Bank Robbery

France: Update on Claudio Lavazza

Posted on 2022/08/30 by darknights

On May 17, 2022, a hearing was held which, at the request of Claudio’s lawyer, was to allow his release on the basis of the principle of accumulation of the sentence, a principle applicable in his case, according to European laws, given that he has already served more than 25 years in prison.

On June 21, the court rejected the lawyer’s request and agreed with that of the prosecutor, who claims that Claudio still has five years left in France plus those he has already spent in Spanish prisons. Her “legal” reasons for this insistence have not yet reached Claudio’s lawyer, who will in any case appeal.

Once again we will have to wait for the slowness of the penitentiary system and it seems that the answer will not arrive before September. This means another months of imprisonment for Claudio, who, we remind you, should have been released on December 11, 2021, according to the calculation of the years already deducted and the consequent accumulation of sentences provided for by their codes. It is not surprising if the State, not content with making Claudio pay the maximum sentence, goes so far as to contradict even its own agreements and its own laws in order to keep locked up a comrade who claims his own ethics, his own ideas and his own path of struggle with his head held high.

To act, so that Claudio is definitively free.

Act, so that the repressive fury of the State against anarchist prisoners finds a just response.

To act, so that all may be free.

Some anarchists in solidarity

Source: Anarquia

Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for explosive attack at house of 2nd Lieutenant Evangelos Kaisis of the ΟΠΚΕ police unit by Group “Revenge Guerrillas”

Posted on 2022/06/02 - 2022/06/02 by darknights

ΟΠΚΕ during a raid in the Exarcheia neighborhood of Athens

Nowadays, the state apparatus and its minions think they are immune. They act against all those who do not accept the miseries they impose on us and who dare to stand up to the vindictive regime. Cops, investigators, prosecutors and journalists have created a regime alliance with the sole aim of repression and the disappearance of dignity. This must stop immediately and these scum must understand that their actions will have the expected consequences. We can come into your homes, your businesses, and attack whenever and however we want without you being able to stop us. Get this through your heads. We take responsibility for the explosive device in the house of 2nd Lieutenant Evangelos Kaisis in Melissia, who was the head of the ΟΠΚΕ team, on 18/3/22, during the transfer of our comrade Fotis Tziotzi to the interrogation room, after his arrest for the bank expropriations in Athens this summer. This cop, after the adventure with the attempted snatching of his gun by the comrade that happened outside the interrogator’s office, ran to testify against the comrade, thus charging him with additional charges.

Try as you might, you will only succeed in strengthening the flame that burns within us for armed action against you. This is a small piece compared to what will follow, and you will lose sleep over it.

P.S. Ilisia. Thalia C. Kyriakides, interrogator. You may have been lucky this time, or we may have been unlucky that the explosive device did not explode in your apartment building, but next time it will be with bullets that will surely find their target.

STRENGTH AND FREEDOM TO ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS.

FIGHTING GREETINGS TO ALL THOSE WHO HAVE CHOSEN THE PATH OF FREEDOM.

LET US ALL ATTACK TOGETHER.

GROUP “REVENGE GUERRILLAS”

Source: athens.indymedia

France: Decision on Claudio’s release postponed to June 21

Posted on 2022/05/27 by darknights

During the hearing that took place at the Court of Appeal of Mont de Marsan, concerning the appeal against the court’s decision to delay Claudio Lavazza’s release for another 5 years, the court decided to set the date for the delivery of its decision for next June 21.

In view of this decision, the campaign of solidarity with the comrade is still going on!
We want Claudio to come home!

Source: Claudio Askatu

Via: Attaque

Greece: Thanos Chatziaggelou – ‘Don’t ask if we will win or if we will be defeated – Just fight!’

Posted on 2022/05/16 - 2022/05/19 by darknights

Solidarity message of the imprisoned member of the Organization Anarchist Action to the unrepentant anarchist Claudio Lavazza, in response to the appeal of his 25-year-old sentence which is to be examined on the 17th of May.

While being imprisoned in the most dystopian Hall of tyranny a combination of a few words on a piece of paper could never vividly describe the ideal of revolutionary intransigence. How could anybody fit a moment a life of disobedience, complexly devoted to the relentless struggle without leaving out any important detail.

Until today, there are only few people who wholeheartedly attempted to build a bridge filling the gap between a life and survival. These people who devoted their whole existence to the bright direct actions of the revolutionary base against the fierce doctrine of tyranny for the “end of history”, laid down their lives in the wholehearted hostilities of the revolutionary base. They enlisted sternly and unyieldingly on the fractious front of subversion, bled while comrades were perishing in battle, but imprisoned in the face of the danger of repentance and legitimacy, they chose ironclad pride.

Comrade Claudio Lavazza belonged to the same mixture of figures of struggle that divided them by a very important “particularity”: injustice and exploitation, social decay and tyranny were not just statements but issues that concerned them individually and collectively. They did not adapt ideology and politics to their lives; they devoted the absoluteness of their existence to vital and militant resistances. Enlisted in the armed ranks of the Italian Autonomy, he chose very early on the path of illegal freedom in the face of repression and political degeneration from statements of repentance. Continue reading “Greece: Thanos Chatziaggelou – ‘Don’t ask if we will win or if we will be defeated – Just fight!’” →

Athens, Greece: Demonstration at the French Embassy in solidarity with the anarchist prisoner Claudio Lavazza (17/05)

Posted on 2022/05/14 - 2022/05/14 by darknights

The open assembly convened after the call of the Anarchists’ Initiative against State Killings decided to convene a demostration at the French Embassy (7 Vassilissis Sofias Avenue) on Tuesday 17 May at 18.30, the day when the appeal of comrade Claudio Lavazza is being considered, through which he is demanding his release from prison. Below is the text of the appeal.

FREEDOM FOR CLAUDIO LAVAZZA

THE FRENCH STATE TAKES REVENGE ON POLITICAL PRISONERS

Our anarchist comrade Claudio Lavazza has been in prison since 1996, having already completed 25 years of continuous detention. He is one of the longest serving political prisoners in Europe. Claudio was one of the militants who took up arms to oppose capitalist rule politically and militantly.

An insurgent proletarian who participated in conflicts and expropriations in the early years of joining the movement in the dynamic 1970s in Italy. Armed fighter of the revolutionary movement of the 70’s-80’s afterwards. Member of the Armed Proletarians for Communism, a horizontal guerrilla group with strong ideological influences from workers’ autonomy. Participant in the coalition of groups under the name ‘Organised Communists for Proletarian Liberation’, an armed project to support fugitives and free comrades and comrades-in-arms from prison. Accomplice to the 1981 attack on the prison in Frosinone where imprisoned militants were released.

At a time when the meaning and content of words had not been surrendered to museification, revisionism, and limited activism. But it found meaning through the practical cultivation of hope in those imprisoned and “exiled” from the legal order by the relentless repression of the state and the parastate. That words like freedom and solidarity would be put into practice with guns in their hands. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Demonstration at the French Embassy in solidarity with the anarchist prisoner Claudio Lavazza (17/05)” →

Athens, Greece: Update and contribution from the event on the case of anarchist Claudio Lavazza on 14 April at ASOEE

Posted on 2022/05/04 - 2022/05/04 by darknights

On Thursday, April 14th, the event of the Anarchist Initiative against State Killings, concerning the case of the anarchist comrade Claudio Lavazza, took place at the ASOEE with a relatively massive presence of comrades. The presentation was read as well as the transcript of an interview Claudio has given about his case and a video was shown concerning the expropriation of a bank in Cordoba and the subsequent confrontation with the police forces where he was arrested. Finally, comments and statements were made by comrades about the connection between Claudio’s experience of struggle, especially the years he participated in the Italian movement, and the present day, and it was decided to call an open assembly to organize a meeting at the French embassy on May 17, the day when the comrade’s appeal against the decision of the bourgeois justice system that forces him to serve another 5 years in prison until he is released will be heard. Below is the text of the submission where you can also find a Pdf file.

We will begin our submission by answering the simple question. Why do we consider solidarity with the comrade Claudio Lavazza important today? We answer by saying that in Claudio’s person we see a part of the revolutionary memory of contemporary revolutionary history.

Claudio from an early age was an insurgent proletarian who was actively involved in the mass movement and proletarian struggles of that period in Italy. But what was the historical context that fuelled the great struggles of that period?

“The post-war environment and the Cold War”

On a macro-level, the end of the Second World War and the new balances of terror that took shape in the international environment after the use of nuclear weapons of mass destruction in 1945 in Japan by the US and the subsequent nuclear arms race from 1949 onwards (when the USSR acquired the corresponding technology), influenced the intensity of the historical period of the Cold War, the milestones of which were the Greek civil war (1946-1949), the Chinese revolution in 1949, the Korean civil war (1950-1953), the lifting of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and the Cuban missile crisis a year later in 1962. These developments were decisive for the so-called transition to the so-called ‘peaceful coexistence’ process, which largely involved the establishment of strict non-intervention zones. These zones were in the perceived centre of the western and eastern world, i.e. almost the entire northern hemisphere of the planet, which of course did not prevent any of the main Cold War competitors from intervening even militarily in their own immediate zones of influence and even more so on the periphery of the perceived undeveloped world, moving the hot fronts of warfare to Latin America, Africa and Asia. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Update and contribution from the event on the case of anarchist Claudio Lavazza on 14 April at ASOEE” →

Athens, Greece: Freedom to anarchist Giannis Michailidis – Gathering – Solidarity March Saturday 9 April 20:00 PM Εxarcheia Square

Posted on 2022/04/02 by darknights

GATHERING-SOLIDARITY MARCH
SATURDAY 9 APRIL 8PM ΕXΑRCHIA SQUARE
FREEDOM TO ANARCHIST GIANNIS MICHAILIDIS
STRUGGLE FOR THE RELEASE OF POLITICAL PRISONERS

Anarchist prisoner Giannis Michailidis has been imprisoned for more than 8 and a half years in the cells of democracy and 3 years in fugitive status in two different periods. His consistent commitment to the anarchist struggle, his unrepentant stance in front of the executioners of bourgeois justice, his practical questioning of the world of power and bourgeois legitimacy has put him in the crosshairs of the repressive and judicial mechanisms for years.

Giannis was prosecuted on the basis of a trumped-up charge of the mass revolt of the prisoners of Korydallos prison against the violent seizure of the then hunger-striking anarchist prisoner Dinos Giagtzoglou.

A persecution that targeted, without any evidence beyond solidarity texts, all the political prisoners of that period in order to put them in a new regime of hostage-taking, discontinued leaves, transfer from rural prisons, etc. Faced with the risk of prolonging his imprisonment and being transferred from the rural prisons where he was being held Giannis chose freedom, making an escape that allowed him to walk the paths of freedom for which he has fought consistently and at great cost throughout his life. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Freedom to anarchist Giannis Michailidis – Gathering – Solidarity March Saturday 9 April 20:00 PM Εxarcheia Square” →

Madrid, Spain: Note from the comrades updating the Bankia case

Posted on 2022/04/02 by darknights

On October 29, 2018, two anarchist comrades from Madrid, we were arrested accused of a sabotage with fire to a Bankia ATM on April 13 of the same year. The action was framed in solidarity with Lisa, who was sentenced to 7 years for a bank robbery in Aachen (Germany), right now in third degree.

There has been a deal between the sides: 1 year suspended sentence for each partner and 7000 euros civil liability paid before the trial.

We were facing 3 years in prison and 17,000 euros of civil liability. Having assessed all the options, we made this decision taking into account all the surrounding factors. The deal is to assume the guilt.

Thank you very much for the solidarity expressed in a thousand and one ways to all comrades around the world.

Fight against all authority now and always!

France: Telephone interview with Claudio Lavazza

Posted on 2022/03/31 - 2022/03/31 by darknights

March 6, 2022

(Taken from Radiocane)

Q: Listeners have probably already had the opportunity to learn about the events that you have lived throughout your long imprisonment in Spanish jails from reading your biography. Let’s start now with the case that led to your current detention in France. What facts does this case refer to?

A: Yes, I have a 10-year sentence set by the Paris Criminal Court on November 8, 2019, for armed robbery and kidnapping. This sentence was recently reduced, a week ago, to five years. And my release date is scheduled for May 16, 2025, so three years from now. This is due to a calculation of the credits for sentence reduction made by the Mont-de-Marsan Prosecutor’s Office, starting from 30 years instead of 25 as the legal limit for the accumulation of sentences in the Spanish system. Well, if this limit had been established by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, if this limit had been enforced, I would have had to be released immediately. Instead, she changed her mind, because she decided that French law should now be applied. A doubly wrong analysis, as my lawyer has already told you in a letter. Technically, it is explained in this way only to understand, in fact, if article 132-23-1 of the French penal code says that convictions pronounced by the criminal jurisdictions of the European Union must be taken into account, on condition that they do not aggravate the situation of the convicted. The legal limit of 30 years of accumulation in French law would therefore be “valid”, in quotations, if I had been sentenced to life imprisonment. This limit would be reduced to 20 years if my sentence had been 30 years, but it is 25 years! So the deliberate error of the prosecutor is obvious. It is Article 362-2 of the French Code of Criminal Procedure. Technically it is quite simple to understand, but when there is a political will behind it that opposes freedom, everything becomes vindictive. Continue reading “France: Telephone interview with Claudio Lavazza” →

Spain: Solidarity with the repressed comrades, accused of burning a Bankia ATM EN/ES

Posted on 2022/02/20 by darknights

On October 29th, 2018 two anarchist comrades from Madrid were arrested accused of a fire sabotage to a Bankia ATM on April 13th of the same year. They have recently received the news that their trial has been dated for April 7, 2022.

The Prosecutor’s Office together with Bankia and Mapfre (the bank’s insurer) are asking for 3 years for Damages and 17,000 euros in Civil Liability. In the police statement, the fact is related to a statement uploaded to counterinformation websites in which the action was vindicated in solidarity with Lisa, sentenced to 7 years (now in third degree) for a bank robbery in Aachen (Germany). They also say that the comrades are recognized anarchists, mentioning identifications at rallies, poster-attachments or arrests in evictions. All this rhetoric is used to justify the ideological aggravant since the comrades, being anarchists, hate the banks, and Bankia in this case would be a victim of this “ideological hatred”. Continue reading “Spain: Solidarity with the repressed comrades, accused of burning a Bankia ATM EN/ES” →