seen many types of prisoners, but I don’t think there was any like me who had a clear conscience knowing that what they had done was fair and necessary, despite the sacrifice that it implied.

Day after day I remember that moment that changed my life and that of so many, for an act qualified as one of the most horrible that has been ever possible to commit.

Although from time to time a chaplain comes here hoping that I will repent, I always tell him that I have a clear conscience and although the means may not be the most appropriate, the purpose justified it.

In truth, no one knows what it feels like when everyone looks at you badly, and I don’t mean what the homeless person who lives on the street may feel and who just receives any attention from others; if not from the looks and feelings of contempt that they had never felt.

Since the police caught me, I went from being a person to being, I don’t know how to say it, but those looks, gestures and even the treatment I received were anything but cordial.

I do not even think that animals should be treated in this way, as if touching me supposed that some kind of infection for the policemen who were guarding me, avoiding looking at me, or if they did, it was with looks of contempt.

It is true that my act may be despicable, but even so, I do not stop being a person, who has committed a wrong act, but a person, after all.

But what hurts me the most of all is the issue of family, it is true that I did not have a close relationship with my closest family, but years have passed and I have not received a single visit, not even a note or letter, that has hurt me a lot.

I still get some invitation to a television program, to tell what happened from the point of view of the dramatization of my actions, that is, as a way to sell books or documentaries using my name and my actions, using for such purpose, actors who highlight a part of me that I’ve never had.

Envy, persecutory ideas or even insanity are the attributes that these actors usually exhibit who try to explain through the drama the events that some claimed could have changed the course of history.

And that is precisely where I agree with the journalists, my ultimate intention was precisely that, neither more nor less, to change the story, or, rather, to change the story that will come and nobody wants to hear about that.

They prefer to hear criminals who claim to hear voices that tell them to commit despicable acts, and even those who seem predisposed to crime from a young age because they suffered some kind of trauma, but my version is at least not very credible and therefore they prefer to ignore it.

Sometimes they have been compared me to a religious fanatic due to my convictions and justifications for my actions, although I have always said that it is not a religion, or to follow some written precept, if not a question of basic morality.

But when I had tried to explain how anyone else in my circumstances would have ended up doing the same, the journalists have even gotten up and interrupted the interview, as if I had offended them with my words.

That is, if you have a mental problem, or if you were traumatized as a child, society comes to justify and even “understand” any atrocity, but if it is a moral issue, they do not even listen to you.

I’d have liked to have made some kind of radio or television program around the issue, based on my precepts, to try to understand or at least discuss whether or not my actions were justified, but that had been so socially serious that no one would think of it.

The only things I had received were insults, threats and contempt from everyone, in such a way that when picking up the members of the jury who were going to judge me they found it difficult since most of the population was inclined to condemn me without even having started the trial.

And about the defense, that was another, no one wanted to defend me despite the fact that the constitution supported me in having legal advice, but there was no one who wanted to see their name stained with this case, not even those who liked to litigate against the interests of the government, or who, as they said, wanted to change the things.

It had to be a foreigner, one of those who studied in their country of origin and who requested at the time the validation of their degree, for which they had to return to supervised practices repeating the internship, who was the only one in the end who agreed to defend me, if you can call it that, for he was also sure of my guilt.

To tell the truth, I was too, at least I knew what I had done, how and why, and although I was not prepared for a life sentence, I knew that my actions were socially reprehensible and therefore that I had to pay for it.

Although I have not considered myself a religious person, I do believe that I have some solid moral values, adjusted to the society in which I have lived, being respectful of the norms and rules of coexistence.

Hence, despite how much they inquired about my past, they did not find those “symptoms” that criminals seem to have, such as petty theft, petty crimes, or transgressions of morals during childhood, to gradually increase in terms of its frequency and intensity during adolescence, until reaching its maximum expression in adult life.

But in my case they did not discover anything similar, which is why they always thought that I had an accomplice, that is, that there was a thinking head, and that I was only the executing arm.

They even argued that I had been brainwashed, or something similar, but all of the drug and psychological tests that I passed came back negative, I had not suffered any kind of external influence that would subdue my will or something like that.

I know they didn’t quite understand me, and that probably in other circumstances I wouldn’t either, but what I did was conscious and meditated.

Despite admitting my guilt, it is difficult to get up every day knowing that it will be exactly the same as yesterday and the day before yesterday, and also that it will be repeated tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, for the rest of my life.

Some prisoners, the most fortunate, are anxious for the days to pass so they can have a visit from a relative or loved one, but no one has visited me for a long time.

Since the conviction was handed down, not even the defense attorney has come to see how I am.

Just when there is a case review to be carried out, and because it is mandatory by law, a prison attorney appears to inform me that a committee must decide whether or not to keep the conditions of my sentence, a procedure that must be carried out, since my crime is unforgivable and for many years that pass I do not think they will forget it.

Perhaps it was not so bad at the end at all, because if they had tried and convicted me in the military field, they say the facilities are worse, since those who go there have a specific training in the art of war, what that makes them dangerous to their own people, and that, despite the fact that some journalists had tried to have me prosecuted in the military sphere, the judge did not understand that it was necessary.

Not that bad, I can’t imagine following a military schedule for the rest of my life, accompanied by convicts who are real killing machines, and that any bad look can be considered an assault.

It is not that I am one of those who seek a fight, or anything like that, but in such a small center, conflicts and misunderstandings are frequent.

On more than one occasion, a simple blow when going out to the yard has been enough to start a fight, which on the same day or in the future has meant that they have attacked and even killed one of those involved.

A situation that has led me to think that I am better off alone than with one of those small groups that are formed among prisoners, where a leader directs a part of the yard and those who pass through that area must obey his orders and even his whims.

At least that is how the majority of prisoners live it, those who have committed minor crimes, or who have little left to get out of jail.

In my case, locked up for life in a maximum security prison, there are hardly any riots, since the guards try to ensure that there are no more than two or three people in the yard at a time, thus avoiding confrontations or what is worse, letting them make some kind of plan, since these prisoners are really dangerous.

At the first in that world, I knew nothing, and I felt safe complying with the regularity that was established, and taking advantage of the free time to carry out some activity or to be in the library.

But on one occasion I was able to witness one of the prisoners being executed by others, apparently for no reason, and from that day on I preferred my cell to spend my free time.

That led me to become a great reader, since I didn’t have much else to do between those three walls, since the gate does not count.

And over time, I thought and decided to start writing, something that has led me to complete this book.