Death in Bruchsal Jail by Thomas Meyer Falk (august 04)

Stefan was serving a long jail sentence in Bruchsal detention facility (Justizvollstreckungsanstalt) with following security detention, as he had injured a warder in his last escape. After his arrest he sat several years in isolation, in Luebeck amongt other places, and from there he was shifted to Bruchsal, where after a few months isolation he was at least chilled out enough to take part in the junior high course in the prison school.

There I got to know him, as the schoolrooms are in the cellar of the jail and they have windows toward the prison yard. As I can leave my cell daily to walk in this yard we started to talk as he stood at the window during a break in class and saw me walking alone in a circle.

He told of his interest in Latin America (he spoke spanish too) and his hope after jail to be able eventually to live there. In the short conversations with him it occured to me that his fingers were constantly moving nervously a bit, apparently one of the possble consequences of longterm lone detention described in the literature: so called motor unrest.

His favourite author, as he informed me, was the Columbian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, born in 1928, and one of his favourite books that writers novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude". Stefan died alone on the 23rd June 2004; he slashed his wrists and was found dead in his cell by the warders in the morning.

http://www.freedom-for-thomas.de/thomas/texte2/isoha/R7uHaY7CyX.shtml