DN Note: We have decided to post these two texts from Christos Tsakalos, a former member of anarchist urban guerrilla organization Conspiracy of Cells of Fire, who represented a “third pole” of anarchist thought in Greece, anarcho-individualism and nihilism, contrasting it with social anarchism and insurrectionary anarchism.
Since mid-November 2010, Tsakalos had been at large, as a warrant for his arrest was issued shortly after the arrest of his brother Gerasimos. On March 14, 2011, he and four other comrades were arrested in Volos. He was prosecuted for the “Volos case” (alleged bank robbery, while being dressed up like cops), for his involvement with explosives and guns, which were found on other people prosecuted for the same case (arrests in Pireus and Kallithea), for the 14 parcel bombs case, for the case concerning 250 attacks by CCF between 2008 and 2011, for the text in solidarity with Anarchist Squat Nadir (second eviction in October 2011), written by CCF, for his personal text denying the cooperation with prosecuting authorities (instigating violence), for an attempted prison escape along with another three CCF’s members in December 2011 and for taking three prison guards hostage and for instigation concerning “Phoenix” project. He is also prosecuted for an attack at a bank in the centre of Athens, in 2007, as his DNA was allegedly found on the scene. He was also prosecuted by the Italian state after a law suit by former Italian prime minster Silvio Berlusconi, concerning the parcel bomb which was shipped to him and he was also under investigation concerning “Ardire” case, which was launched on June 2012 by the Italian prosecuting authorities.
Christos was serving originally 7 years for charges stemming from the ‘Halandri’ case and 24 years and 2 months for the Fire Cells Conspiracy case. In 2016 he was sentenced to a further 115 years for an attempted escape from prison and other CCF attacks.
On 24/7/2019 under the provisions of the Paraskevopoulos Law, Christos and his brother Gerasimos who were serving time as members of the “Conspiracy of Cells of Fire” were released, having served a third of their reduced sentences.
Christos was arrested on 09/02/2024 in an operation that involved a supposed police informer who has been paid 20,000 euros. He had been originally accused of involvement in the Greek Mafia, especially in bombings that have occured in a mafia war that has been raging in Greece for several years now. He was coonected originally to two Greek navy SEAL members, arrested at the same time elsewhere, who had with them explosives most likely taken from a military base. This connection with the others, including with the the mafia, bombings and other larger charges have been dropped. He has been imprisoned for 2 years and 1 month without appeal under the newly passed Penal Code, for the misdeamours of a pistol with bullets and drugs that were discovered in a property he was staying at that was not his own.
DN Update: We also add the introductory text of the comrades from Informativo Anarquista & their translattion of the two texts further below. We agree with our Chilean comrades analysis of the situation surrounding comrade Christos Tsakalos. We would like to add that for too long there has been a putrid smell of not only propaganda vomited by the Greek media about Christos and other former members/comrades of CCF but also we are aware of the slander and gossip in anarchist circles, the movement in Greece & internationally, who even replicate the words of the media scum, state and cops.
We are reminded of the quote from a poster in solidarity with the CCF:
“The Slime of the Media feeds the unstoppable Terrorlust of the TV Audience”
On February 10, 2024, police raided four houses, investigating a possible exchange of explosives. The detainees are two members of the Greek Navy, a nightclub bouncer and comrade Christos Tsakalos, a former member of the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire.
According to the Greek press, pistols, ammunition of various calibers, fragmentation and incendiary grenades, flares, industrial fuse, detonators and two sealed boxes filled with TNT were seized during the raids.
The Navy members were referred to a Maritime Court, for possession of explosives and weapons, while the discotheque bouncer and Christos Tsakalos were prosecuted for the crime of arms control.
Finally, an Athens Court sentenced comrade Christos Tsakalos to two years and one month in prison without parole.
Note from Informativo Anarquista
The almost non-existent translations, dialogues and information exchanges dangerously distance us from the anarchist realities of other territories, especially when we speak different languages, therefore, we do not know more details about what the hegemonic press has vomited against comrade Christos after his release from prison and his new arrest.
Whatever the scum of power may say about our comrades must be read with the utmost care, as they are ultimately the complicit voice of our enemies, their propaganda tool. Their headlines, news and reports are nothing more than the graphic representation of the hatred and fear that Power has towards anarchist ideas and practices, against our history, our memory, prisoners, fugitives, dead and active comrades in the work of revolt. Let us understand that their designs and fantasies will never be the truth, they will always be an easy trigger to delegitimize our denials.
For months the Greek media has been linking the comrade with the mafias dedicated to the smuggling of fuel, designating him almost as the leader of one of the most powerful groups in the sector, also linking him with bombs that have detonated in Greece and that the police attribute to territorial disputes between mafias.
As Informativo Anarquista, we recognize Christos Tsakalos as a comrade, we believe in his warrior word. It is the voice of the comrades the only channel of communication we have between anarchists, without intermediaries or representatives.
We encourage you to review and correct the translations below.
Source: Informatovo Anarquista
And now some truth gentlemen…
One misdemeanor two years in jail, that’s the math of the new penal code. First they set up a fearful lie with “terrorists” and Greek Mafia that eventually scared the lie itself. They linked me to ΟΥΚαδες*, who I not only did not know, but value-wise and ideologically we are in opposite worlds . They linked me to “Greek Mafia” bombs which is a place that makes me sick. They used two of my personal friendships with people who have died to set up a script that would give medals to the Ministry of Civil Protection and feed lies to willing journalists. Their lie was exposed, but no one will talk about it.
During my time in prison I had developed friendships with various people who had experienced the conditions of incarceration with me. These friendships did not mean professional cooperation or common goals in our further life. The truth is simple and clear. The friendship I had with certain people, who have now been dead for some time, had nothing to do with either their professional or any other occupations. Their own business, choices, friendships and enmities were their own business, not mine. The media has dubbed me as a man who owned, not one but more than one, petrol stations in partnership with other people. A lie that never and nowhere has the slightest grain of truth and I challenge the police or the media who are so fond of repeating it to report the slightest evidence to back it up. Where I operate professionally is fully known to the counter-terrorism and all the other police agencies that have been watching me for years at my place of work. Then, in addition to being potentially involved in fuel smuggling schemes, they are now trying to make their stories even more inflated by trying to implicate me in cases involving cigarette smuggling and clashes between people involved in it… Another outright lie and I challenge the police and the media who are now reproducing it to find the slightest evidence that shows any connection to anything like this. The police who have had me under constant “surveillance” since my release if there was the slightest basis in these fictions you can be sure that they would have already set up an inflated case to sell another one of their “successes”. They even went so far as to report that they are even considering my involvement in blowing up the Aegina water pipeline, far surpassing previous stages of ridiculousness.
My life path was and is different. I had and have no connection with these places and if the media that are so fond of reproducing it, let them say a single fact, apart from the existence of certain friendships, which, after all, I have never hidden. If I ever went to jail for something I actually did (not like now that is the product of a frame-up) it would be for political reasons and never for criminal and “para” capitalist reasons.
My case was eventually separated from the ΟΥΚαδες and I ended up being tried by a single judge misdemeanor court for a simple misdemeanor.
And here begins a new dystopia that spews out bars, cells and prisons.But how can there be a fair trial (if there ever could be one) when for 24 hours all of Greece was bombarded with the great success of the Police for the first arrest of a “terrorist” for the “Greek Mafia” and all these ridiculousnesses. This was a judicial process out of the news and without taking into account any real facts. I was even not allowed as a defendant to call witnesses, one of whom was even a police officer of the service that arrested me. They even violated their own standards of ‘legal culture’. This is a real settling of scores, just this time by the state power and its manifestations, against me so as not to bask in the fiasco of scripts that were talked about and eventually deflated. I am eventually sentenced to two years in prison (for the same misdemeanor the sentences are usually 6 months) and the court decides my imprisonment without parole. My past is a round trip ticket back to prison. They try my name first, then my case. A dress rehearsal of the new penal code. A judicial supremacy that spews out sentences and bars.
GUILTY GUILTY
PRISON PRISON PRISON
And if today it is the “terrorist” with the misdemeanour tomorrow it will be the demonstrator, the squatter, the striker, anyone who has the misfortune to be confronted by the priesthood of “justice” for whatever reason. This will be the new criminal code. It is the new fear. And if you get used to fear, you also learn in silence. Because today the silence of the social graveyard prevails. Eyes glued to screens, hands glued to cell phones, and the new prison world is rising. But, there will always be, against this dystopian power, individuals with a conscience, conviction and an appetite for attack and resistance.
All quasi-prisoners
I give them their lies but not my freedom
Let’s see who knows
Christos Tsakalos
GADA detention facilities
PS. I wonder if the police and the Ministry of Citizen Protection will officially answer whether 20,000 euros were given to an informant who made this fiasco complaint as police reporters report? Will they answer who is setting up false cases to make money off people’s backs and where does that money end up?
Source: athens.indymedia
DN Notes
* Ομάδες Υποβρυχίων Καταστροφών, Submarine Disaster Reponse Team, similar to the US Navy SEALs.
THE PAROLE BOARD AS A RETURN TICKET…
Going back to where you said you’d never go back. Handcuffs, sirens, prosecutors, judges and the human cargo is ready to be delivered… Prison is rushing… Rushing into our minds, into our hearts, into our skin. Prisoners counting life in lock and unlock. Prison is the geography of loneliness.
So let’s reconvene…
I have always taken responsibility and paid the cost of my choices. Choices of struggle, of which I am proud, outline a journey of which my stay in prison for some time was a part. I belong to the generation of the dozens of anarchist prisoners who have experienced prison since 2009 and who, from our release onwards, there has always been an axe hanging over our heads… The release of each of us, which was often accompanied by exhausting conditions (I had present myself 6 times a month), is the return ticket to prison. My case is not just a personal affair. Just as I found myself in prison for a misdemeanor with a two-year sentence, so too is every released prisoner constantly held hostage, a prospective prisoner, for a disobedience, for a squat, for a demonstration, for any misdemeanor… And if those already released from prison each have a round-trip ticket to prison, that ticket is open to everyone else with the blessings of the new Penal Code. All quasi-prisoners…When you internalize fear you build a prison for yourself. Don’t speak, don’t claim, don’t fight. These are the invisible bars of the new prison. When the prisons start to fill up with protesters and fighters for misdemeanors of two years, one year, six months then you will realize what I am saying. If your name is written on the judges’ dockets then you are doomed to meet them again. As the prosecutor said to me, “guilty by association.” Return the merchandise to the soul warehouses. Freedom with an expiration date.
And now what?
Stay on your feet, don’t bend, don’t do them any favors.
In the courts, they say the innocent are afraid and the guilty hope. I neither fear nor hope. Knowing very well what it means to take responsibility, I know that the most meaningful acceptance of responsibility is the way you choose to live and I don’t intend to give my life away to any cop, journalist or judge. Good luck to all those who are fighting, not only for a world without poverty, but for a life that contains us in a meaningful way.
Christos Tsakalos
GADA Detention Centre
Source: athens.indymedia
Y ahora un poco de verdad señores…
Un delito menor y dos años de cárcel, esas son las matemáticas del nuevo código penal. Primero montaron una mentira espantosa con «terroristas» y mafia griega que al final asustó a la propia mentira. Me relacionaron con los SEAL, a los que no sólo no conocía, sino que valorativa e ideológicamente estamos en mundos opuestos. Me relacionaron con bombas de la «mafia griega» cuyo ambiente me da asco. Utilizaron dos de mis lazos de amistad con personas que han fallecido para montar un guión que diera medallas al Ministerio de Protección Civil y alimentara con mentiras a periodistas dispuestos a ello. Su mentira quedó al descubierto, pero nadie hablará de ello.
Durante mi encarcelamiento entablé amistades con varias personas que habían vivido conmigo las mismas condiciones de encarcelamiento. Estas amistades no significaban colaboración personal ni objetivos comunes en nuestra vida posterior. La verdad es simple y clara. La amistad que mantuve con ciertas personas, ya fallecidas hace tiempo, no tenía nada que ver ni con sus actividades ni con ninguna otra tarea. Sus propios asuntos, elecciones, amistades y enemistades eran asunto suyo, no mío. Los medios de comunicación me han bautizado como un hombre que poseía, no una sino más de una, gasolineras en sociedad con otras personas. Una mentira que jamás y en ninguna parte tiene el más mínimo grado de verdad y reto a la policía o a los medios de comunicación que tanto gustan de repetirla a que presenten la más mínima prueba que la respalde. Donde yo actúo políticamente es plenamente conocido por la lucha antiterrorista y por todas las demás agencias policiales que me vigilan desde hace años en mi lugar de trabajo.
Entonces, además de estar potencialmente involucrado en planes de contrabando de combustible, ahora intentan inflar aún más sus historias intentando implicarme en casos de contrabando de cigarrillos y enfrentamientos entre personas involucradas en ello… Otra mentira descarada y reto a la policía y a los medios de comunicación que ahora la reproducen, a que encuentren la más mínima prueba que demuestre cualquier conexión mía con algo de esto. La policía que ha estado bajo constante «vigilancia» desde mi liberación, si tuviera la más mínima evidencia de estas ficciones, puede estar seguro de que ya habrían montado un caso enorme para vender otro «éxito». Incluso han llegado a informar de que están considerando mi implicación en la voladura de la tubería de agua de Egina, superando con creces las anteriores etapas de ridiculez.
Mi trayectoria ha sido y es otra. No tuve ni tengo ninguna relación con esos espacios y si los medios de comunicación que tanto se empeñan en reproducirlo, que digan un solo dato, aparte de la existencia de ciertas amistades, que al fin y al cabo nunca he ocultado. Si alguna vez fuera a la cárcel por algo que realmente hice (no como ahora que es producto de un montaje) sería por motivos políticos y nunca por motivos delictivos y «para «capitalistas.
Mi caso se acabó separando de los SEAL y acabé siendo juzgado por un tribunal de delitos menores de un solo juez por un simple delito menor.
Y aqui comienza una nueva distopia que vomita barrotes, celdas y prisiones. Pero ¿como puede haber un juicio justo (si es que alguna vez pudo haberlo) cuando durante 24 horas toda Grecia fue bombardeada con el gran exito de la policia por la primera detencion de un «terrorista» por la «mafia griega» y todas estas ridiculeces?. Fue un proceso judicial fuera de las noticias y sin tener en cuenta ningun hecho real. Ni siquiera se me permitió como acusado llamar a testigos, uno de los cuales era incluso un policía del servicio que me detuvo. Incluso violaron sus propias normas de «cultura jurídica». Se trata de un auténtico ajuste de cuentas, sólo que esta vez por parte del poder estatal y sus organismos, contra mí para no regodearse en el fiasco de los calumnias de las que se habló y que finalmente se desinflaron. Finalmente me condenan a dos años de prisión (por el mismo delito menor las penas suelen ser de 6 meses) y el tribunal decide mi encarcelamiento sin libertad condicional. Mi historia es un billete de ida y vuelta a la cárcel. Primero juzgan mi nombre y luego mi caso. Un ensayo general del nuevo código penal. Una supremacía judicial que vomita sentencias y rejas.
SECCIÓN SECCIÓN
PRISIÓN PRISIÓN PRISIÓN
Y si hoy es el «terrorista» con un delito menor mañana será el manifestante, el okupa, el huelguista, cualquiera que tenga la desdicha de enfrentarse al sacerdocio de la «justicia» por cualquier motivo. Este será el nuevo código penal. Es el nuevo miedo. Y si te acostumbras al miedo, también se aprende el silencio. Porque hoy prevalece el silencio del cementerio social. Los ojos pegados a las pantallas, las manos pegadas a los móviles, y el nuevo mundo carcelario se levanta. Pero, siempre habrá contra este poder distópico individuos con conciencia, fe y apetito de ataque y resistencia.
Todos los cuasi-prisioneros
Les doy sus mentiras pero no mi libertad.
A ver quién entiende
Christos Tsakalos
Centros de detención GADA
Pd: Me pregunto si la policía y el Ministerio de Protección Ciudadana responderán oficialmente si se dieron 20.000 euros a un informante que hizo esta denuncia que resultó un fiasco, como informan los reporteros de la policía. ¿Responderán quién está montando casos falsos para ganar dinero a costa de la gente y dónde va a parar ese dinero?
LA PRISIÓN COMO BOLETO DE VUELTA…
Volviendo a donde dijiste que nunca volverías. Esposas, sirenas, fiscales, jueces y la carga humana está lista para ser entregada… La prisión se abalanza… Se abalanza sobre nuestras mentes, nuestros corazones, nuestra piel. Prisioneros que cuentan la vida bajo llave. La prisión es la geografía de la soledad.
Así que volvamos a reunirnos.
Siempre he asumido la responsabilidad y he pagado el costo de mis decisiones. Decisiones de lucha de las que me siento orgulloso y que esbozan un recorrido del que formó parte mi permanencia en prisión durante algún tiempo. Pertenezco a la generación de las decenas de presos anarquistas que hemos vivido la cárcel desde 2009 y que, desde nuestra puesta en libertad, siempre ha habido un hacha colgando sobre nuestras cabezas… La puesta en libertad de cada uno de nosotros, que a menudo iba acompañada de condiciones agotadoras (yo tenía 6 asistencias al mes), es nuestro billete de vuelta a la cárcel. Mi caso no es sólo un asunto personal. Del mismo modo que yo me encontré en prisión por un delito menor con una condena de dos años, cada preso liberado es constantemente un rehén, un preso en potencia, por una desobediencia, por una okupación, por una manifestación, por cualquier delito menor.
Y si los que ya han salido de prisión tienen un billete de ida y vuelta a la cárcel, este billete está abierto a todos los demás con las bendiciones del nuevo Código Penal. Todos los cuasi-prisioneros… Cuando interiorizas el miedo te construyes una prisión. No hables, no reclames, no luches. Estos son los barrotes invisibles de la nueva prisión. Cuando las cárceles empiecen a llenarse de manifestantes y luchadores por delitos menores de dos años, un año, seis meses, entonces te darás cuenta de lo que digo. Si tu nombre está escrito en los archivos de los jueces, entonces estás condenado a volver a encontrarte con ellos. Como me dijo el fiscal, «culpable por razón del pasado». Devuelve la mercancía a los almacenes de almas. Libertad con fecha de caducidad.
¿Y ahora qué?
Mantenerse en pie, no doblegarse, no hacerles concesiones.
En los tribunales dicen que los inocentes tienen miedo y los culpables esperanza. Yo ni temo ni espero. Conociendo muy bien lo que significa asumir la responsabilidad, sé que la aceptación más significativa de la responsabilidad es la forma en que eliges vivir y no pienso regalar mi vida a ningún policía, periodista o juez. Buena suerte a todos los que luchan, no sólo por un mundo sin miseria, sino por una vida que nos contenga de forma significativa.
Christos Tsakalos
Centro de Detención GADA