It was more than 30 years ago that Alain Olivier was subjected to the death penalty in a dirty overcrowded Thai prison, but the memories still haunt him.
In a recent interview, he talked about what it was like to be tied up with 40 pounds of chains and lying on a concrete floor in a cell with no toilet. He recounts a particularly intense monsoon when it rained for 14 days straight and all of the sewers in the prison backed up, spewing waste into the cells. In the first Thai prison where he was housed, there were 100 prisoners in each cell.
“When you get in an environment like that in a Thai prison, it’s your animal instincts that kick in,” said Olivier, 66.