Brenner anti border march 2016

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: “Brenner” trial appeal sentence

Posted on 2023/04/01 by darknights

“Brenner” trial appeal sentence

On March 17, the appeal verdict in the trial for the May 2016 anti-borders demonstration at the Brenner Pass was handed down at the Bolzano court.

While there was a general lowering of the sentences (from 150 to 123 years total, with 8 acquittals due to the statute of limitations of the crime), the balance is still heavy (keep in mind that the trial was in abbreviated form). 28 female comrades and comrades received sentences above 2 years, while 5 comrades took more than 4 years (the highest sentence was 5 years and 1 month in prison) for conspiracy to commit aggravated resistance, private violence, injury, etc. The charge of devastation and looting did not hold up, as it did in the first instance.

Another significant element is that the judge denied all and sundry who applied for it access to the so-called Cartabia reform. Although the sentencing date had been formally postponed to allow defendants and defendants to make use of the new law, the request to access it was denied under the pretext of the criminal records and “social dangerousness” of defendants and defendants. But there is an even more emblematic fact: the main argument for the rejection of “substitute sentences” has been the defendants’ failure to abjure their conduct. The increasingly overtly rewarding nature of sentencing applies not only to the supervisory judiciary, but also to ordinary courts. What makes the difference on the type of sentence is not so much the offense itself, but whether or not the defendant “repents.”

For more than 30 defendants and defendants, therefore, prison doors may open in the future.

This ruling only prolongs the structural violence of state racism, that set of laws, neocolonial practices, administrative detention and police devices that produce massacres, mass deaths and a humanity forced into conditions of semi-slavery. From the harvesting in the fields to the many sectors of the “informal economy,” from the blackmail of the residence permit – which weighs on logistics, construction, catering, “care work”… – to the fat black rental market, the terror exercised by the borders is as strategic as it is unmentionable part of capitalist exploitation.

123 years in prison for a motorcade blatantly tells us that we are at war, that the margins of permissible dissent are shrinking, and that non-negotiated conflict is a desertion from the frontline to be punished in an exemplary fashion.

The anti-immigrant wall at the Brenner Pass-which the Austrian police had called a mere “technical solution” …-was not built. Perhaps also thanks to those who fought with generosity and courage that May 7, 2016.

Solidarity with the convicted comrades and comrades.

[Taken from https://ilrovescio.info/2023/03/19/sentenza-dappello-del-processo-brennero/]

Via: La Nemesi

Italy: ‘To burning hearts’ Statement of the anarchists accused at the trial for Operation Renata

Posted on 2023/02/21 - 2023/02/21 by darknights

Four years after the repressive operation Renata on February 19, 2019, we publish – not for an aseptic “exhumation” of recent history, but because these are texts that address the profound social and individual reasons for the anarchists’ thought and action – the statement of the seven comrades accused during the first-degree trial (“To Burning Hearts”) and a second statement distributed during the appeal trial. In addition, we believe it is important and necessary to find and disseminate the statements of comrades who, during the trials, take the floor continuing to support the ideas and practices of attack against the state and capital.

To burning hearts

Statement of the anarchists accused at the trial for Operation Renata

The anarchist does not look to success, to victory, to competition. He fights, because it is right. And in any struggle loss is part of life. He does not change his mind because he loses, much less give up the next struggle. The System is self-feeding because of the people who do not fight, not because they are invincible. The anarchist’s job is to instill in the people revolt, not in segments but continuous. Like a wave that recedes and then returns. You ask me if we will win? You ask me the wrong question. Ask me if we will fight and I will answer yes.
Luigi Galleani

Today we decided to have our say on the “Renata” operation. In other writings, the investigation has been analyzed, both in its general repressive aspects of the state and with regard to the technological, inquisitorial and legal tools used to hit those who still dare to fight for something different and still blow on the wings of freedom.

We have decided not to turn to the court that will try us nor to the diligence of our repressors. A courtroom is not the place where we choose to speak today.

We want to speak in those places where there is struggle, where there is still critical spirit, wherever there are women and men who are aware that so many things must be changed now, that this state of affairs must be revolutionized.

So we are going to talk about the actions that we are accused of or that are included in the investigation.

These actions-night or day, individual or collective-are part of a conflict that goes far beyond the specific facts or the territory in which they are located. They are the result of a broader clash, that between the exploited, the exploiters and those who defend them.

Of these actions we share the spirit, the ethics, the method, the goals, regardless of who carried them out. They speak for themselves, they are understandable to most, they point to a path – that of liberation. They point the finger at those who live by exploitation and war, hatred and violence, they wish for something more, something that will put an end to the worst atrocities and barbarities, but above all they aim to destroy the wall of resignation, in times so poor in human solidarity, rebellion, critical thinking.

Those who in recent years have said and still say that such actions serve no purpose, that the game is not worth the candle, that nothing will change, that human beings have permanently lost their wits by reducing life to a constant fratricidal war, have stopped dreaming, have stopped questioning those responsible for injustice and the causes that have brought society to a moral, environmental and material level that is disturbing to say the least. Continue reading “Italy: ‘To burning hearts’ Statement of the anarchists accused at the trial for Operation Renata” →

Bolzano, Italy: Statement at the appeal trial for the Brenner demonstration

Posted on 2023/02/08 by darknights

Today, Feb. 3, the last hearing prior to sentencing in the appeal trial for the anti-border march (Brenner, May 2016) was held at the Bolzano court. This is the statement read in the courtroom, signed by some 20 defendants:

Statement at the appeal trial for the Brenner demonstration

If there is a place where words do not express mere opinions without consequences, this is certainly the court. In a few days, in this courtroom, it will be decided whether and for how long our future will consist of bars and prison.

This is no reason to keep silent.

In the repressive doggedness that the various public prosecutors’ offices in this country have long reserved for the anarchist movement – of which the 130 years in prison dispensed in the first-degree verdict in this trial is a good example -, in these days it is reaching its zenith. The state seems determined to condemn to death fellow anarchist Alfredo Cospito, now on his 107th day of an all-out hunger strike against the torture of 41 bis and against hostile life imprisonment. Alfredo’s determination, on the one hand, and institutional ferocity, on the other, decisively overshadow for us the outcome of this trial and our individual fates.

In a country marked by a long trail of real massacres carried out by state apparatuses with the manpower of neo-fascists-this is not only a historical truth, but even a judicial one-, to be convicted of “political massacre” are … two anarchists (Alfredo Cospito and Anna Beniamino), for “a massacre without massacre attributed without evidence.” The most odious falsification of the anarchist idea and practice, taking Alfredo to the grave for living of 41 bis.

If this is the logic, then 130 years in prison can be doled out for a demonstration that caused, according to the same prosecution, 8,000 euros in damages. Consistency, as they say, is in the whole.

While there is talk of the Constitution, the rule of law and peace, reality tells us that the democratic governments of the West are leading us straight toward conflict with Russia, that is, on an inclined plane at the bottom of which is World War III, with the accompanying annihilation of terrestrial life.

The fury against dissent in general and against anarchists in particular is the home front of that war. The 41 bis is prison of war.

That is why Alfredo’s great courage and the solidarity he was able to muster are so frightening. They are part of that humanity that will never side with NATO bombs, just as our comrades in Russia do not side with Putin’s bombs.

While it is up to you to choose whether to join the chorus of repression that is nowadays more disproportionate, our thoughts and hearts are with Alfredo.

Bolzano, February 3, 2023

Giulia Perlotto, Carlo Casucci, Kamilla Bezerra, Massimo Passamani, Manuel Oxoli, Luca Rassu, Roberto Bottamedi, Marco Degosus, Arianna Viola, Mattia Magagna, Roberto Bonadeo, Agnese Trentin, Andrea Parolari, Stefano Diani, Benedetta Antonucci, Matteo Nascimben, Sirio Mafrini

Source: Il Rovescio & oltre il Ponte

Via: La Nemesi