Juan Sorroche – Page 10

Rome, Italy: 10 cars are not enough…

Posted on 2022/08/06 by darknights

Rome, 10 cars are not enough…

In the early hours of May 27, we carried out an incendiary action against the Enjoy carpooling vehicles belonging to the multinational ENI s.p.a. (national hydrocarbon company) in the Tuscolana-Cinecittà area of Rome. According to local newspapers, 10 cars were completely destroyed, while four others were seriously damaged.

ENI has always been one of the pillars of Italian capitalism, and its interests coincide with those of the State and, consequently, of the governments that succeed one another in administering it, whether they are of the right or the left, because its profits and infrastructures are strategic insofar as they strengthen the State in which they are located, being fundamental for the preservation of economic power, in the contemporary configuration of the capitalist productive system.

ENI is present in many countries where local and international conflicts are active for the control of energy resources: Libya, Mali, Nigeria, Kazakhstan (note that not a word was heard against the oligarch Putin when he sent his troops to quell the uprisings that broke out in that country), to name but a few. In these places, energy in the form of fossil fuels has been extracted from the earth for decades to feed the energy needs of Western industry, in a pattern that takes the form of true neo-colonialism. These extractive activities, it should be remembered, carry great risks for the environment and indigenous populations, especially in countries where controls and safety systems are consciously minimized in order to maximize profits, as in the case of the Niger Delta, an area severely devastated by continuous crude oil spills and the dispersion of gases and combustion residues resulting from extraction activities into the air. Continue reading “Rome, Italy: 10 cars are not enough…” →

Treviso, Italy: Juan sentenced to 28 years’ prison. With blood in our eyes

Posted on 2022/08/03 - 2022/08/03 by darknights

Juan sentenced to 28 years’ prison.

With blood in our eyes

Saturday July 9th, the court of Treviso sentenced our friend and comrade Juan to 28 years’ prison (plus three years’ probation, 30,000 euro in compensation to the League and 17,000 euro in court costs) because he was held responsible for the attack in Treviso of the Carroccio in August 2018. Following the recent configuration of the charge of ‘political massacre’ – which stipulates life imprisonment – for an explosive attack on the carabinieri barracks in Fossano attributed to the anarchists Anna and Alfredo, this is the highest penalty, in our memory, ever imposed in Italy for a direct action that resulted in no injuries.

Among the infinite possible examples, it can be observed that the charge of ‘political massacre’ was not even brought against the Capaci massacre, [1992, anti-mafia Judge Giovanni Falcone, his wife and three escort cops, are killed in an explosion on the motorway near Palermo, Sicily and seven other people injured] while the fascist Traini was sentenced to 12 years for shooting at immigrants, wounding six of them, (and against a PD [Democratic Party] premises…). The aggravating circumstances of ‘terrorism’ (and of ‘massacres’ with neither dead nor wounded) apply to revolutionaries in general and anarchists in particular. We could also remember what was said in so much of so-called civil society in 2018 about state racism, on immigrants segregated on ships in ports, on the declarations of Interior Minister Salvini.

We say declarations on purpose, because the actual practice of state racism, criminal agreements with Libya, etc. has never been changed by whatever government in charge. But the social consensus towards institutional racism is no mere trifle: the Captain’s [Salvini, Northern League, anti-migrant ex-deputy pm and home minister] daily tweets produced a security decree that increased the possible penalties for picketing and roadblocking to 12 years. As has been the case in Italy since 1975 – in that unique security text that began with the Reale Law and has never been completed – ‘exceptional’ regulations proliferate without any democratic outcry ever leading to the slightest repeal. While we are discovering the obvious these days: that political pressure from a multinational like Uber is behind the taxi competition rules, we pretend that the subject of ‘security’ is instead ‘technical’. As if the tightening of penalties against workers’ picketing was not commissioned by the logistics bosses. If until now no one had taken 28 years in prison for an action such as the one in Treviso, it was not because of legal limitations (with the aggravating circumstance of ‘terrorism’ applied to the individual segments that make up an action – packaging, transport, use of ‘deadly’ materials – one can get close to life imprisonment), but because of social limitations. Continue reading “Treviso, Italy: Juan sentenced to 28 years’ prison. With blood in our eyes” →

Spoleto, Italy: The premeptive class warfare of the Italian state

Posted on 2022/07/22 by darknights

THE PREEMPTIVE CLASS WARFARE OF THE ITALIAN STATE

The arrests that took place in the early morning of Tuesday, July 19, on a warrant from the Piacenza prosecutor’s office are indicative of the repressive climate in Italy and the authoritarian turn underway. Four SI Cobas trade unionists were placed under house arrest for the long cycle of struggles that inflamed logistics from 2014 to 2021. Along with them, two USB unionists were also placed under house arrest and two others are the recipients of other precautionary measures. Prosecutor Grazia Pradella’s charges are of criminal conspiracy, private violence, resisting a public official, sabotage, and interruption of a public service, finalized by extortionist intent in order to obtain better wage conditions for workers.

We do not believe that we should be outraged, as is happening in these hours, by this repressive operation, but rather point out that it is an open manifestation, a true confession, of the mentality of the bourgeoisie in this historical period: for the gentlemen of GLS, Amazon, FedEx-TNT, as well as from the arrogant statements that are being uttered every day by the leaders of Confindustria, everything must be granted, everything must be permissible for them. Even putting up a tough fight for a wage increase becomes extortion. The whole loot belongs to them by right, one must not dare to ask, one must not struggle. The charge of extortion is thus not a scandal, if anything, a sign of the times.

This repressive operation stands in open complicity with the murders of Abd El Salam, which occurred, moreover, in Piacenza itself in 2016, and Adil Belakhdim, who was murdered last year in the province of Novara. In both cases, the murders occurred during a strike picket, the same pickets that have been attacked repeatedly in recent years by police charges and assaults by corporate henchmen. Therefore, judicially attacking self-defense practices means acting basically in concert with the picketers and murderers. Continue reading “Spoleto, Italy: The premeptive class warfare of the Italian state” →

Italy: Statement of Juan Sorroche in front of the court of Treviso and against the telematization of the democratic inquisition.

Posted on 2022/06/18 - 2022/06/18 by darknights

In this umpteenth hearing in videoconference and after many requests, all denied, to appear and attend in person and not in absence to all the hearings of the trial that sees me charged, for the heavy and infamous accusation of massacre, I have to face the issue of videoconferencing, which enters, or to be more precise, was entering, in the infamous logic of the differentiation of the penitentiary circuits, in which the individual prisoner and accused is demonized and dehumanized by the said “considerable social dangerousness”. And I said that I was entering, because the videoconference, the trial in absentia, has been extended to all the prisoners in Italian prisons, who have been left without a real defense and with the marginalization that all this implies for all the defendants who suffer this imposition, through a liberticidal dynamic of the umpteenth emergency, this time for the Covid-19 emergency, which then became law. It is known, it is already evident and unmasked – and I am not only talking about the contradiction of this problem especially, or of one law or another – how the specific problem of the videoconference has reduced the defense to be a farce, annulling in fact the defendant within the trial.

This court will probably say that this has nothing to do with the trial taking place today.

But I believe it does, and what is more, I believe it is a fundamental issue. I am talking about the contradiction that the States possess by their own systemic nature, the fundamental problem is the disintegration and degeneration that dresses itself as emergentialism, and has the objective of breaking and directing the consolidated and ordinary legality at will, transforming it into another legality. We see it with the same dynamics of the perpetual emergency, and the specific plan of the videoconference is only an example of how the systemic authoritarianism liberticidal system expands in a capillary way. It is the exception, the emergency of today, that forges the law of tomorrow, reducing it more and more. The trials by videoconference, that is, in absentia, have been established by the continuous emergencies within the said social dangerousness, which is already the norm, such as the trial by videoconference for all the prisoners in Italian prisons. And it is not that this does not have repercussions on the real conditions of the entire trial, since it hinders the management of a real defense of the accused, creating a contradiction with what your own democratic and bourgeois law argues. Continue reading “Italy: Statement of Juan Sorroche in front of the court of Treviso and against the telematization of the democratic inquisition.” →

UK: Text from Anarchist prisoner Toby Shone June 11th

Posted on 2022/06/13 by darknights

Text from Toby Shone June 11th

War in the Heavens

J 11. Open Letter in solidarity with Juan Sorroche
Hi, Juan. I’m writing this letter to express my solidarity and send you a big flaming hug of anarchy for the date of June 11th. This date, which is the date of the sentencing demands from the prosecutor, and also is the date for the International Mobilization for Anarchist Prisoners, is one more day in our intransigent lives.

Most likely, you may not remember me, but we met approximately 15 years ago, in Carcelona (i.e. Barcelona, a play on words which mixes the word “Barcelona” with “carcel” or prison in Spanish – translator’s note). I recall your broad smile, your laugh, and your warm and strong heart.

I saw your letter in Respiro number two with a collage of sunflower
seeds and a zen squirrel! Comrades from the Anti-repression fund of the Western Alps sent it to me while I was in the prison of Bristol, which I’m now banned from. When I see the artwork letters of my comrades, it gives me strength. I want to share this vitality with you and all the other comrades through this letter.

Anarchist direct action has precise objectives – it advances towards
those responsible for tyranny and the structures they administer. Our struggle is irrevocable, empirical and international. It is the state which carries out the massacres. It is the state which terrorizes. All the piles of corpses at the borders of Fortress Europe and drowned in the Mediterranean are mass murders. The results of the failed military interventions in Libya, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, just to mention a few, are mass murders in the service of Western interests. Multimillion dead from poverty, malnutrition, and economic adventurism, are mass murders. The killings by police on the streets or in custody, the deaths in prison and at the hands of nationalist fascist gangs are mass murderers. And those responsible where are they? With power. We may be imprisoned but our hearts are free. As anarchists we have nothing to explain to the enemy nor apologize for. It is the state which must justify itself and it is the state which is on trial.

It is said that “mountains and rivers differ in each region. But the
wind and the moon are the same throughout the skies we look upon.”

This is the love of the comrades and the compassion which navigates.
Five continents of fire. Five arrows. Five Fingers form a fist.
A fist of solidarity.

We’ll escape beyond the sun.
And nothing can stop us.
04/06/2022
G4S Park, UK
Toby Shone

Source: Act for freedom now!

Bologna, Italy: Two repeaters set on fire

Posted on 2022/06/03 - 2022/06/03 by darknights

“Social war on state war,” this was the writing left on the night of May 22 near 2 repeaters set on fire near Bologna. A minimal gesture of active insubordination to a state that lives on wars and massacres and today accuses anarchists of massacre, that sends weapons but flaunts itself as a bearer of peace, that legitimizes the use of torture through the 41bis regime. We act, because for 2 years they have been intermittently locking us in, blackmailing us and taking away our ability to deal on the basis of free choices with what was happening. All to run the money machine of capitalism. And today we find ourselves the rich richer, the poor poorer and society more alienating, judgmental and suspicious. Now, with war, it happens again: emergency, national unity, sacrifices, because the bosses, beyond their country, have to assert and proceed with their interests, on the skin of those who are under the bombs, those who go to jail for protests, those who impoverish. If we don’t want the war they are waging on us to make the world an unlivable place, it’s time to agitate, to fight back and strike even unpredictably because they must know that in front of their plans there are those who are immobile and silent and do not want to be.

For Anna, Juan and Alfredo
Against the torture of prison and 41 bis
For all x prisoners who struggle

Source: Il Rovescio

UK: “Like Mercury” Open Letter for Dan Baker, aka Alishare – from Toby Shone

Posted on 2022/06/01 by darknights

Open Letter for Dan Baker, aka Alishare – from Toby Shone

Alishare, I heard your message of solidarity, thank you, it gave me strength. I would turn the energy with this open letter, and I hope to kick a brick from the walls. One more time. In a flurry of black feathers and lunar wisdom, a murder of crows delivered your statement and those wily crows told me about your situation in FCI Memphis.

I want to add on to this dialogue and talk about three anarchist comrades imprisoned in Italy. The first is Anna Beniamino who is serving a 17 year sentence for the Scripta Manent case in a high security regime in Rebibbia prison (Rome). The Scripta Manent case involved the arrest of 7 anarchists accused of subversive association with terrorist intent and a series of direct actions claimed by the Informal Anarchist Organization. An absurd farce with obscene conclusions. The second comrade I want to mention is Alfredo Cospito who has been locked up since 2012 for the Adinolfi case for which he was sentenced for nearly 11 years and is now waiting for the confirmation of another sentence of 20 years for the Scripta Manent case. Alfredo was recently struck with the legislature 41 bis, special security regime. Each month, he can only receive either one phone call (10 minutes) or one visit strictly with family members with glass and recorded; he can only walk in the yard with maximum 3 other prisoners previously approved by prison security; he cannot receive books, censorship is applied to his correspondence (number of letters per month is extremely limited), and he has a very limited amount of items which he can keep in his cell. Several international agencies have continuously condemned the 41bis prison regime as torture. The third comrade I want to mention is Juan Sorroche. On the date of the international day of with long-term anarchist prisoners, June the 11th , Juan will face a court hearing in Treviso. Juan is on trial accused of an attack against an office of the Lega Nord political party claimed by the “Cell Haris Hatzimihelakis/Black International (1881/2018)” that happened in August 2018. Juan who was already serving time for other judgements, is now facing a long sentence in this other political trial. Like all the imprisoned anarchists around the world, these three comrades deserve the support and solidarity that the international anarchist movement can give them. Continue reading “UK: “Like Mercury” Open Letter for Dan Baker, aka Alishare – from Toby Shone” →

Italy: Against 41 bis, revolutionary solidarity with anarchist Alfredo Cospito

Posted on 2022/05/09 - 2022/11/16 by darknights

Thursday, May 5, the imprisoned anarchist Alfredo Cospito received notification of the provision against him of the penitentiary regime of 41 bis. At the moment Alfredo is still detained in the prison of Terni, in the dedicated section. We do not know if this is a provisional destination and if it will be followed by a transfer to another institute. The decree has been ordered, as foreseen by the law, directly by the Minister of Justice Marta Cartabia, former president of the Constitutional Court. Let us recall, very briefly, that 41 bis is a particularly afflictive penitentiary regime, which provides, in order to prevent any form of communication, isolation, absence of sociability and any internal activity, silence, censorship of correspondence, one hour of monthly meetings with the glass partition and the “intercom”, then the recording of the meeting itself, 10 minutes of phone calls per month with an authorized family member forced to call from inside a Carabinieri barracks. Inmates are forbidden to receive newspapers and books, most correspondence is blocked in advance because of its contents, moreover, it is not possible to buy newspapers and there is a strong limitation in the availability of objects inside the cell (books, clothes, food, paper and pen are limited).

It is not the first time that such a measure is applied to revolutionaries, in 2006 four prisoners of Brigate Rosse were interned in such facilities (one of them, Diana Blefari, committed suicide in October 2009, shortly after being declassified from 41 bis). This is a precedent that, despite the mobilizations, has not yet been disarticulated.

In these first hours of anger, we must dwell on two issues.

On the one hand, we note the personal, physical attack on an anarchist comrade who in these ten years has never lowered his head: a comrade who claimed to have shot in the legs the CEO of Ansaldo Nucleare, Mr Adinolfi. The fact that Alfredo could not be isolated and his revolutionary contribution silenced was a thorn in the side for investigators. This has led in recent years to further restrictive measures against him, such as the censorship of correspondence and the serving of an arrest warrant in prison for Operation Sibilla on November 11, through which the repressive forces have attempted to remove from circulation a newspaper and publications that over the years have reported the articles and contributions of the comrade. We must make Alfredo feel the solidarity of a movement that is not tamed, that has not forgotten him, that does not leave him alone; we must make sure that this solidarity breaks the bans and breaks the isolation. Continue reading “Italy: Against 41 bis, revolutionary solidarity with anarchist Alfredo Cospito” →

Trentino, Italy: Repressive operation and new measures against anarchists

Posted on 2022/03/06 by darknights

Source: Il Rovescio

Via & Translated by act for freedom now!

Yesterday, 25th February 2022, police notified three custodial measures to as many comrades – from the documents we learn that the recipients would be 4 in total. They concern one custodial measure in prison, one house arrest and two compulsory residence orders in municipalities outside Trentino (one in the Trevigiano area and the other in Trieste).

The accusations refer to events different to one another and also distant in time. The only common thread seems to be the struggle against prison. After the revolts that took place in Italian jails in response to the management of the epidemic, attention has become more stringent concerning those who mobilize outside the walls on this obviously explosive front (a local example is proceedings opened in Trento for incitement to commit crime following gatherings outside the prison of Spini di Gardolo in 2021). In the orders notified yesterday, the prosecutors (Raimondi, Ognibene, Profiti, the same as in operation Renata) talk about the intent “to impose their anti-prison ideology”.

The accusations are three:

According to prosecutors, Juan allegedly placed a device near the Tribunal of Surveillance in Trento in 2014 (article 280 bis). Juan is currently being held in the prison of Terni and is facing a trial for ‘terrorist attack’ and ‘massacre’, following devices placed near the premises of the Northern League of Treviso in 2018.

Two other comrades are accused of having aided and abetted Juan’s hiding between 2017 and 2018 (procured non-observance of an accusation, article 390), by providing him with fake identity documents and a rented place.

Another comrade is accused of attempted extorsion with the aggravating circumstance of purposes of terrorism because along with others he allegedly tried to convince the editor of Radio Ottanta to read live a communique in solidarity with the revolts and [against] the massacres which occurred in Italian jails in March 2020.

There is no charge of subversive association.

This is what the documents say in short. What we say is that the spirit of freedom will never be sedated by any police manoeuvre. That we’ll continue to fight against prison. That we want our comrades back with us. That we won’t deprive them of our closeness.

Solidarity with Juan, Massimo, Agnese and Stecco.

Rome, Italy: Texts and materials distributed during the initiative of 26/11/21 at Bencivenga + Contributions of Alfredo Cospito and Juan Sorroche

Posted on 2022/02/20 by darknights

We receive and publish a series of texts and materials distributed during the initiative in solidarity with the Chilean prisoners, held at the Bencivenga Occupato on November 26, 2021. Two booklets: one on the hunger strike conducted by prisoners in Chile, the other is a collection of texts, many translated from the magazine Kalinov Most, which were intended to better focus the topics of the debate: the specific reality of Chilean prisons, solidarity, fight against prison. There are also two contributions of Juan and Alfredo for the initiative, which they asked to be disseminated.

UNTIL THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PRISON-SOCIETY

(leaflet of introduction to the debate distributed during the initiative)

This initiative was born with the need to send, in our own small way, a gesture of solidarity to the comrades prisoners in Chile who in the first months of this year have undertaken two hard hunger strikes. We want to support them, also through the translations contained in the pamphlets prepared for this meeting, by spreading the determination with which they have carried out their struggle inside the prison, with the aim of feeling it closer to us who are outside those walls and far from those territories. Although at the end of their mobilization the prisoners did not get all that they demanded, it still allowed them to build and establish bonds of complicity, both inside and outside the prison. Ties that have made this struggle transcend barriers and borders and that, since it has clearly positioned itself against all forms of coercion and domination, have made it recognizable and vindicable by refractory people all over the world.

But it is not for simple voyeurism towards distant rebellions that we are here today. With this initiative we also intend to underline our complicity with our comrades who today are prisoners of the State, so that they know that they are not alone. Also in this part of the world we have anarchist prisoners who have recently conducted several struggles inside the prison. Struggles conducted individually or collectively, strikes and mass uprisings such as those of March 2020 against pandemic management inside prisons. Struggles whose quality, to take up a concept expressed with emphasis in the contribution that Juan, a prisoner in the Terni prison, wrote for this initiative, is closely related to the relationships that exist between inside and outside the prison. These relationships are the same on which prisoners and Chilean comrades have repeatedly insisted, stating that “the prison is part of the options of the struggle, it is part of it and therefore, instead of being a parenthesis or a pause, it is configured as one more scenario in which to carry out the clash” and that it is necessary to understand “the prisoner as an active comrade, in struggle, who is in this particular condition as a result of a chosen path that does not end within [those] four walls”. Relationships in which it is necessary to invest if we want to recognize a prisoner as our comrade, as a complicit in the struggle against all power, especially at this time when these relationships are under attack. The latest repressive operations in Italy have in fact, among others, the purpose of hitting the communication between the world outside and inside the prison, putting pressure on the epistolary communication through which prisoners continue to be part of the anarchist debate and struggle, providing reflections, contributions, proposals for action and stimuli for action. Now more than ever it is therefore the time to increase efforts in the direction of greater communication and complicity with the prisoners, having as its objective not mere support in the charitable way, but rather the reinforcement of our offensive capacity against this system of domination and exploitation. Continue reading “Rome, Italy: Texts and materials distributed during the initiative of 26/11/21 at Bencivenga + Contributions of Alfredo Cospito and Juan Sorroche” →