User:Lennon860/Jacques Tillier

Jacques Tillier is a French journalist. He is the managing editor of the l'Union, L'Est-Éclair, Libération Champagne and L'Aisne Nouvelle. He was seriously injured in 1979 by Jacques Mesrine while working for the Minute. He was also director of the fr:Journal de l'île de La Réunion before becoming the CEO of L'Union de Reims.

Biography
After several years as a police officer in the Directorate of Territorial Security (DST), Jacques Tillier pursued a career as a journalist, he first wrote for Minute a right-wing weekly journal. Using his past police connections including his friendship to the Commissioner Lucien Aimé-Blanc, head of the central office for combating banditry(OCRB). He began to write articles in contradiction to the “honorable gangster” image Jacques Mesrine, Public Enemy Number 1 in France at the time, was trying to convey to the media. Mesrine began to threaten Tillier, but he persisted in publishing articles which refute the image of Mesrine as a modern day Robin Hood.

Tillier gained an exclusive interview with Mesrine on 10 September 1979, but Mesrine set a trap for the reporter. Mesrine and his accomplice, Charlie Bauer, drove Tillier to the Forest of Halatte brought him into a cave lit by candles forced him to strip naked and handcuffed him. Mesrine beat, tortured and humiliated Tillier claiming that he was a fascist and police informant. Mesrine then shot Tillier 3 times with a revolver: First in the face "to stop him talking crap", then in the arm "to stop him writing crap", and finally in the leg "for the pleasure of it". He then took pictures of Tillier as he lay naked and bloodied, and then left him for dead.

Tillier survived the ordeal although lost the use of one arm. After two weeks in the hospital Tillier returned to Minute, but eventually decided to leave the weekly. He became the advisor of Paul Biya, President of the Republic of Cameroon, and Lansana Conte in Guinea. Following this Tillier returned to journalism and began to work on the Journal of the Island Reunion (JIR) where he was appointed editor in the early [[1990s. JIR has been bought by the group France Antilles], a subsidiary of the [[:fr:Groupe Hersant Média|Groupe Hersant Média. He subsequently became the director and the CEO.

In his editorial published on 9 February 2008, entitled On s'en tamponne mister Président, "he announced he is leaving the Journal of the island of Reunion. He became the CEO of the daily L'Union de Reims in 2008.