Montreuil – Dark Nights

Paris, France: Fire involving a crane at the Baudrière construction site in Montreuil

Posted on 2025/10/26 by darknights

It was in lower Montreuil, in a seemingly quiet neighborhood, that an inexplicable and unexpected tragedy occurred during the night of Wednesday, October 22 to Thursday, October 23. Passersby noticed a sudden glow: the cab of a crane was on fire, causing chaos and widespread panic.

The firefighters were slow to arrive. This gave the fire time to cause considerable, irreversible, and unspeakable damage. Although relatively invisible from the street except for the blackened windows of the cabin, the significant impact of this fire was revealed to us by a source close to the investigation. The cabin, burned out from the inside, is now completely unusable.

The vehicle in question was located on the Imava construction site at 65 bis rue Voltaire, the real estate developer that evicted the squat known as La Baudrière in August 2022. This construction site is currently at a standstill.

Shortly afterwards, we received a text containing an interview with an expert on the event in question. Will it shed light on this very dark affair? We sincerely hope so.

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France: “I know that there, somewhere, other comrades continue the struggle.” Letter from Ivan, anarchist comrade arrested in Paris

Posted on 2022/08/30 - 2022/08/30 by darknights

“I know that there, somewhere, other comrades continue the struggle.”

Letter from Ivan, anarchist comrade arrested on June 11 on the outskirts of Paris

15 VI 22

My name is Ivan, I am an anarchist.

I was arrested by the Sous-diréction anti-térrorisme [SDAT] of the French police on Saturday, June 11, around 3:30 a.m., near my home (suburbs of Paris), on my way home.

I am accused of six vehicle fires, in Paris and Montreuil, between January and June, often in solidarity with anarchist prisoners (the last one, an embassy car, was set on fire in the 17th arrondissement of Paris on the night of my arrest).

The cops followed me for months, listened to my phone calls, installed a camera in the entrance of the building where I live, intercepted my mail (especially letters from imprisoned anarchists) and looked at my bank account.

Another person (we know each other only by sight, but to him all my esteem) has been followed, listened to, etc., but has not been challenged. Courage friend!

The SDAT investigation began in late February 2022 on the orders of prosecutor Louise-Anne Belanger of the Bobigny prosecutor’s office. They also pulled from their drawers another archived investigation, which had been done by other cops, into some 50 arson attacks against vehicles, all in and around Paris, between 2017 and 2021. SDAT “merged” the two investigations, but the judge (Stéphanie Labarge [?], of the Bobigny court) retained only the last six attacks. For the others, I am an “assisted witness” [the equivalent of “person informed about the facts”].

In addition to “destruction by dangerous means,” there is also the charge of endangering the lives of others, refusal to give my DNA, refusal to have my photograph taken, refusal to give fingerprints, refusal to give passwords to computers and phones.

Right now, I am in pre-trial detention at Villepinte Prison. I am fit, I am fine, although I miss my loved ones very much.

Normal, it’s prison, and you have to put it on the line when you are an enemy of this society.

Here, the hardest time is when we come back from the walk. The door closes and we stay here until the next day. But I turn to the window and look out. I know that there, somewhere, other comrades continue the struggle.

As soon as I get more information on this story, I will write more (I don’t have much else to do!).

My thoughts go out to the anarchists in prison everywhere in the world: to Damien (in prison in Draguignan), to Alfredo, to Anna, to Juan, to Toby, to Giannis Michailidis on hunger strike… to all/all of you out there!

Solidarity is the attack!

Long live anarchy!

Ivan

Source: Il Rovescio

Montreuil (Seine-Saint-Denis), Paris, France: The van of Valmy street

Posted on 2021/10/03 - 2021/10/03 by darknights

This is the story of an eiffage van. A brand new van. Because it has obviously replaced the one that, as we read, was burned earlier this year in the same area. A brand new van, therefore, which ends up burning.

An Eiffage van is most often used to build cages.

Sad cages with colors that sound false. Cages to get us used to conformity, to prepare us for work and to play the social role we have been assigned.

Cages that are depressing or full of noise and lights that make our heads spin, supposed to motivate us to waste our time and energy in occupations that are too often useless or harmful.

Falsely welcoming cages to fill with trinkets to park us when we are not busy producing or consuming. To hide the emptiness that our life has become.

Gloomy cages with barbed wire and bars, when we don’t want to or can’t play the social role we have been assigned.

Sanitized cages to try to prolong this existence when it is the very life that is missing.

The characteristic of this existence is its absence of life, replaced by a set of objects and more or less obliged occupations. But there will always be someone to avenge this life that is taken away from us. Because the only dignified life in a society that prevents us from living is the destruction of this society.

So this is the story of the Eiffage van that was set on fire on Sunday night, 27 rue Valmy in Montreuil.

This is the story of a van that will not be the last to go up in smoke.

Solidarity with Boris, with Toby Shone, imprisoned in England and with the three Italian anarchists currently on trial and facing many years in jail.

Long live anarchy!

Source: Attaque

France, Paris, Montreuil (Seine-Saint-Denis): Smoke signals of solidarity

Posted on 2021/08/24 - 2021/09/14 by darknights

August 22

Last night we wanted to send a message of solidarity to Boris, a fellow anarchist who is in a coma because of a fire in his cell in the Nancy-Maxèville prison.

In Montreuil, gentrification is advancing by leaps and bounds with new buildings for a more affluent population attracted by the extension of the metro. We are not admirers of the poor slums and the neighborhoods eaten up by traffic, a simple form of capitalism, albeit illegal. But the labyrinth of alleys between the small self-built houses have their charm and allow other relationships between the people who live there, less dictated by money. Another relationship with the State too. The winding alleys make the video surveillance less efficient, which is also advancing in Montreuil (as everywhere in Paname*).

In this context, publicity is an important vector to convey the capitalist and authoritarian values of this society. These values are: property, consumption, work, “success”, conformism. These ideas have colonized the imagination of most of the world, including the poorest and most marginal social strata. This conformism of thought prevents us from imagining something else, another life. How can we talk about revolution to people who only dream of wealth, family, and futile gadgets that fill up their lives?

So we thought that a JC Decaux van would make a good target. The one that was parked on Ernest Savart street went up in smoke. Same thing for an Enedis van (no need to introduce it, in the most nuclearized country in the world) a little further down, rue Victor Beausse

Courage Boris!
The head high, the heart burning!
Long live anarchy!

Source: Attaque

*French Slang to mean Paris & its suburbs.