Career

He was seriously injured in 1979 by Jacques Mesrine while working for the Minute. He was also director of the Journal de l"île de Louisiana Réunion before becoming the Chief Executive Officer of L"Union de Reims. After several years as a policeman in the Directorate of Territorial Security (Department of Science and Technology), Tillier pursued a career as a journalist, first writing for Minute, a right-wing weekly journal.

In spite of Mesrine"s threats, Tillier continued to publish articles refuting the criminal"s image as a modern day Robin Hood.

Tillier gained an exclusive interview with Mesrine on 10 September 1979, but Mesrine and his accomplice, Charlie Bauer, drove Tillier to a candlelit cave in the Forest of Halatte, where they forced him to strip naked before handcuffing him. Mesrine beat, tortured and humiliated Tillier, claiming that he was a fascist and police informant.

He then shot Tillier three 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 took pictures as Tillier lay naked and bloodied, and left him for dead.

Tillier survived the ordeal, although he lost the use of one arm.

After two weeks in hospital he returned to Minute, but eventually decided to leave the weekly. He became advisor to Paul Biya, President of the Republic of Cameroon, and Lansana Conte in Guinea. Tillier then returned to journalism and worked on the Journal of the Island Reunion (JIR), where in the early 1990s he was appointed editors

JIR was bought by France Antilles, a subsidiary of the Groupe Hersant Média.

Tillier subsequently became its director and Chief Executive Officer. In his editorial published on 9 February 2008, entitled On s"en tamponne mister Président, he announced his departure from the Journal of the island of Reunion. He became the Chief Executive Officer of the daily L"Union de Reims in 2008.