41 bis – Page 2 – Dark Nights

Perugia, Italy: Further statements by anarchist comrades Matteo Monaco, Sara Ardizzone & Paolo Arosio at the Sibilla proceedings

Posted on 2025/02/03 - 2025/02/03 by darknights

Statement read by Matteo Monaco during the preliminary hearing in the Sibilla proceedings

I take the floor well pleased to be able to do so in person this time.

I would have liked to be here as early as October 10 on the occasion of the preliminary hearing that was then postponed, but unfortunately the work commitments to which I have to submit for a living and the one thousand five hundred kilometers separating my residence from this courtroom prevented me from doing so. I am not going to rage about the gross errors, certainly not mine, that led to the failures of notification against me and resulted in the postponement of the hearing. They qualify themselves. And they also qualify much more actually. I face this hearing, as well as the eventual trial that will ensue, with serenity. Aware that I have nothing to defend myself against in a political trial such as this one. Proud to be on the stand together with some of the comrades dearest to me. Happy to finally be able to greet to Alfredo and express all my closeness and solidarity with him. Determined to look those who claim the right to judge me in the face.

We are here because we have to answer, in particular, the charge of incitement to commit crimes for the purpose of terrorism and subversion of the democratic order. Good. I’m not interested in going into the merits of the charges, let alone, as already mentioned, defending myself against these crimes of opinion. What I am interested in is to make my considerations clear with respect to this charge.
In my conception of anarchism, as well as of life itself, there is no instigator-instigated binomial, there are no empty heads to be filled, there are no masses to be directed and steered, and I do not claim to instigate anything. The very term “instigation” has a negative, devious meaning, implying a kind of persuasion of the other by deception or trickery or manipulation. And that is precisely why, gentlemen, I believe that there is no better instigator of crime than the state itself. What do you think engenders feelings of revenge and revolt among the exploited and oppressed all over the world? The export of war or anarchists? Are you really convinced that if someone decides to take charge of his life and revolt, it is because the anarchists whispered it in his ear? Does it not occur to you that the systemic violence perpetrated through laws, institutions and repressive apparatuses, always directed toward the proletariat and always in defense of the bourgeoisie, may genuinely produce a backfire? What then is the question? If anarchism propagates ideas of revolt? Whether I as an anarchist point to the destruction of this miserable system? Of course I do. If I write and applaud theories and practices of subversion? That seems like an open secret to me.

The truth is that the state, capital, its apparatuses and their concrete personifications, including you, are afraid. Not afraid of anarchists let’s be clear, they are afraid that the situation will get out of hand, that the control they claim to have over the world may falter. Any sick system inevitably tends to put itself on the defensive, taking measures to try to maintain an internal balance and trying to annihilate threats, whether internal or external. The creaks of this imbalance can be felt just about everywhere, and slowly they are beginning to become more and more evident and, above all, the perpetrators increasingly clear in people’s eyes: economic disasters, environmental disasters, wars, pandemics. Crises, you know, generate discontent, discontent very easily turns into anger, anger triggers riots. And this, all of you, you certainly cannot afford. So you try to act in a preventive way, going to strike relentlessly at those who have already declared war on you for a century and a half and those who consider you enemies regardless of crisis and discontent, trying to prevent certain ideas from spreading among those who have begun to harbor a certain distrust and resentment toward you. Because they are dangerous ideas for your stability and for your comfortable places in ivory towers. Continue reading “Perugia, Italy: Further statements by anarchist comrades Matteo Monaco, Sara Ardizzone & Paolo Arosio at the Sibilla proceedings” →

Italy: Statement read by Michele Fabiani during the preliminary hearing in the Sibilla proceedings

Posted on 2025/02/02 by darknights

Statement read by Michele Fabiani during the preliminary hearing in the Sibilla proceedings

Legalitarian rhetoric sees trials as a moment in which truths are established, in which a person endowed with willpower must willingly or unwillingly assume responsibility with respect to malicious episodes. To the point that one is in effect acquitted when it is established that the accused is not of sound mind. I have never believed anything like that in my entire life: I think it is an ideological junk typical of bourgeois liberalism to crush necessity, need, material conditions, personal formation, innate impulses within the concepts of guilt and innocence. But today I want to follow, in the economy of this speech, the commonplace. Not least because today marks the likely beginning of a particular trial, a trial against books and newspapers.

What kind of truth does Operation Sibilla conceal? And what responsibility are the protagonists taking on?

For consistency I start with my own, of responsibilities. I have written articles, I have published and disseminated anarchist press, I have published anarchist books. I published, through Monte Bove Editions, the book Which International? by Alfredo Cospito and many others. And I am so proud of having done that, that just last October-in a deliberately provocative gesture toward the previous preliminary hearing-I printed its third edition.

However, there are responsibilities that will also have to be assumed by those who support the prosecution, in a trial in which the body of the crime are books and newspapers. I say this with extreme sincerity, I just do not understand how the state cannot comprehend such elementary evidence: since the world began, he who is censored, gagged, interned, tortured for his ideas gains popularity and fame from the very action of censorship. Everyone knows who Socrates and Giordano Bruno are, I don’t think anyone in here knows the names of Meleto or Cardinal Giulio Antonio Santorio.

Which side of the story do you sit on?

When it comes to accountability there is one that is greater than all and frankly crushes jurisprudential technicalities. When it comes to truth, I cannot be silent about the most shameful truth of this trial. As we discuss criminal procedure there is an elephant in the room. Right in here.

I just cannot keep quiet about the scandal that there is a co-defendant of mine, a comrade of mine, locked up in 41 bis and connected by video conference. When we talk about truth, no one can deny that this investigation played a central role in the decision to lock Alfredo Cospito up in 41 bis. The minister of justice spoke about it in parliament, chief prosecutor Cantone himself spoke about it during a hearing.

This is a scandal not only because 41 bis is an international disgrace, a torture prison regime to which no one should be subjected. Above all, it is a scandal because we anarchists say things clearly. In this book, Which International?, you will not find a cabal of cryptic messages. The writings of anarchists are not pizzas! Nor will you find orders, because anarchists have no leaders and take orders from no one. Continue reading “Italy: Statement read by Michele Fabiani during the preliminary hearing in the Sibilla proceedings” →

Italy: Statement filed by Francesco Rota in the course of the preliminary hearing in the Sibilla case

Posted on 2025/02/02 - 2025/02/02 by darknights

Statement filed by Francesco Rota in the course of the preliminary hearing in the Sibilla case

I would never have written this statement if I had not felt that under attack was not only a path of analysis and critical insight, thus an important portion of my life, but above all a fellow anarchist whom the state in recent years has intended to bury under a blanket of isolation aimed at annihilation, because according to the anti-terrorist organs he was representative of decades of experience in revolutionary struggle. Then again, it was clear that a transfer to 41 bis and a life sentence amounted to attempted annihilation. The international solidarity movement of the years 2022-’23, however, by the force of the actions taken, first broke the silence and later spoiled the precarious political balance on which this attempt was based.

After several years of investigations by the Milan prosecutor’s office, aimed at attempting to somehow link the defendants to actions of attack, the Perugia prosecutor’s office inherited as part of an investigation into an anarchist space those acts of investigation concerning the editing and distribution of the newspaper for which indictment is being sought today. Coming to these last years, here then appears the shameless intention to employ this proceeding as a 41 bis support function against Alfredo Cospito. This intention, together with the ongoing attack against revolutionary anarchist publications in the context of the belligerent policies of the last executives, is therefore one of the reasons why I am filing this statement today. In this sense, I again express my solidarity with Alfredo Cospito without half-measures, reconfirm what I have already stated at the review hearing on the precautionary measures on March 14, 2023, and reiterate the reasons for my visceral participation in the 2022-’23 mobilization against 41 bis and hostile life imprisonment.

How to act against the overall technological turn that has been taking place for decades by fighting it now, before it is too late? What implications in social confrontation and revolutionary struggle do the ongoing technological process and the changes that have taken place in social reality in recent decades have? And how to equip for this? What clash can take place in a society where capacities for class struggle and organization are manifesting with extreme difficulty? Who are the exploiters, the masters, today? These are some of the questions posed between the pages of the newspaper under indictment, where the prosecution instead intends to see at all costs instigation and orienting and terrorist capabilities. However, this is not what I am talking about: analyses on the terrain of revolutionary struggle are not the concern of the courts, which by their very constitution cannot comprehend the essence of anarchists’ struggles.

I have known anarchism for as long as I can remember and, amazed, without anyone having pointed me in any direction, I discovered the ideas and practice of anarchists from the words of comrades, from their example and from the writings found in that anarchist propaganda that is today being prosecuted as incitement to crime with the aggravating circumstance of the purpose of terrorism. It is therefore difficult to describe what the texts of anarchism meant to me, with their density and depth of analysis of social reality: some had the revealing ability to shed light on only apparently marginal aspects that I had never before considered, concerning the things of the world and life in their totality; others, on the other hand, shocked me in their being a slap in the face against all accommodation and compromise.

Anarchism does not only imply the existence of a movement, the anarchist movement, which only at the cost of a gross oversimplification we could call first and foremost a political movement, but it has always been something more, something profoundly different that speaks of the dream and possible realization of a different life, radically different from the one we live today. Anarchism implies the undermining of our guarantees, of many of our certainties. Fighting for anarchism therefore inevitably means entering the dimension of risk inherent in the desire for integral, authentic freedom, certainly not the artificial democratic “freedoms” of which courts, inquisitors and butlers of the state stand as champions.

This knowledge of anarchism of mine has therefore been an enormous fortune, and today I cannot help but think of the absence of an anarchist, of my father, who made this fortune possible, untying the intuitions of the heart from the strings of petty logic and bringing up that cry for freedom that cries out in our hearts.

So you will understand that I do not turn to you today to beg for something, to advance justifications, to initiate a confrontation, to deny something that for me is not only the passion of all time, but the indissoluble essence of my ideas, my very life.

Francesco Rota

Source: La Nemesi

Italy: Statement of Alfredo Cospito during the preliminary hearing for the “Sibilla Trial”

Posted on 2025/01/29 by darknights

We publish the statements read by some of the anarchist comrades accused in the Sibilla trial in the preliminary hearing held on the 15^th of January in Perugia. Amongst the defendants, is also Alfredo Cospito, who attended by videoconference from Bancali prison in (Sardinia) where he is locked up in the 41bis regime, who read a statement. The hearing ended with a dismissal of all charges against all defendants, bringing to a conclusion an infamous case, which apart from aiming at the silencing of anarchist revolutionary publications, had a central role in Alfredo’s transfer to the 41bis regime. For a few hours Alfredo was able to hear the voices of his comrades, to see their faces, to speak, breaking the wall of silence in which they are trying to bury him. And this is certainly more stirring than any decision made by any state bureaucrat. In particular, Alfredo’s own words resonate as a powerful denunciation against the totalitarian horror of the 41bis regime. Those children’s handprints on the dividing glass in the visiting room should shake the consciences, of those who still have a conscience.

We do not know to what extent the intervention of the comrades in the courtroom somehow influenced the court’s decision not to venture into a shaky trial in itself. However, on January 15, it became clear that subsequent potential hearings would also undoubtedly provide an opportunity to intervene, breaking the wall of isolation of the 41bis, on behalf of Alfredo and the other accused comrades. Certainly, it should not take a trial like this one to initiate moments of mobilization against the international shame of 41 bis, and in Alfredo’s specific case, as of today the justifications for confinement in this special regime have one important piece missing. To make them pay the price for this contradiction, it is more urgent than ever to undertake other paths and revitalize initiatives against 41 bis and the warmongering and repressive policies of States.

Statement of Alfredo Cospito during the preliminary hearing for the “Sibilla Trial”

Today, you the representatives of the judiciary branch of this republic are putting us on trial for writing on the walls, for our words, for our books and magazines, forcing, as a matter of fact, anarchy into clandestinity. We are in good company, with this post-fascist government, censorship and repression are expanding to the entire social body, accelerating the transition from totalitarian democracy to a tragicomic opera regime. Saying this, I must thank you: after a year of silence, thanks to your embarrassing and anachronistic prosecution, I am allowed to express my thought publicly. Even if remotely, even if for the brief time of a blink of an eye, today I can tear off the gag, the medieval bridle of a 41bis that a moderate left-wing government applied to me years ago to silence an uncomfortable voice, for however minor and irrelevant, however surely an enemy of your democracy. These two years of special regime have most definitely opened my eyes to the true face of your law, of your constitutional rights, revealing to me a criminogenic system composed of an obscene, crude and murderous totalitarianism.

Today in this courtroom we are undergoing an inquisitorial trial based on an interview given through regular prison mail and not through a conversation with my sister in a prison visit as the prosecution wants us to believe, dragging her to the courthouse only for the mere fact of continuing undeterred to attend prison visits with her brother. It is a classic strategy of all authoritarian regimes, used regularly in the 41 bis regime, to burn all bridges with all emotional bonds at the exterior of the prison.

It is indicative, with every visit I attend, to see children’s handprints on the security glass that separates them from their fathers or mothers. But after all, what to expect from a democracy that puts children in prison? Continue reading “Italy: Statement of Alfredo Cospito during the preliminary hearing for the “Sibilla Trial”” →

Rome, Italy: Road block in viale Giulio Agricola, postamat ATM set on fire and Intesa Sanpaolo subsidiary damaged on 24th April [day of appeal in cassation of Anna Beniamino and Alfredo Cospito against ”Scripta Manent” sentence].

Posted on 2024/06/15 by darknights

Rome, 24th April 2024

We learn from the mass media (which from the morning have given some prominence to the event) that shortly after 4am on Wednesday April 24th, in viale Giulio Agricola in the Appio Claudio district in Rome, unknown persons had set up a road block with an improvised incendiary barricade composed of rubbish bins dragged into the roadway and set on fire. At the same time a nearby post office had been attacked: the flames, although put out in conjunction with the intervention of the police forces, had nonetheless damaged the postamat (ATM).

On the wall was written “Anna and Alfredo free”, in reference to the anarchist comrades Anna Beniamino and Alfredo Cospito for whom, the same day, the hearing was be held in the court of cassation concerning the appeal against the judgement of the Turin court of appeal that had established the sentences for the comrades in the Scripta Manent trial to 17 years and 9 months and 23 years (the court of cassation had confirmed the outcome). At the same time, still in the same area, a window of an Intesa Sanpaolo bank subsidiary was shattered. “No peace for those who live off war” was written on the wall of the bank.

[Information and photographs taken from the mass-media, text published in https://lanemesi.noblogs.org/post/2024/05/03/blocco-stradale-in-viale-giulio-agricola-incendio-di-un-postamat-e-danneggiamento-di-una-filiale-di-intesa-sanpaolo-roma-24-aprile-2024/

Via & Translated by Act for freedom now!

Komotini, Greece: Reoccupation of Anarchist Steki Utopia A.D., book presentation event of ‘Which International?’ + Intervention by comrade Francesco Rota from Vetriolo newspaper

Posted on 2024/06/02 - 2024/06/06 by darknights

On Wednesday 29 May we reoccupied the Anarchist Steki Utopia A.D. where we held the planned event on the book presentation of the interview of the anarchist nihilist Alfredo Cospito in the anarchist Italian newspaper Vetriolo, a telephone intervention and an information from an Italian comrade about the 41BIS regime and the current situation in Italy, while a text was sent by a comrade of the newspaper Vetriolo which was translated into Greek and read at the event, followed by an update from a comrade on the new penal code and the event ended with a discussion, after some questions were asked to the Italian comrade.

In the area there were tables with texts, stickers, posters, pamphlets and books as well as a poster exhibition and a banner for the occupations. The event was attended by 20 people.

It should be noted that when we approached the site, there were about 10 people from the technical service in order to prevent the occupation and the event. Of course, they did not succeed. What we made clear to them is that not only the dean and the cops are our enemies but also any others who stand against us. The issue of the evacuation of the compound is clearly political and provocative since guards were placed in our area. The idiots in the technical department have no business getting involved in political issues.

There are no excuses that they are following orders and are afraid of being fired, nor do we care since none of the workers of the technical service bother to understand what they are asking us to understand. If they have labour problems with their bosses they can find ways of fighting their class, we will not spare any fearful minions of the enemy.

From now on anyone who comes across us will be treated as they chose to be…

Nothing is over Everything continues Continue reading “Komotini, Greece: Reoccupation of Anarchist Steki Utopia A.D., book presentation event of ‘Which International?’ + Intervention by comrade Francesco Rota from Vetriolo newspaper” →

Italy: Juan Sorroche – ‘Reflection on the General Context of the Causes of the Struggle’

Posted on 2024/05/03 by darknights

Regarding my convictions and trial charges and the nexus of non-systemic revolutionary struggle action practices and “my” meaning of the anarchist vision

“(…) The reality is precisely this complex thing that cannot be traced back to the results of a judicial proceeding. This will always be arbitrary and will be based not on evidence but on force, not on logic but on domination. Difficult reasoning? Maybe so, but reasoning that once done can never be forgotten” [Published with the title “Noterelle su Sacco e Vanzetti. In margine a un convegno di studi”, in “Anarchismo”, n. 63, July 1989, pp. 36-40].
Alfredo Maria Bonanno, A mano armata, Pensiero e azione, Edizioni Anarchismo

In remembrance, and a warm greeting and see you soon comrade Alfredo!

Note:

To facilitate the writing of the text, I chose to use mainly the masculine as a gender ending. Aware of the importance of rejecting and countering gender abuses (as of any kind), I trust in the reader’s understanding so that no one feels discriminated against.

Premise:

Hello to all, compañeras and to all, compañeros

I am Juan Sorroche, an anarchist prisoner arrested on May 22, 2019 and I write from the AS2 section of the Terni prison where I have been locked up for 5 years.

After my heavy sentence on January 26, 2024 in Rome in the Court of Cassation trial for the action against the Lega Nord, a party that was and is part of the government of the Italian State, a strongly racist, misogynistic and xenophobic party.

As an anarchist prisoner I would like to make clear to comrades, revolutionaries, outcasts and oppressed the connection of the causes of the struggle for which I am here in prison today as an anarchist prisoner.

In the first instance, even though the prosecutor had removed the charge of “political massacre” (285), I was sentenced to 28 years in prison plus 3 years of probation. On appeal, almost half of the sentence, I was sentenced to 14 years and 7 months. A few days ago, the Court of Cassation definitively sentenced me to 14 years and 7 months, a significant and exemplary sentence for the attack.

In the first instance, I want to say that I entered prison already having spent a cumulative period of about 8 years behind bars for my struggles in Italy, which is why I escaped into hiding in 2016 to continue living-fighting. Of these 8 years, 4 years are for the “NO TAV trial”. Subsequently, the other 4 years were different trials related to anti-prison and anti-CPR struggles, anti-fascist and anti-democratic struggles, struggles against technologies, GMOs, “environmentalists”, in which I took part, always trying to include the anti-state and anti-capitalist aspect of anarchism in Trentino as well as in different Italian situations. Including the Susa Valley, a path that I had taken in the past years in the NO TAV struggle against one of the projects of capital and the State and the devastating tentacle of the high-speed train. I was arrested, among many others, for the days of struggle and violent clashes of July 3, 2011. During the trial and during my imprisonment at the time, I claimed with a personal statement those days of struggle and the paths of opposition to the TAV and more generally the anti-state and anti-capitalist aspect. I refused the defense in the “NOTAV Trial”, positioning myself anti-juridically even trying to fight in court by refusing the trial, believing that I should not “defend” myself in that judicial theater, and for this I was sentenced to 4 years and 6 months. And I take those decisions with my head held high.

In May 2019, after 2 and a half years on the run, I was arrested together with another comrade accused of having supported my being on the run, and then the comrade was sentenced for aiding and abetting to a year and a half, a sentence that was significant and exemplary as we had not seen each other for years, and it gave us a hint of the new tenor of the trials to come.

When I was arrested, little by little, I became aware of a series of investigations and trials that see me accused of several attacks (with terrorist aims) in Italy:

– the bombs at the headquarters of the Lega Nord in Treviso for the attack of 12/08/2018, regarding the two explosive devices, one exploded and another full of nails discovered by the bomb squad in the form of a trap to carry out the components of the building and the police; these were placed in the headquarters of the Lega Nord in Treviso and were claimed with the claim:

“Let’s hit them at home!!!: (…) to specifically attack racism and exploitation. To strike at the state, capital and its perpetrators. Direct action makes it clear to us why and how. For an internationalist, rebellious, and anarchist solidarity! Solidarity with all prisoners (…). And to all the rebels locked up in the homeland prisons of the world!”
Haris Hatzimihelakis Cell/Black International 1881/2018

– the bomb at the Surveillance Court of Trento 2014. Sentenced in the first instance to 3 years and 2 months, then acquitted on appeal, I must soon go to the Supreme Court. Claimed anonymously: in solidarity and to give voice to the prisoners who struggle with dignity in all prisons and to the anarchist comrades who were in prison isolated in AS2 in Italy and other anarchist prisoners in the world.

– the bomb against the POL GAI (police academy) claimed by cell H, I report some sketches of the published claim:

“(…) as a cell H (C.A.A.) akin to the Black International and we join the call to action for a BLACK DECEMBER. We attacked one of the armed arms of the state. In this “school” cops from all over Italy and other countries are educated. This is a small signal against war. We stand in solidarity with all the people who are fighting against all states and capital. Our thoughts go out to the many comrades who have been repressed, locked up, tortured, or killed in the present and in the past. In solidarity with all the detainees who are struggling.”

This is in the context of the campaign launched by anarchist prisoners in Greece for a Black December, called international in the context of anarchist action in 2015.

A trial that I will begin shortly.

To date, I have accumulated 23 years in prison.

Actions that I agree with because for me they are part of the history of our movement of struggle in non-systemic revolutionary anarchism of action and of the struggle for freedom of all the oppressed in the world. Regardless of whether or not I am responsible for these facts. And I am determined to move forward in my anarchist life in order to live-fight within my limited possibilities as a prisoner. Continue reading “Italy: Juan Sorroche – ‘Reflection on the General Context of the Causes of the Struggle’” →

Italy: Alfredo Cospito and Anna Beniamino sentenced to 23 and 17 years in prison

Posted on 2024/04/30 by darknights

From: No 41 bis- international mobilisation

“The sentences of 23 years and 17 years and 9 months of imprisonment to the anarchists Alfredo Cospito and Anna Beniamino are final. The Court of Cassation confirms the sentence bis of the Court of Appeal of Turin. The requests of the defense and of the prosecution of Turin were rejected, and they insisted to the end on obtaining life imprisonment. Rage and love for our comrades! With the practices of which they are accused! Alfredo out since 41 bis!”

Thus communicated the comrades from Italy the final sentences imposed on Alfredo Cospito and Anna Beniamino in what was the trial of the Scripta Manent case, which sought to blame both comrades for “political massacre”, based on the action against the Carabinieri school of Fossano.

During the trial at the Court of Cassation in Rome, an appeal regarding the mitigating factors in the conviction for “political massacre” was reviewed, finally reconfirming the sentences already established in June 2023, after the long hunger strike of Alfredo Cospito against 41 bis, which lasted 182 days. In this way, both comrades remain in prison and under the same isolation measures.

It should be noted that during the early morning of April 22 the DIGOS of Turin “carried out 19 precautionary measures (3 house arrests, 1 prohibition of residence and 15 obligations of residence and daily signature) in the framework of the so-called Operation City related to the events of the march of March 4, 2023 in solidarity with Alfredo Cospito”, this as part of a series of repressive intimidation against those who mobilized in support of the comrade.

Despite the persecution and the continued imprisonment of Anna and Alfredo, the signs of solidarity continue, strengthening them from the other side of the wall.

Source: La Zarzamora

Via: Informativo Anarquista

Italy – Operation City: eighteen measures of judicial control for a demonstration against prison and 41-bis

Posted on 2024/04/30 by darknights

At dawn on Monday April 22, DIGOS issued nineteen judicial control measures against compas, as part of a repressive operation in connection with the demonstration which, on March 4, 2023, set Turin ablaze, against the prison and 41-bis, alongside anarchist prisoner Alfredo Cospito and others. A demonstration in which hammers, homemade cudgels and cobblestones struck and smashed to pieces symbols of the violence of the state and capital, and which ended right in the courtyard of Radio Blackout, surrounded by the forces of law and order: for a few hours, the insipid normality of existence in an increasingly concentrationary city was interrupted.

Three house arrests for comrades from Turin, Cuneo and Rome, seven residency obligations with daily check-in with the cops, one residency ban, eight obligations with daily check-in with the cops, 75 comrades under investigation, all over Italy. They called this umpteenth repressive operation, coordinated by the Turin Public Prosecutor’s Office (prosecutors Paolo Scavi and Enzo Bucarelli), “City”. The charges are devastation and pillage, violence, assault and assault against police officers, with aggravating circumstances.

At the time, Alfredo was on hunger strike, as were other inmates, against the prison and the 41-bis torture regime to which the anarchist prisoner is still subjected today, in Sassari prison, along with 740 other inmates whom the state wants to annihilate.
This operation follows on from all the others which, in recent months, have hit hard at dozens of compas who have committed themselves to an international solidarity movement and to a mobilization which has intensified since 2022.

On April 24, at the Court of Cassation in Rome, what should be the final stage of the Scripta Manent trial will take place, one of the consequences of which is Alfredo’s confinement in the 41-bis regime. […]

Attaque Note: a radio interview with one of Rome’s comrades goes into more detail on this repressive operation, on the charge of devastation and pillage (which can lead to extremely heavy sentences), in addition to those of resistance, violence and threats against a person holding public authority, also in competition, and those of subversive propaganda and apology for a crime or misdemeanor. The investigators paid particular attention to the organization of the event and the way it was run, with damage estimated at around 630,000 euros.
This is the second time that the Turin Public Prosecutor’s Office has targeted the compas who took part in the mobilization in solidarity with Alfredo, following the proceedings in July 2023.
Solidarity with Guido, Lello and Daniele and all the others!

Original source & radio recordings in Italian: Radio Black Out

Extract/Summarisation via: Attaque

Italy: ‘The carousel of repression’ – Anna Beniamino

Posted on 2024/04/23 - 2024/04/23 by darknights

THE CAROUSEL OF REPRESSION

Almost eight years after the arrests for Scripta Manent, for the second time the Court of Cassation, on 24th April 2024, will pronounce judgement on the crime of “political massacre”, pursuant to art. 285 c.p., against Alfredo and myself, the last remaining fragment pending in the process (i), after a whirlwind of delays, recalculations, and repressive-jurisprudential manipulations (ii).

Although the repetition of error numbs the horror, and we are living in times of multiple horrors flaunted and total anaesthetisations, I believe there are still some words to be said about the ongoing annihilation attempt, about reactions, successful and attempted. Not so much because I believe this may be useful for our personal fates, but out of a kind of stubborn “romanticism” that considers silence and resignation always and even more lethal in a political process.

Having no inclination to resign silently to the administration of “justice” (as it happens daily in the prisons) and nor to be restricted by the logic of damage limitation (another cornerstone of survival between prison and courts), but shifting the focus to the repressive policies underlying this and the actual capacity to react, to create moments of struggle and rupture, to build barriers, individual and collective, against the arrogance of repression.

I have spoken of error and horror because that is what repressive policies are at their core, errors and horrors that blend together in completely distorting the theoretical and practical significance of the enemy, burying them alive and/or forcing them into defensive entrenchment and the Indian reserves of “counterculture” and the pursuit of “democratic indignation” (which by now is little more than an Indian reserve, with a threshold of sensitivity that more often than not is an impenetrable callousness in most), a strategy that weakens the reactivity of comrades in the short term, more than they may believe, in a sense of inevitability of events and the impossibility of constructing reactions.

Seven years ago, I thought it was possible to manage the Scripta Manent process as ordinary repression, countering from a technical perspective, point by point, both individual events and the entire associative framework, given the clear fragility of the accusatory structure. There was an excess of optimism about the ongoing political will and strategies and an unforgivable shortsightedness in not immediately highlighting with greater force what was happening. It took the threat of 41bis and life imprisonment looming to focus eyes and attention.

Far from wanting to fall back into the rhetoric of “judicial error,” of excess, because from a jurisprudential and probative standpoint, that was precisely the fact that some mainstream media had to reluctantly admit (while others held firm on their sensationalism) in order to justify the anarchist under 41bis. They had to contextualise the events and the character with a certain embarrassment, and also place the heart of the State, its security – endangered precisely what characterises political massacre – within a couple of exploded bins at 3 a.m. on the perimeter walls of a barracks, while having to awkwardly sidestep the other script holes offered by DNAA and the Turin prosecutor’s office.

Far from a “judicial error” because this is a deliberate intent, with convergences between paper castles of the police headquarters and cages of cement over cement: the episodic component (the career of individual cops or magistrates, the media always ready to hype up the new danger, the crassest propaganda) is there, but it converges into a well-oiled machine that always needs new heads to be cut off and displayed on the ramparts of law and order. Sometimes the machine stalls… and it is the duty and pride of every anti-authoritarian to make it stall.

In these years of prison time and trials, I have had the opportunity to experience firsthand a series of logical and legal manipulations that I didn’t think could be possible to concentrate in a single operation, making me equally aware that it is the modus operandi in practice between public prosecutors and courts in the extension of “special” legislation, from “emergency” to “daily”, in the fields of anti-mafia and anti-terrorism: no longer an exception, but the usual management that the National Anti-Mafia Directorate applies and has been applying to cases involving organised crime extended to anarchists, and that the justice system in general applies to those segments of social opposition and non-conforming elements that are isolated and easily attackable, which still express, albeit in a rudimentary form, the need to reclaim the streets, the word, and the dignity of a non-negotiated opposition. A synergistic attack – fuelled by a political climate not just of a simple right-wing government but equivalent in the last “political” or “technical” governments that wanted to define themselves – against the irredeemable components for electoral purposes: in a general lowering of the bar for criminally punishable acts and the parallel increase in what can be sensationalised in the media, one can discern the strategies at work and the resistance to be opposed.

In this sense, I believe Juan’s (iii) writings in capturing the positive aspects, if not the need to put a stop to them, in addition to the necessary critical and self-critical questions of the movement, are clear. Continue reading “Italy: ‘The carousel of repression’ – Anna Beniamino” →