Social Control

France: A letter from Ivan, from Villepinte Prison

Posted on 2022/09/28 by darknights

Below is a text by anarchist Ivan Alocco, who was arrested on June 11 and is currently imprisoned in Villepinte Prison, France.
Break the isolation! For immediate revolutionary solidarity with Ivan and all imprisoned anarchists!

–

I am writing to share some thoughts and give some news.
I would like to begin with something that illustrates well the methods of the judicial system.
A few days after my arrest, the judge who instructed the investigation, Stéphanie Lahaye, sent two cops from SDAT [the Anti-Terrorism Sub-Directorate of the Judicial Police] (including the judicial police officer “RIO 1237232” – like machines, they have numbers instead of names) to interrogate my daughter and her mother. Obeying his orders, the procedures of state justice, they tried to pressure a 12-year-old girl. After making her wait in the courtyard of the local gendarmerie barracks during her mother’s interrogation, they allegedly wanted to interrogate her alone. Evidently, her mother refused to leave her.
An ordinary, mundane procedure, a necessary act to establish the truth, according to judges and cops. A way, in my opinion, of trying to spread fear. A warning to my loved ones and to everyone, because, in the inquisitive logic of Justice, people who stay or stand by an anarchist accused of direct action are suspect and must be bothered.

This is somewhat the same logic that was used against me. When the same judicial police officer, during interrogations while I was under arrest, asked me, she reproached me for bringing my support to imprisoned anarchists, in France and in other countries. Of writing to them and occasionally sending them some money. Of course, I often wrote to numerous imprisoned compas and did my best to express my solidarity with them. Because they are anarchists and also because I am convinced of the rightness and necessity of the actions some of them are accused of.
I think solidarity, by any means necessary, with compas affected by repression is fundamental. To avoid openly solidarizing with them, for fear that repression will spread, would be to enter the game of Justice, to accept its logic. A logic that would make us retreat further and further, until we abandon, or almost abandon, the imprisoned revolutionaries. Continue reading “France: A letter from Ivan, from Villepinte Prison” →

Belarusian anarchists given prison sentences from 5 to 17 years

Posted on 2022/09/18 by darknights

On 6 September Minsk City Court pronounced the verdict in the criminal case of the so-called “international criminal group”. There are 14 anarchists and libertarians, four of whom have left Belarus. The defendants were charged under 10 articles, including the articles on the establishment and participation in a criminal organization (paragraph 1 and paragraph 2 of Article 285 of the Criminal Code) and the establishment of an extremist formation (paragraphs 1 and 3 of Article 361-1 of the Criminal Code). The trial was held behind closed doors.

According to the investigation, from 2005 to 2020 unidentified persons together with anarchist Alexander Frantskevich and human rights activist Martha Rabkova united “a number of organized criminal groups”: “Revolutionary Action”, “National self-defense” and Revolucijna Dia (“Revolutionary Day”). Investigators allege that Frantskevich and Rabkova organized the arson of the Gomel District Tax Inspectorate in March 2017 using “Molotov cocktails.” Read more about the case and its defendants in Russian here.

The 10 convicts were sentenced to exactly the terms requested for them by the prosecution:
– Aleksandr Frantskevich – 17 years (strict regime)
– Akihiro Hanada-Gayevsky – 16 years (medium security)
– Marfa Rabkova: 15 years (minimum security)
– Alexei Golovko – 12 years (maximum security)
– Pavel Shpetny, Nikita Drants, Alexander Kozlyanko, Andrei Chepuk – 6 years for each (maximum security)
– Andrei Marach and Daniil Chul – 5 years each (reinforced regime)

It is also reported that the defendants were fined up to 700 basic units (about $8,900).

After the verdict was pronounced, the law enforcers detained relatives of the defendants and other political prisoners, diplomats who were not allowed into the courtroom, as well as random people who came to other trials.

Address for letters: SIZO-1, 2 Volodarskogo Street, Minsk, 220030 Belarus.

Currently, we work on the recovery of libertarian and anarchist movement in Russia, after a long period of stagnation and repressions and we need your help to improve our site. Join our campaign to raise money on Firefund!

Source: Avtonom

Italy: 25/09 in Genoa against Anti-Anarchist Repression EN/IT

Posted on 2022/09/18 - 2022/09/18 by darknights

Squeezed in the grip of health emergencies, wars, increasingly fierce domestic repression, energy crisis, economic recession, systematic erosion of individual freedoms, dismantling of acquired rights and widening social gaps, we are asked for an act of blind loyalty like that of the dog that, though clubbed, does not shy away from its master’s oppression, of resigned submission to the inevitability of these events: the chorus of politicians of all colors, of masters, of regime shouters re-propose to us the fatuous promise of the solution of the problems that grip the daily lives of most, of the common well-being, to be obtained, as it happens, through “tears and blood” sacrifices to which we should also, ironically, grant our consent in the electoral ballet. It seems to us that this spectacle is a painful rerun. The assent and social cohesion demanded of us are aimed more at feeding the interests of political apparatuses and the business dealings of the masters of the economy, these already closely coalesced at several levels for some time, who thrive on the backs bent by the chain of labor and necessity. To us anarchist comrades, libertarians, rebels, refractory to authority, the way forward seems clear: to resolutely oppose against this power that suffocates us and against the state, the men and women who represent it, against prisons and all places where anyone is imprisoned, against the political and economic institutions that speculate, plundering the planet’s natural resources and degrading our lives. We claim the necessity of the conflict against this state of affairs because we are aware that the oppression we experience is the result of processes that unfold historically in a well-defined way, that this system of exploitation will not exhaust itself, that it is up to us, here and now, to pursue the idea of freedom to which we aspire. And it is to this clash that we bring back, without victimhood, the meaning of repression when it targets us: repression and prisons will continue to exist as long as there is a state to bring down and that will do everything not to fall, exposing any illusion of democratic justice. This confrontation is burying in prison so many and so many of our most generous comrades, Anna, Alfredo, Juan, Monica, Francisco, Davide, Claudio, decades in jail, whole lives facing isolation, censorship, physical and psychological violence of rigid detention regimes. Yet they defend tooth and nail the idea they keep alive in their beleaguered hearts. We do not want to be outdone; their courage and determination inspire our paths out here. Since May 5, our comrade Alfredo Cospito has been locked up in the Bancali prison near Sassari in 41 bis, an extremely severe detention regime that involves almost total isolation, absence of sociability, and almost complete censorship of correspondence, the recording of the monthly 10-minute phone call and the interview reduced to one hour a month behind a partition screen without the possibility of any physical contact, constant body and cell searches, the very reduced availability of even everyday objects (clothes, books, paper and pen) and always subject to the arbitrariness of the jailers. Such a penalizing and fundamentally vindictive measure is clearly aimed at silencing the voice and ideas of a comrade who, over the years, has made a decisive contribution, with his theoretical critique and practice, to the anarchist debate; to annihilate him because he perseveres with determination and dignity in his path of struggle; to dampen, with the specter of exemplary punishment, the initiative of comrades outside in solidarity. In Genoa, three comrades who did not spare themselves in supporting Alfredo and the other imprisoned comrades are affected by special surveillance orders requested by the usual prosecutor Federico Stalker Manotti, in an attempt to isolate them and inhibit those close to them; a further request for surveillance has been issued for another comrade in Genoa, and a hearing against him will be held on September 28. These are the reasons why we have decided to take to the streets in Genoa next September 25, a date, that of the elections, which is symbolic of the farce of the social contract being renewed on the skin of all of us; if the machine of domination advances with all its apparatuses to engulf the lives of comrades, in our most disruptive desire for freedom, hatred of authority and active solidarity we can find adequate levers to crack the enemy’s front. We invite you to join us. When repression becomes tight and lashing, the response must be clear, determined and consistent. Let us break the isolation into which they would like to plunge our comrades. Let us deploy ideas, forces, strategies in response to the anti-anarchist campaign that the state has been waging for almost a decade now.

Solidarity is a weapon, let’s use it!!!

Out Alfredo from 41bis. Against all prisons

Continue reading “Italy: 25/09 in Genoa against Anti-Anarchist Repression EN/IT” →

Solidarity with Ivan! Freedom for everyone! Repression and vehicle arsons

Posted on 2022/09/07 - 2022/09/07 by darknights

For reading

For printing

This zine comes from an informal and anonymous collective formed in solidarity with Ivan. This collective does not claim to be a reference support committee or anything official. We welcome all autonomous initiatives in solidarity with Ivan and/or any other prisoner of the social war. Just as we welcome the reproduction and distribution of this zine.

Anarchists
July 2022

Summary:

Villepinte (Seine-Saint-Denis) France: Letter from prison from Ivan, “Solidarity means attack” (June 15, 2022)
Chronology of some vehicle arsons in France, between May 2021 and May 2022 (July 2022)
Bure (Meuse), France: Solidarity banner (June 2022)
Toulouse (Haute-Garonne), France: Solidarity arson of a camera (July 2022)
France: There are no isolated arsonists (July 2022)

Source & Translated from French by Act For Freedom Now!

France: “I know that there, somewhere, other comrades continue the struggle.” Letter from Ivan, anarchist comrade arrested in Paris

Posted on 2022/08/30 - 2022/08/30 by darknights

“I know that there, somewhere, other comrades continue the struggle.”

Letter from Ivan, anarchist comrade arrested on June 11 on the outskirts of Paris

15 VI 22

My name is Ivan, I am an anarchist.

I was arrested by the Sous-diréction anti-térrorisme [SDAT] of the French police on Saturday, June 11, around 3:30 a.m., near my home (suburbs of Paris), on my way home.

I am accused of six vehicle fires, in Paris and Montreuil, between January and June, often in solidarity with anarchist prisoners (the last one, an embassy car, was set on fire in the 17th arrondissement of Paris on the night of my arrest).

The cops followed me for months, listened to my phone calls, installed a camera in the entrance of the building where I live, intercepted my mail (especially letters from imprisoned anarchists) and looked at my bank account.

Another person (we know each other only by sight, but to him all my esteem) has been followed, listened to, etc., but has not been challenged. Courage friend!

The SDAT investigation began in late February 2022 on the orders of prosecutor Louise-Anne Belanger of the Bobigny prosecutor’s office. They also pulled from their drawers another archived investigation, which had been done by other cops, into some 50 arson attacks against vehicles, all in and around Paris, between 2017 and 2021. SDAT “merged” the two investigations, but the judge (Stéphanie Labarge [?], of the Bobigny court) retained only the last six attacks. For the others, I am an “assisted witness” [the equivalent of “person informed about the facts”].

In addition to “destruction by dangerous means,” there is also the charge of endangering the lives of others, refusal to give my DNA, refusal to have my photograph taken, refusal to give fingerprints, refusal to give passwords to computers and phones.

Right now, I am in pre-trial detention at Villepinte Prison. I am fit, I am fine, although I miss my loved ones very much.

Normal, it’s prison, and you have to put it on the line when you are an enemy of this society.

Here, the hardest time is when we come back from the walk. The door closes and we stay here until the next day. But I turn to the window and look out. I know that there, somewhere, other comrades continue the struggle.

As soon as I get more information on this story, I will write more (I don’t have much else to do!).

My thoughts go out to the anarchists in prison everywhere in the world: to Damien (in prison in Draguignan), to Alfredo, to Anna, to Juan, to Toby, to Giannis Michailidis on hunger strike… to all/all of you out there!

Solidarity is the attack!

Long live anarchy!

Ivan

Source: Il Rovescio

France: Some news on the situation of the anarchist Ivan

Posted on 2022/08/30 by darknights

August 16, 2022

Here is some news about the situation of Ivan, the anarchist comrade arrested on June 11 near Paris for arson and currently in pre-trial detention in the Villepinte prison.

He is well. After two weeks in a cell on his own between late July and early August, he is back in a cell with another detainee.

While Ivan was in detention, the SDAT (Sous-Direction Anti-Terroriste of the Central Direction of the french judicial police) interrogated his partner. A few weeks later, they also summoned his daughter (who is 12 years old) and mother for questioning. The cops wanted to question the girl, but the mother refused to leave her alone.

The comrade has not yet had access to the investigation files. The magistrate standing in for the judge in charge of the investigation explained the refusal by the fact that Ivan did not say anything during the interrogations. The lawyer will appeal against this decision.

Since July 19, the comrade no longer receives mail (there was only one exception). Maybe because the judge is on holiday? So do not be surprised if your letters remain, for the time being, unanswered. In any case, Ivan has always answered every letter he has received.

We continue to write to him and show our solidarity, through any means necessary.

Long live the fire, long live the attack!

The address of the comrade:

Ivan Alocco
n. d’écrou: 46355
M. A. de Villepinte
40, avenue Vauban
93420 – Villepinte
France

Besançon (Doubs), France: The medical and judicial powers are relentless against Anarchist comrade Boris

Posted on 2022/08/30 by darknights

PDF:

Besançon (Doubs): The medical and judicial powers are relentless against Boris

In April 2020, our comrade and friend Boris set fire to the antennas of four cell phone operators, as well as those of the cops and the gendarmes on the Mont Poupet (Jura). Identified by DNA present on a bottle cap, he was incarcerated in September 2020 in the prison of Nancy, then sentenced in April 2021 to four years in prison, two of which are unsuspended. In a public letter written from prison*, he defended his act by his desire to oppose the increasing digitalization of our lives through direct action, with all the control, environmental and social ravages it implies. In August 2021, he was seriously injured in a cell fire, and has since been in the hands of the medical authorities. On the judicial side, his imprisonment was lifted at the time of the appeal trial of the following September (postponed sine die), while an enquiry, still in progress, was entrusted to a judge in Nancy in order to determine the causes of the fire and to investigate the eagerness of the screws to let our companion suffocate in his cell.

Alternating between artificial coma and semi-consciousness for a few months, Boris could not make his own decisions. The doctors were not without mistakes in their diagnoses, but always with unwavering confidence. At the beginning of March 2022, Boris was transferred from the “Grands Brûlés” wing of the Metz hospital to the intensive care unit of the Besançon CHRU, which in April decided to get rid of him by sending him to another unit that was not well suited to his situation, without his opinion having any importance. This decision, which had serious consequences and meant the abandonment of active care, was essentially motivated by the fact that no favourable evolution of his state of health was observed, following miserable statistical criteria. Clearly, these criteria take absolutely no account of the particular individual to whom they are applied in an absolute and chilling manner, even if he expresses his fierce will to continue to live and fight to get better. Taking advantage of his current quadriplegia, and despite the fact that he is able to speak, lucid and combative, the doctors decided not to resuscitate him if a new serious infection occurred. It was only by protesting and writing letters that they had to take into account his will to survive and resume a minimum of active care. Continue reading “Besançon (Doubs), France: The medical and judicial powers are relentless against Anarchist comrade Boris” →

Italy: Cassation Scripta Manent: some considerations and clarifications

Posted on 2022/08/11 by darknights

Cassation Scripta Manent: some considerations and clarifications

This writing stems from the need to explain to comrades what will happen after the Cassation ruling for the Scripta Manent trial issued on July 6.

Starting with the most serious convictions, the court requalified the explosive attack against the Carabinieri’s student school in Fossano(Cuneo) on June 2, 2006 and claimed by Rivolta Anonima e Tremenda / Federazione Anarchica Informale as a “political massacre” (art. 285 c. p.), referring the case back to the Turin Court of Appeals for a peggiorative recalculation of the sentence with the risk of life imprisonment for comrades Alfredo Cospito and Anna Beniamino.

In addition, all other convictions handed down in the Court of Appeals were upheld with sentences ranging from 2 years and 6 months to 1 year and 6 months for 11 comrades and acquittals for the rest of the defendants.

The convictions and acquittals as of now are final.

Continue reading “Italy: Cassation Scripta Manent: some considerations and clarifications” →

Thessaloniki, Greece: Poster for the evicted squat 111

Posted on 2022/08/06 - 2022/08/14 by darknights

Poster for the evicted squat 111 that will be stuck on the streets in the coming days. Below is the text of the occupation and comrades.

In the early morning of Friday 22 July armoured forces of repression entered squat 111 and then evicted it and sealed it with an armoured door, the measures of which seem to have been taken in advance. They confiscated material and, in collaboration with the ever-willing establishment, tried to create an impression, among other things, with sharp kitchen knives and beer.

What is ultimately a squat has been an internal preoccupation from the beginning of their history. It’s the walls; it’s the relationships; it all gets complicated and changed in the course of the scythe of history. All, however, are elevated to full-light stars that point the way to the struggle for freedom and life. Simple as that. These walls, stable and immovable until recently, have housed relationships that are strong but complex and fluid in nature. The paradox of the Argo demonstrates the contradiction of this essentialist conception of the detached and self-contained/moving nature of abiotic beings by linking them to their historical position and the perception of the living beings who observe them and yet are life-giving energies for them. Placing them in dialectical relation to the surrounding world. Squats, therefore, are value-wise equally their walls equally their history, their fixed and transient world. Perhaps one of the most important roles they perform beyond the production of public discourse, interventions of all kinds and intensities, events, is the sharpening of consciences. Our squat, our big house, certainly, although it has fallen short in many ways, if it was anything, was a ‘matrix’ of well-ordered steel consciences that, through word and deed, gave and give steadily from their post in the struggle for freedom. It hosted human and non-human animals, material and archival blossoms on the tree of the struggle for the liberation of nature, land, animals and people. The eleven was neither silence nor storm. The eleven was simply a part of the larger silence before the storm we vowed would come. A page in the tomes of movement history, a thorn in the flesh, another crack in the silence of alienation. “Never say you lost something, better to say you got it back.” Not to the state dregs, nor to oblivion, but to the inevitable end of beings. This knowledge to us non-owners, the natives of cities who have always lived trying not to be trapped does not frighten us. Neither wreckage nor loss frightens us. But we are not comfortable with anything less than everything. Continue reading “Thessaloniki, Greece: Poster for the evicted squat 111” →

Italy: The 5G network and the so-called ‘Smart Planet’

Posted on 2022/08/03 by darknights

THE 5G NETWORK AND THE SO-CALLED ‘SMART PLANET’

Italy, like the rest of the world, is pressing ahead with the implementation of the 5G network, but how many really know what it is? First of all, the name: 5G is not related to the frequency of the waves used, but indicates that it is a fifth-generation network, whose waves have A power and frequency several times higher than those used so far. Like most technologies it also originated in the military sphere, in fact the type of waves that will be used by this network, namely microwaves and millimetre waves, are used both for localisation (radar), and as a real weapon of war (Active Denial System).

With the 5G network we will be irradiated twenty-four hours a day by an infinity of these waves, which, due to their technical characteristic, will require the installation of millions of new antennas, at a maximum distance of one hundred metres from each other, depending on the location. One only has to look around to see the continuous installation of new repeaters, or the continuous installation of new antennas on existing ones. What few people know is that there will be many ‘mini-antennas’, camouflaged both in street furniture (lampposts, manhole covers, bus stops, etc.) and in everyday objects, not to mention the thousands of satellites that have been launched, and will continue to be launched, into space, to connect even the most remote places on earth. What is known to date about the network already in use is that it causes serious and irreversible damage genetically, biologically and to the reproductive system, which makes it clear that its enhancement (by means of the installations we have just discussed) will cause even greater damage to all living things, further aggravating a situation which already today appears dramatic.

Continue reading “Italy: The 5G network and the so-called ‘Smart Planet’” →