Letter – Page 2 – Dark Nights

UK: “Unsurprising Fact” – Letter By Anarchist Prisoner Toby Shone + Fallout From Publication Of “Unsurprising Fact”

Posted on 2024/11/02 - 2024/11/03 by darknights

“Unsurprising Fact” – Letter By Anarchist Prisoner Toby Shone

17/10/24

Some things don’t surprise us and for sure the recourse to judicial options I find distasteful but expedient. Anarchism is either illegal or it is not anarchism as our dear comrade Gustavo Rodriguez reminds us. Nevertheless, over the past few months my lawyers were able to obtain a Security Intelligence Report (SIR) produced by the prison’s anti-terror bureaucrats. This disclosure occurred in the course of a parole motion, which was denied in any event. The Secretary of State opposed my release and used a non-disclosure application to prevent me from seeing or being able to respond to “evidence” used against me on grounds of “national security”. The Parole Board disagreed and granted me access to a scant eight pages of intelligence reports. These cover the time period September 2023 – January 2024 and show an incomplete snapshot of the surveillance and censorship of my correspondence and books, the gathering of information on those that I am in contact with and the intel received about the fireworks solidarity demo at Bristol prison last year when I was detained there. The report revealed the collection of all the names, addresses and personal details of all those who communicate with me. For example, it is noted that one comrade writes that he works as a postman, another comrade “has a daughter in prison”, etc. Also listed in the entries are any personal connections and any details related to affiliations to any groups or tendencies. Geographic analysis using Google Maps has been made to view their locations. The Star and Shadow Cinema in Newcastle upon Tyne is designated a “potential meeting point” and BASE in Bristol described as “a heavily graffitied possible squat or commune.

Thus the level of intelligence and analysis displayed is low and crude but we can anticipate that the data is funnelled to the security services and the police state.

The security regime that I am imposed with is directed from outside the prison by a panel* comprising of senior police, Counter Terror Unit, National Security Division, governmental administration and forensic psychology.

We know that the state is afraid and takes step of repression; however it is rare that we see the evidence and its workings, therefore I am giving this account as my response.

I have nothing to justify.

In this situation I already knew perfectly well before disclosure what the secret “evidence” consisted off – the fact that I maintain my perspective and contacts with the anarchist dependency and with the social movement. The stand that I continue to write “and try to receive” letters and I am sent books and publications with critical content.

I will not apologise one sentence for those things.

I send my greetings to Alfredo, Anna, Juan and all the prisoners and those persecuted in Italy.

To Francisco, Monica and all the imprisoned comrades in Chile.

To the comrades imprisonned and those in struggle in Greece.

To Daniela Klette in Germany, strength.

Likewise to all the comrades detained in every territory and to the groups of action, I send a hug and my complicity.

A warm hug to Claudio who is now free.

To the application of practical theory.

For a black international.

Toby Shone
13th October 2024
HMP Garth
North-West

* MAPPA – Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangement

Fallout From Publication Of “Unsurprising Fact”

22/10/24

As the result of Toby Shone having giving the text “Unsurprising Fact” to Brighton ABC, he had a visit from Counter-Terror Prevent duo Ian Turner and Mick McCormack on the morning of October 21st. He was issued 3 administrative sanctions and is now on Basic IEP regime, which means no television and only £5 a week to spend. The sanctions were for: writing an open letter to Joe Black at Brighton ABC on October 13th. [“Unsurprising Fact” was dictacted over the phone]; repeated phone calls to a friend during which she put him on speaker phone so that he could also talk to others in the room; and for speaking disrespectfully about staff including his Probation Offender Manager person Clare Ashton in a conversation with another contact in September. The first two people have been removed from his phone list.

NB: Toby is due to be relased on November 13th, 2024, having served his full sentence. This is just the latest (and hopefully the last) vidictive move by HMP Garth’s “anti-terror bureaucrats” attempt to punish him during his final days at “His Majesty’s pleasure.

Source: Brighton Anarchist Black Cross

UK: Civilization is a cancer. Letter by imprisoned anarchist comrade Toby Shone

Posted on 2024/01/22 - 2024/01/22 by darknights

“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”

– Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Some matters should be denounced in the strongest terms, one of these is the way prisoners health is addressed. Neglect and mistreatment are endemic, if not malice, institutionalised. I was scheduled an MRI scan and blood tests for tumour markers in late October 2023 at the Bristol Royal Infirmary. I should have been put on medical hold and provided that treatment, but I was transferred to the long term High Security Estate where I did not receive the blood test by the prison medical team until late December. The results of those blood tests have never been disclosed to me by the prison medical authorities. In fact, I only got the results after a comrade called my Bristol NHS Oncology Unit. Twice the prison team have failed to facilitate a telephone consultation with my doctor to receive the blood test outcome. The prison medical system has totally failed in every way to provide continuity in my oncology pathway. My scheduled MRI scan, which I have not been given any information about, is not being declared to me for fear I will use the opportunity to make an escape. The last time, the despicable cowards of the prison service zip tied my hands before I was placed in the coffin of the MRI scanner, an indignity that I will not accept again even at risk of my health. Prisoners die each day chained to their hospice beds watched by bastards with keys and batons. Prison is an abomination and the only future we are fighting for is one in which it is destroyed forever. I will live and die in the way I choose.

Death to the state!

Toby, 18th of January 2024, HMP Garth

Germany: Letter from Thomas Meyer-Falk

Posted on 2023/09/18 - 2023/09/18 by darknights

From ABC Brighton: Thomas Meyer-Falk has written about his first few days of freedom after serving 26 years in prison, much of the latter part under an old nazi-era preventative detention law.

How the wind rustles and the acorns fall: A few days of freedom!

On 29.08.2023, after almost 27 years of imprisonment, I was released from the high-security area of Freiburg prison with two hours notice. How does a person feel in such a situation? I would like to report on this after the first 14 days.

On 29.08.2023: The release!

At 8 a.m. I was still sitting in the visiting area of the prison with the probation officer, who might be responsible for me in the future, and we puzzled over when and if a release would take place. At 2 p.m. the time had come – I was discharged and on my way to my new place to live.

I should have been overflowing with happiness, but my focus was on the speedy handling of the move and my first official visits. Already around 3 p.m. I was at the job center and then at the health insurance company. The evening became long, ended after midnight. I got to know people in the new living environment, talked to friends on the phone and immediately started texting. The world of the 21st century had integrated me in a short time: thanks to the local group of the Rote Hilfe e.V. from Freiburg, my smartphone and laptop were ready. It felt surreal to sit on the tram and talk on the phone – just hours before I had sat in a cell with a corded phone and was only allowed to call numbers approved by the prison, and the conversations would be monitored and recorded, as it was always said in an announcement text before calls.

At 8 p.m., for the first time in 27 years, I sat together in a circle of people who voluntarily live together, who had voluntarily taken me in, and where I voluntarily went. It felt just as surreal, but really good. Continue reading “Germany: Letter from Thomas Meyer-Falk” →

“A dance with time. Greetings, year seven”

Posted on 2023/07/20 by darknights

Greetings from nowhere.

“Freedom is secured not by the fulfillment of one’s desires, but by the removal of desire.”

– Epictetus

My journey into clandestinity began 7 years ago today. It was July 10, 2016, the sun was heating up the city and for most of the people I met that day it was just another Sunday. For me, that day was both an end and a beginning. Giving up my old and beloved reality of life, replaced by the great unknown variable. Leaving the old behind me, welcoming the new. A painful and overwhelming start of the journey… From then on I was confronted with the unknown every day, resembling a person who has lost their sight from one day to the next and now has to focus on their other senses. I wandered around, looking for anchor points, and after long months, with patience and persistence, finally regained my bearings. My life was back on track, or so I thought… What had to come was coming. The next big shock hit me and once again life held its instruction manual in front of my nose; leave the old behind, welcome the new. Clandestinity is a rigorous study full of hardships, but the fruits of it will be a lifetime harvest for me.

A year ago, I stood again in this clearing to call out to you. To let you know that I am well. To let you know that I sincerely love you and carry you in my heart day after day. Today, one year later and 7 years after the beginning of the journey, I am somewhere else, as I will be tomorrow. But the bond between us remains. I had to leave you behind physically. But spiritually and emotionally you have been my silent companionship for 7 years. Thanks to you I always find the strength and courage to welcome new things into my life. To then, when the time comes, leave it behind me again.

Still on the run, mentally ready for the task of securing freedom –

With love and in solidarity

Your friend and comrade from nowhere

Italy: Letter from Alfredo Cospito and update on the latest transfer to San Paolo Hospital on March 6

Posted on 2023/03/16 by darknights

Letter from Alfredo Cospito and update on the latest transfer to San Paolo Hospital on March 6

On Monday, March 6 (the 138th day of his hunger strike) Alfredo Cospito was again transferred from Opera Prison to San Paolo Hospital. Recall that the comrade had been an inmate in the Intensive Assistance Service (SAI) inside the Opera prison since Jan. 30, on Feb. 11 transferred for the first time to San Paolo Hospital, and then transferred again to Opera on the 27th of the same month (following the hearing on the 24th in the court of cassation), remaining there for a week, until this last transfer to San Paolo on March 6.

Following the outcome of the Feb. 24 hearing at the court of cassation (which rejected the petition to revoke his detention in 41 bis, further ratifying what had already been decided by the Rome supervisory court in its Dec. 1 hearing), Alfredo stopped taking the mild supplements he had been taking for some time.

Also in the same days as the latest transfer, on March 6, the opinion requested by the Ministry of Justice from the National Bioethics Committee on the possible medical intervention in Alfredo, that is, on force-feeding in case of loss of consciousness, was released. The CNB stresses that it has “no legal, political, moral or ethical legitimacy to formulate an ‘ad personam’ opinion” (and “consequently, the CNB’s response is of a general nature”), without even issuing an unambiguous opinion, thus dividing itself between the “pro-life” and the “pro-choice” (according to the latter, the Anticipated Treatment Arrangement should be respected in any case).

On March 1, during a press conference, Alfredo’s lawyer disclosed a hitherto undisclosed letter-statement by the comrade, plausibly dating back at least a month. We publish its full transcript here. Recall that to date, due to the systematic censorship inherent in 41 bis, it has not yet been possible to read the comrade’s first statement regarding the beginning of the hunger strike, dating back to October 20. The only statement published to date, other than this letter disclosed on March 1, was the one for the December 5 hearing in Turin as part of the Scripta Manent trial.

The state’s choice to annihilate the comrade poses the need to place, once again, no hope in the outcomes of the courts or in the opinions of the various structures deputed to express their views on the contradictions that have opened up in state bodies as a result of the hunger strike and with the development of the international solidarity movement. These are, especially with regard to the courts of the Italian state, structures and figures directly responsible for the very serious conditions in which Alfredo Cospito finds himself. The state, first with the transfer of the comrade in 41 bis on May 5 and later with the cassation ruling of the Scripta Manent trial on July 6, intended to give a warning to the anarchist and revolutionary movement. A warning that after the outcomes of the hearings of the Rome parole court on Dec. 1 and the court of cassation on Feb. 24 was expressed even more clearly, taking the form of a will to total annihilation against the comrade.

To the attempted annihilation against Alfredo and the constant mass-media campaign of slander the whole anarchist movement we respond with the clarity of our ideas and the tenacity of our practices.

Letter from Alfredo Cospito

My struggle against 41 bis is an individual struggle as an anarchist; I do not do or receive blackmail. I simply cannot live in an inhumane regime like 41 bis, where I cannot freely read what I want, books, newspapers, anarchist periodicals, art, scientific and literature and history magazines.

The only chance I have to get out is to deny my anarchy and sell me someone to put in my place. A regime where I cannot have any human contact, where I can no longer see or stroke a blade of grass or hug a loved one. A regime where photos of your parents are confiscated. Buried alive in a grave, in a place of death. I will carry on my struggle to the bitter end, not because of “blackmail,” but because this is not life. If the goal of the Italian state is to make me “disassociate” myself from the actions of the anarchists outside, know that I do not suffer blackmail. As a good anarchist I believe that everyone is responsible for his own actions, and as a member of the anti-organizational current I have never “associated” with anyone and therefore cannot “disassociate” myself from anyone. Affinity is something else. Continue reading “Italy: Letter from Alfredo Cospito and update on the latest transfer to San Paolo Hospital on March 6” →

“Conspiracy and Subversion”, a conversation of the Informal Anarchist Federation (2006) + Letter to the various realities of the informal FAI. A reflection by Gabriel Pombo da Silva (2007)

Posted on 2023/01/25 - 2023/01/25 by darknights

Note from InformantivoAnarquista

With regard to the hunger strike of the anarchist comrade Alfredo Cospito, it seems important to us to collect and value our anarchist history, to reread, reflect and sharpen our denials. Alfredo Cospito and Anna Beniamino today face a new labyrinth of the judicial inquisition, trying to impose the article of political massacre to bury stories, experiences, courage, bravery and desire for freedom with life sentences and long sentences.

16 years ago took place the clandestine conversation that we are spreading, we resort to the timelessness of the ideas and reflections that arise in the course of the fraternal dialogue, it also allows us to recognize the comrades as beings close to us, neither heroes nor perfect militants, nor guerrillas coming down from the plain… the revolt is contagious and exponentially reproducible, we can all contribute and recognize our absence.

“Conspiracy and Subversion”, a conversation of the Informal Anarchist Federation (2006)

Some of the comrades who belong to the original groups of the FAI Informal Anarchist Federation have decided to discuss a few points and to make the transcription of the discussion known. There are some omissions due to security reasons, but in the whole the transcription reflects the direct and informal tone of the conversation, which avoids all formalisms just as we do in our life…

These groups take part in the discussion: ‘Crafts and Fire Cooperative’, ‘July 20 Brigade’, ‘Cells against Capital, its Prisons, its Jailers and its Cells’, and ‘International Solidarity’.

QUI: I like Pippo’s idea to record and write down our conversation, Quo and Qua like it too. We think it is worthwhile even if we risk to be caught (touching wood). What counts is that Pippo takes off what doesn’t have to be written and destroys the recording.

PIPPO: My idea was to make some points known, points that normally we have never clarified and that make us angry sometimes…yes, when we hear or read comments about us…in other words we need to show to this fucking movement that we are not ghosts coming from nothing (laughers…’hey, did you see you?’). We need to show to them that we think it very carefully before carrying out an action and that we leave very little to chance. Our actions are not indiscriminate, on the contrary they are so controlled that we haven’t managed to do what we really want yet…(laughers). Then there’s nothing obscure or clandestine in our way of life. Most of us come from the movement. Live inside it and know that reality. Some even come from shit situations. let me tell you that Paperino. I don’t know how you can do…

PAPERINO: Forget it, it’s a long story…

PIPPO: Alright, I explain better. Sometimes it happens that I read or hear very horrible comments on our activity, for example that we are ‘provocateurs’ or ‘secret services’ not to mention their partial and blind general vision of what we do and say. If we write down the content of this encounter we might make some of our dynamics clearer…this is also for the comrades of other FAI groups that we don’t know.

NONNA PAPERA: I’m not sure about writing down this discussion. Maybe a self-interview would be better: each group answers questions decided by everybody. In this way we avoid a transcription that would be incorrect for security reasons.

PAPERINA: I don’t think so. The meeting written on paper is more spontaneous and clarifying. We will make some corrections, pass it to the other groups and then it will be ready to be spread in a couple of weeks.

Paperino and I will print and send it, you know, we’ve got a new PC …

QUI: Let’s see which points we need to discuss. This might help us to understand better and then I’m willing to communicate with the groups that followed us in the FAI. We can reach them in this way and they can communicate with the same method.

ARCHIMEDE: I think that a very good point of this experience is experimentation, that is to say I put in practice things that I only talked about before, yes, to join thought: and action and to avoid that schizophrenic dualism between what is said and what is done. Then there exists another form of schizophrenia. a deeper alienation: the fact that you can’t talk openly to the comrades who surround you and who are not part of our groups, you can’t say what you really think or you risk exposing yourself and putting the comrades in danger. In other words,this caution, the fact that I can’t shout what I would like, is killing me.

QUA: Well, I feel the same but I don’t suffer out of that. To come back to the document….how are we going to spread it? There’s not much anarchist press and those who are willing to publish certain documents are very few…and then it is not fair to turn the comrades into targets for repression, as it often happens. Not to mention those who faint as soon as they read certain things or run to the cops…

Internet is a problem for us. we are not IT experts. And then, after the lndymedia server was searched because they published our claim of the bombs to the EU, it is very difficult that someone wants to publish our writing… Continue reading ““Conspiracy and Subversion”, a conversation of the Informal Anarchist Federation (2006) + Letter to the various realities of the informal FAI. A reflection by Gabriel Pombo da Silva (2007)” →

France: Updates on anarchist comrade Ivan Alocco

Posted on 2022/11/25 - 2022/11/25 by darknights

Hello to all and everyone,
I am writing these few lines to give you some news.

I am continuing the hunger strike I started on October 27, in solidarity with Alfredo Cospito’s struggle to get out of 41 bis. I am doing well. I feel tired and sometimes dizzy, but my determination remains intact.

This is the first time since June, since I’ve been locked up here, that I feel like I’m doing something worthwhile, instead of simply surviving and watching time go by. Two weeks ago, the head warden threatened to transfer me to solitary confinement if I continue with the hunger strike (” for my own good, to be better looked after in case I have a sudden health problem “), but so far he has not put his blackmail into practice.

My mail is blocked again. They gave me letters on October 24, then nothing more. Likewise, the letters I have written to my family since mid-October have still not arrived.

On Thursday, Nov. 24, at 1:30 p.m., I will appear before the investigating judge (Anne Grandjean), at the Bobigny courthouse, for questioning.

Finally, I was able to start reading the files of the inquiry. Right from the beginning, a little surprise: the SDAT explains that they began to tail me and the other comrade (quickly exonerated) starting last January. This was because of ” confidential information ” (one judge writes ” anonymous information “) telling them that we would be the authors of the arson attacks against some diplomatic or big business vehicles, claimed by the anarchists.

All my solidarity to Alfredo, Anna and Juan, on hunger strike.
A thought to the revolutionary prisoners and prisoners across the world.
Freedom for all and everyone !

Ivan

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

Source: Inferno Urbano

Germany: Letter from anarchist prisoner Thomas Meyer-Falk

Posted on 2022/10/01 by darknights

To give space to the nameless, faceless and voiceless!

Horror, sadness, rage, anger and a feeling of helplessness, of powerlessness. Short-term flaring up of affects and stirring emotions here, long-lasting, persistent feelings there, and all this before what we call mood, it colors our experience background, it is, so to speak, the primordial layer, the ground of feeling.

It is the global warming, what is called “climate crisis”, as if it would be a temporally manageable crisis and not a generation-spreading world change, before whose foil all further conflicts must be read, because a world-spreading cooperation, a togetherness is demanded.

Instead, horrible wars are raging, the one that touches us in Central Europe for very different reasons in the area of Ukraine, but also in Kurdistan, in Syria, in Yemen, in many regions of Africa. Conflicts in South America, in Asia – basically there is no region of the world where military conflicts are not being waged, which in turn lead to even more horror, grief, anger and rage.

Not to forget the economic antagonisms. Just as trivial as existential: Rich against poor! More and more super-rich against more and more super-poor. More and more exploiters against exploited.

The prisons are full also because of this. People are imprisoned if they don’t want to belong to the super poor anymore. Or if people go beyond the very narrow corridor that government systems keep open for protests to articulate their fear, but also their anger about the existing conditions, they are also locked up. When people express dissenting opinions, as is currently the case in Russia, for example, they can end up in camps. People who can no longer endure the brutal present without being stunned, who take various substances to escape into a colorful world of illusion, are also imprisoned. Depending on the country, even the death penalty is imposed. And people who flee from starvation or an otherwise hopeless living situation, they are also locked up in jails, if not killed, or inhumane border regimes are set up, resulting in the death of countless people.

Solidarity Weeks like this one in August 2022 are an encouragement for those held in prisons as well as for those who are threatened with imprisonment. Because it is a work against forgetting. As a rule, interest in people wanes when their criminal trial is over. But Soli Weeks bring the names, the faces and the voices of those concerned back into the focus of attention.

This is a Sisyphean task, because the number of prisoners is increasing rather than decreasing, and all this happens against the background of existential conflicts and disputes, which in turn attract all attention.

All the more beautiful that there are people outside the walls who fill this week of solidarity in August with life and keep it alive.

With heartfelt greetings

Thomas Meyer-Falk
currently JVA(SV)
Hermann-Herder-Str.8
D-79104 Freiburg

http://freedom-for-thomas.de

Source: solidarity.international

France: A letter from Ivan, from Villepinte Prison

Posted on 2022/09/28 by darknights

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

–

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

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

From Coast to Coast: Open Letter by Anarchist Prisoner Toby Shone

Posted on 2022/09/11 by darknights

I’ve previously written about the need to recreate an Atlantic bridge, based on international revolutionary solidarity and reciprocal knowledge, that moves towards affinity and direct action in support of our imprisoned comrades. Since then, I was recently visited by a comrade from Anarchist Black Cross Philadelphia here at the G4S facility in which I’m held. G4S is originally an American company, Wackenhut, which has pioneered the private prison and security industry all over the world. As part of our discussion between the comrade from ABC Philadelphia and myself, we spoke of the need to prevent our groups and commons becoming inward-looking and closing in on themselves in microscopic scenes and myopia. The anglophone world is particularly susceptible to this trend, although it is not solely confined to English-speaking territories. How can we translate rhetoric into practical activity? Words and deeds must coincide, and that is what?

For too long, a kind of one-way discourse has been in effect, breached by too few valiant individuals and groups. We can speak of a loss of solidarity flowing across the Atlantic between north and south, east and west. Without wanting to advocate any kind of anarcho-tourism or the colonial approach of the wholesale export-import political programs of the activist left, I’m in favor of strengthening our international networks in the face of an increased technocratic authoritarianism. To remain locked up in our local areas without considering the struggles elsewhere is self-defeating, as repressive operations seek to confine us and stem our anarchic contagion specifically to promote sterility. Can we renew an Atlantic bridge that connects our tendencies, that connects the uprisings in the North American metropolises to those in Europe, Latin America and Asia? Can we join together the struggles of the long-term COINTELPRO prisoners with those elsewhere in the global prison industrial complex? Continue reading “From Coast to Coast: Open Letter by Anarchist Prisoner Toby Shone” →