Nikos Maziotis – Dark Nights

GRECIA: COMUNICADO DE NIKOS MAZIOTIS – LXS REVOLUCIONARIXS NO SE «CORRIGEN» NI « SE MEJORAN MORALMENTE»

Posted on 2025/03/22 by darknights

EN:Text by anarchist comrade Nikos Maziotis (Greece)
Ελ: ΟΙ ΕΠΑΝΑΣΤΑΤΕΣ ΔΕΝ «ΣΩΦΡΟΝΙΖΟΝΤΑΙ» ΚΑΙ ΔΕΝ «ΒΕΛΤΙΩΝΟΝΤΑΙ ΗΘΙΚΑ»

LXS REVOLUCIONARIXS NO SE «CORRIGEN» NI « SE MEJORAN MORALMENTE»

Una vez más, por sexta vez consecutiva, el tribunal plenario de delitos menores de Lamia me honra con su decisión de rechazar mi solicitud de libertad condicional, con el argumento de que ¡no me he «corregido» y que no he mostrado «mejora moral»! ¡No puedo sino admitir que tienen razón!

En efecto, un militante consecuente, un revolucionario, un anarquista como yo, no podría ser «corregido» y «mejorado moralmente» por la cárcel, no importa cuántos años esté encarcelado. Un militante consecuente, un revolucionario, un anarquista, puede dar su vida por la lucha, como el compañero de la Lucha Revolucionaria Lambros Fountas, puede arriesgar su vida por la lucha, puede arriesgarse a ser asesinado por los pretorianos del estado, como casi ocurrió en mi caso, puede pasar muchos años en la cárcel -yo ya he cumplido 12 años por la Lucha Revolucionaria y otros 4 antes de eso- pero no se le permite dar un paso atrás, mostrar arrepentimiento o revisión, o en otras palabras y en el lenguaje del tribunal, una mejora «correccional» y «moral». Así que, desde este punto de vista, todas las decisiones de los tribunales y juntas judiciales, las seis del tribunal plenario y la una de la junta de apelaciones, me honran y me demuestran que sigo en el camino correcto. Si dijera lo contrario, empezaría a preguntarme si me he equivocado y he violado mis principios y valores morales. Mi única objeción es la referencia del tribunal sobre un “pretencioso” buen comportamiento por mi parte. Esto realmente me hace injusticia. Si tal cosa fuera cierta, en las audiencias del tribunal, en manera completamente «pretenciosa», contraria a lo que creo por lo que he sido condenado y por las faltas disciplinarias que he cometido, estaría murmurando disculpas y lamentos como hacen la mayoría de los presos penales para lograr su puesta en libertad. Pero tal cosa es impensable para mí.

La última decisión negativa del tribunal plenario de Lamia me excluye efectivamente de la posibilidad de la libertad condicional, a pesar de que ya he cumplido más de 4/5 de mi condena.

Dentro del endurecimiento general en los últimos años, de la legislación penal y «correccional», en cuyo marco se han aumentado los límites de las penas, y los límites para la concesión de la libertad condicional y de los permisos; basicamente el derecho a la libertad condicional y a los permisos estan bajo abolicion. Se han introducido carceles de maxima seguridad (algo parecido a las antiguas prisiones de tipo C para peor), probablemente seré la primera persona con una condena de 20 años que cumplira la condena completa -las 5/5 partes de la misma- sin posibilidad de libertad condicional, acercándose a una cadena perpetua, es decir, 16 años según el antiguo código penal.

Este endurecimiento de la represión penal y «penitenciaria» es una consecuencia y un eslabón de una larga cadena de curso evolutivo sociopolítico, que parte de la derrota de la insurrecction social y popular contra los memorandos de 2010-2012, el retroceso de las luchas sociales y desemboca en el totalitarismo estatal y de régimen que vivimos hoy.

Nikos Maziotis, condenado por la Lucha Revolucionaria

4º modulo de la carcel de Domokos

Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim by the Cells of Offensive Solidarity for the placement of an incendiary device at Kypseli’s ΕΦΚΑ (National Social Insurance Agency)

Posted on 2025/02/08 by darknights

We take responsibility for the placement of a low powered incendiary device in the early hours of 03/12 at the ΕΦΚΑ office in Kypseli, located on Kefallinias Street.

Although the device, fortunately for you, did not ignite, the message remains the same.

Rest assured that with the same operational ease, we can target any location of our choosing at any time, with a similar device.

The reason we selected this specific target, among the many offered by the metropolis, is that it is a key structure of the state mechanism, one that promotes destitution, subjugation, and consequently, the manipulation of the majority of society. The Social Insurance Agency (ΕΦΚΑ) operates under the supervision of the Ministry of Labour, which in capitalist terms means it acts as an executive organ of the ideological orientation promoted by the current government.

To clarify, ΕΦΚΑ is responsible for distributing pensions of a mere €426.17, withholding contributions from workers, freelancers, and farmers, and combating tax evasion. Taxes for farmers exceed 50%, and for freelancers, they surpass 75%. In summary, ΕΦΚΑ serves as the state’s tax collector, playing a pivotal role in financing its political agenda and legitimizing its existence. But when words fail, numbers speak.

Revenues for the years 2024 and 2025 (approximately) amounted to about €51 billion, while expenses for social security funds were around €50 million. This means only 0.1% of the revenue is returned to society.

ΕΦΚΑ is the hand that gives a pittance to the beggar’s outstretched hand—a currency whose value is dictated by the state and government, within the predefined trajectory imposed on the modern wage slave, who defines themselves based on how productive and disciplined they have been within the capitalist machine, perpetually chasing class advancement and social status validation. Moving beyond the confines of sterile class analysis, which solely blames the state and capital while ignoring the responsibility of those consciously trapped in a condemned life—a life determined by others from birth, bound by servitude, shackled, and surrounded by the glitter of capitalist showcases.

In opposition to the world of social consent and submission, complacency, inertia, and defeatism, against any logic of delegation and waiting, we choose the path of direct action, responding with attacks on the world of power, navigating through the flames of its total destruction. Every call for attack is a proposal for social disengagement, a rupture with all forms of authority, a call for the destruction of the existing order.

With armed hands and words, with a broken heart, and the name of a street etched in memory, we carried out this attack in memory of the armed revolutionary Kyriakos Ximitiris and in solidarity with the anarchist comrade Marianna M., who is held captive in the dungeons of bourgeois democracy. Walking the path of insubordination, dispute, and attack—a path stained with the blood of those who, unrepentant, chose frontal assault on the state and power—every step we take remains unwavering in its purpose.

For every comrade who bore the heavy cost of revolutionary prospects and insurgent action, we promise that with each passing day, as long as our feet tread this earth, we will cut off the heads of our oppressors and dismantle everything they have built with their filthy hands. Comrade, may you have good incursions in the valley of eternal silence.

Strength to imprisoned comrade K.K., accused of arson on a police service van in Mesolongi.

Solidarity to all those prosecuted in the Ambelokipi case.

Freedom for the revolutionary Nikos Maziotis, member of Revolutionary Struggle

IMAGINATION – OPTIMISM – RISK

Cells of Offensive Solidarity

Source: Issue 3 of anarcho-nihilist / insurrectionary newspaper “Blessed Is The Flame”

Via & translated by Act for freedom now!

Athens, Greece: Arson Attack on the Offices of New Democracy party

Posted on 2024/11/03 by darknights

We take responsibility for the attack on the premises of the local organization of New Democracy, in the 5th municipal district Agios Eleftherios on Petridis Street, with an incendiary device in the early morning of October 13th. We chose to place the device in front of the metal door of your offices because although we could have broken into them and burned them completely, we did not want to risk the safety of the residents of the apartment building located above your hole. So we consciously hit this target and minimized the damage, because for us it had great symbolic value, clearly proven by the fact that you kept quiet about it.

In its 50 years it has remained and will go down in history for the dozens if not hundreds of scandals with bribes, murders, trafficking rings, participation in fascist groups, etc. This right-wing, patriotic-traditional party, which still gathers a huge percentage of supporters, has been in power for 5 years and with a specific and methodical plan has created the ultimate European paradise for domestic and international capital, as well as for the mafias all over the world, and absolute hell and dystopia for the lower economic and social strata. New Democracy and all its cronies (judges, mafia, businessmen) act shamelessly and cynically without trying to hide their atrocities, sodomizing anyone who tries to take out their dirty laundry or opposes even their own victims.

Every day we wake up in a world that is sick without dying. In a world where citizens’ discontent is limited to painless protests for the state, harmless symbolism and “remembrance anniversaries”. All this while the most murderous government of the 21st century is devouring and plundering the last forest areas on the altar of profitability, stifling entire settlements. The same moment that orchestrates dozens, and for us who count the deaths from covid as such, thousands of state murders. Migrants at the border, at sea, in police stations, Roma by cops for any reason, militants, prisoners, women, drug addicts. It is as if the 7 plagues of the Pharaoh had fallen on our heads, except that it is not some god that is punishing us, but the state and its armed minions, seeking by force to make us a “civilized country”, the one that dismantles hospitals and is responsible for thousands of dead, the one that burns-floods-loots and murders in the name of its own god, capital. With the 2 most recent murders of immigrants in the police stations most “famous” for their barbarity, Agios Panteleimonas and Omonoia. And this power is not impersonal. Above all it is not invincible. The people who make it up have houses-jobs-offices-vehicles, the parties have their offices, all institutions exist somewhere in their physical form. Power is not an abstract concept that is imposed and fragments our lives. It is the people of the state and capital, and it is through a methodical plan of theirs and their external allies that the Trojan Horse is attacking us.

The repressive framework that they have installed and is managed by the Greek police aims to neutralize those who resist their universal hegemony. That is why they want to put us in the cells they build to punish those who ignore their orders. What is unprecedented in the period we are going through is the intransigence of the state and the “omerta” attitude that this government has been holding since 2019. For all these years many struggles have been begun by various subjects and a striking example is the hunger strikes of political and non-political prisoners, few of whom have been vindicated.

However, this is not a defeat but a trigger for rallying. Because every beast state makes a noise when it falls. The consistency of speech-action, aggressive solidarity and the transmission of empirical knowledge are the characteristics that give us hope no matter how dystopian things might seem. The war against the state continues and our values lead us to extend the struggle.

Solidarity with the militant prisoner Thanasis Pikasis!

Free Nikos Maziotis!

Fire in the cells of the Republic!

Victory to the weapons of resistance in the Middle East and Kurdistan!

Feet on Earth, head in the sky, soul always deep!

Anarchist Attack Group

——————-

Source: https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1632448/

Via & translated by Act for freedom now!

Greece: Nikos Maziotis – On the Latest Rejection of My Parole

Posted on 2024/07/09 by darknights

For the 5th time, the Lamia Criminal Court has recently rejected my request for conditional release despite the 3rd consecutive positive prosecution. During the last 2.5 years since I have reached the law of suspension by law, Lamia’s judicial councils, including the Lamia Council I had once appealed, have rejected a total of 6 times my request for conditional release. It is now very likely that I will be one of the few prisoners nationwide – if not the only one – with a temporary prison sentence with the maximum sentence of 20 years under the 2019 Presidential Code that will get the entire sentence without parole. And I will probably be the only one of dozens of political (anarchist and other) prisoners who have spent the last 20 years in prison with a sentence of temporary imprisonment, who is exempt from parole. Of course, the reasons for rejection are still political-opinional: that I refuse to recognize as criminal the acts for which I have been convicted, namely the action of the Revolutionary Struggle, as mentioned in the recent rejection decree, but also the precedent of September 2023.

The issue of repentance for the political opponents of the political-economic regime has now been historically established as a necessary criterion and condition for the granting of conditional release, thus continuing the historical tradition of the Greek state in other eras, from the years of the Metaxas dictatorship, the years of the civil war and the post-civil war period to the junta of the colonels.

Of course, the Council of Misdemeanors of Lamia has proven that it has double standards in these cases, as proved by the case of the recent – albeit temporary – release of the “führer” of the neo-Nazi organization Golden Dawn. In a country and a place where many do not have a short historical memory as the state authorities want and hope, the Lamia Misdemeanour Council was irreparably exposed socially and this is not negated by the fact that the release order was overturned by an appellate prosecutor after government-political intervention.

Once again, the historical tradition of the Greek state is confirmed and the political sympathies of several state bodies are not hidden. Just as the collaborators after 1945, the Security Battalions, the Chites, the ancestors of Golden Dawn, were treated favorably by the post-occupation state, few of them were tried and even fewer remained in prison, so today we see their descendants receiving the same favorable treatment from the current state and their “justice”. Of the 28 convicted of the neo-Nazi organization after the murder of Pavlos Fyssas, 21 are already free, while the rest do not have significant time left in detention. After all, they are “their own children”. It was nothing but a parastatal apparatus, i.e. an offshoot of the state apparatus itself, which had been operating for years, since the 1990s, with the tolerance of the police, and did the “dirty” work of the state. That is, anti-immigrant pogroms and racist attacks, beatings, stabbings, assistance of riot police in clashes with anarchists posing as “indignant” citizens, attacks on hangouts, occupations of the anarchist/anti-authoritarian space. Traditionally, the Greek state has always treated the parastatals with the glove, such as these fascists, nostalgics for the colonels’ junta who in 1978 carried out indiscriminate bombings at the Rex and Elli cinemas because they screened films that were not politically correct according to them, with content that was not “nationalist”. It is no coincidence that among them was the later “führer” of Golden Dawn. The same was done to the parastatal assassins – members of ONED-ND – of Professor Nikos Tebonera in January 1991 who had been ordered to break in a “dynamic” way the mathematical occupations of that period. Continue reading “Greece: Nikos Maziotis – On the Latest Rejection of My Parole” →

Berlin, Germany: Claim of Responsibility for the Incendiary Attack Against a Greek Diplomatic Vehicle

Posted on 2024/02/07 by darknights

On January 30, we placed an incendiary device under a car with the number plate of Greece’s diplomatic mission in Germany. The action took place in the Rosenthaler district in Berlin.

The action is not directed against a specific person but against the relations between two racist and murderous states and those responsible for them. The burning diplomatic car is once again a vehicle for international messages between the oppressed and at the same time a message to those who want to rule the world…

..that we have not forgotten the hundreds of murders committed last June off the coast of Pylos at the hands of the Greek coastguard and Frontex.

…that we have not forgotten the racist, murderous acts of violence by the police against Roma youth in Greece.

…that we do not remain inactive in the face of the persecution of anarchists and individuals fighting against oppression and exploitation.

In 2024, at a time when indifference in the face of daily mass murders is far advanced, we anarchists continue to reach out to migrants. We want to remind them once again that mass migration has its origins in the system and that those who try to control it are the same ones who live off our labour and resources. The thousands of murders at the borders are murders of our brothers and sisters. The victims of the coming pogroms and assassinations in this increasingly openly racist European Union live among us and stand side by side with us.

In memory of Oury Jalloh, who was tied up and set on fire alive with broken bones in a police cell on January 7, 19 years ago.

Signed: Anarchists

PS: For the immediate release of Nikos Maziotis and solidarity with Pola Roupa!

Source: https://de.indymedia.org/node/338369

Via & translated by Abolition Media

Greece: Solidarity Day on February 9, 2024, for the final release of comrade Pola Roupa & the immediate release of comrade Nikos Maziotis EN/ FR / GR / DE / IT

Posted on 2024/02/05 by darknights

We call comrades in Greece and around the world to be vigilant and act in solidarity:

9/2| SOLIDARITY DAY FOR THE FINAL RELEASE OF
COMRADE POLA ROUPA & THE
IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF COMRADE NIKOS MAZIOTIS

Comrade Pola Roupa and Comrade Nikos Maziotis were sentenced to several years in prison for their participation and action in the guerilla organization Revolutionary Struggle.

They were imprisoned and served the combined 20-year prison sentence to which they were finally sentenced (after the “breaking” of their life sentence for the bombing attack on the Bank of Greece-branch of the European Central Bank-office of the International Monetary Fund in Greece, by Revolutionary Struggle Commando Lambros Fountas).

Comrade Pola Roupa served 8.5 years of real prison (13.5 years mixed), while her partner Nikos Maziotis has already served 11 years of “closed” prison and a total of 14 years mixed. That is, 3/5 of their sentence as state laws dictate.

Comrade Pola Roupa was released from prison with restrictive conditions on November 17, 2023, and a few days later, on November 28, 2023, the deputy prosecutor of Evia filed an appeal against her release, requesting that she be taken back to prison. This unprecedented event led comrade Pola Roupa before a new judicial council at the court of Chalkida on January 10, 2024, in order to judge from scratch whether she will remain free or continue to be a prisoner in the cells of the republic.

The definitive release of comrade P. Roupa from state hostage-taking is the immediate political issue as they seek to put her back in prison. The regime itself questions its jurisprudence and retracts itself: it initially “allows” the release of comrade P. Roupa, while subsequently attempting to reverse its decision. The aforementioned mandated minion of the political and judicial power – vice-prosecutor of Evia – with his move proves the extreme vindictive way of dealing with the political enemies of the state and capital, and especially the armed combatants.
Comrade N. Maziotis has received 4 parole denials in two years, because he remains unrepentant. This “special” treatment of exception does not stop, even after the many years of persecution and captivity imposed on them. Continue reading “Greece: Solidarity Day on February 9, 2024, for the final release of comrade Pola Roupa & the immediate release of comrade Nikos Maziotis EN/ FR / GR / DE / IT” →

Greece: Nikos Maziotis on his 4th rejection of parole

Posted on 2024/01/25 by darknights

Nikos Maziotis on his 4th rejection of parole

The last board of misdemeanors of Lamia (29/9/2023) rejected my request (for the 4th time) for parole on the same grounds as the 3 previous ones, i.e. the disciplinary records for which I have been punished in the past have been deleted and should not normally count under the penal code for parole. But this time the board of misdemeanors of Lamia, in the reasoning of the rejection, went a step further than the previous boards by proving that it has the same logic that the institutions of the bribe-taking state, the post-conflict state and the junta used to have, when they asked for statements of repentance and renunciation from fighters as it also proves to have the same logic of the Inquisition.

I am quoting the contested passage of the decision verbatim:

[…] “However, the repeated commission of serious misdemeanors that also constitute criminal offences demonstrates the applicant’s lack of self-discipline and compliance with the basic rules of the penal system, his constant tendency to commit criminal acts and therefore his insufficient imprisonment and the his lack of moral improvement, for the purpose of his conversion and the possibility of his smooth reintegration into society in the event of his release from the detention centre. In addition, during the applicant’s personal appearance at the council remotely, through technological means, the latter showed particularly aggressive behaviour towards the council, as well as complete disrespect for justice and the penal system, and stated that he considers himself a political prisoner, while at the same time, he did not show that he had realized particular disrespect for the criminal acts he had committed.

Moreover, according to his statement before the council, confinement is only a punishment and cannot serve any other purpose, such as the imprisonment of prisoners. From the above it follows that the conduct of the applicant during the serving of his sentence makes it necessary to continue his detention in order to prevent him from committing new criminal acts. In particular, the above-mentioned prisoner has repeatedly committed disciplinary offences which he does not seem to recognize as wrong, which suggests that any good behaviour he has been showing lately while serving his sentence is pretentious and only apparently good, apparently awaiting his conditional release, and it testifies to his inability to comply with the rules of the prison and, by extension, social coexistence, as an element of his character, but also a constant tendency towards delinquent behaviour.With this behaviour, the applicant demonstrated that the purpose of the legislator was not fulfilled in his case by introducing him to the institution of conditional release, which is nothing more than a strong psychological motivation for the convict for his intended moral improvement , because for the time of his stay in prison, he has an interest in living according to the law, expecting his conditional release, and during the time of probation, he also has an interest in living according to the law, fearing his re-incarceration in prison. This is how his moral conformity and improvement is achieved, as he becomes addicted to the philanthropic life and becomes the creator of his own honest life. All the above objectives were not fulfilled in the case of the present convict, that is to say, he proved, with his behaviour detailed above, that he has not been sufficiently punished, a fact that he himself admitted before the council, and does not present the guarantees that he will lead an honest life as a dismissed person and will not commit new criminal acts. The repeated commission of disciplinary offences during the time of his detention demonstrates a lack of penal improvement and a real desire for law-abiding living and his lack of integration, despite his many years of stay in detention facilities…”, concluding that for all these reasons the my request for parole to prevent the alleged commission of further criminal acts. What exactly does this “monument” of inquisitive argumentation say? I am not being released on parole because:

I declare – after their own question – that I am a political prisoner.
I do not perceive the particular iniquity of the criminal acts that I have committed, meaning of course the action of the Revolutionary Struggle, which I do not consider to be either criminal or “terrorism”.
I think as I stated to the board that imprisonment is purely a punishment and that it does not ‘rehabilitate’, adding something which they do not state in the reasoning of the decision, that they should be satisfied that I have served the greater part of my sentence and that I will not change character and be “imprisoned” not in a million years. Continue reading “Greece: Nikos Maziotis on his 4th rejection of parole” →

About the Switch Off! attack campaign

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

A year ago in Europe a campaign of attack against companies and infrastructures that feed the ecological catastrophe around the world, entitled Switch Off! was launched. Large and small actions have positioned themselves in offensive from the concern and need to confront an evident eco-systemic collapse provoked by the global capitalist machinery that destroys everything in its path.

The intention of the campaign is to “attack the system in a sustainable way”, placing direct action in a common context through anonymous communication with each other, inviting to arm themselves with their own means and go on the offensive against the productive infrastructure and with it the property, without falling into false discursive, institutional and/or technological illusions, “making it clear that there can be no green capitalist alternative, nor peace with the existing conditions”.

In a first statement of presentation we can see more precisely what is the background and objective of why to invite the use of the slogan “Switch Off!”:

Switch off – a call to revolt

(DN Note: We make our own translation into English from the original German text.)

The certainty that the current system will lead to the collapse of the massively damaged ecosystem has already moved countless people and driven them into resistance. Tens of thousands are taking to the streets against the capitalist machinery’s “business as usual”, people are resisting the destructive large-scale projects en masse, the system’s infrastructure is being blocked and courageous fighters are setting fire to the machines that are robbing them of their livelihoods.

What we need in the struggle against the destruction of nature and the resulting social misery is the common striving for the real revolutionary break and the freedom of all. For an initiative that rejects all compromises and cosmetic corrections of the state and brings about a transformation of our social relations.

Because the destruction of the planet by the neoliberal economic system is inextricably linked to patriarchal thought patterns, racism and colonialism. The initiative for this must necessarily come from below. From the struggles of the marginalized. From the struggles of those who oppose the state’s promise of salvation with a self-organized, solidary coexistence. From the struggles of those who see that there can be no compromise in the fight against the systemic destruction of the biosphere.

We should also be aware that we cannot completely prevent the gradual collapse of a massively damaged ecosystem. Not the loss of biodiversity. Not the depletion of resources. We will not be able to prevent the climate catastrophe, as we are already in the midst of it. Admitting this – without any doomsday pathos – does not paralyze us. On the contrary: it should open up the question for us and our contexts of what our lives and our revolutionary struggles could look like in the future.

We can hardly block and sabotage as radically and uncompromisingly as the climate change caused by capitalism requires. But we should not be discouraged by this. Let us question, sabotage and sustainably attack the infrastructure of capitalism in the fight against exploitation. So that another world becomes possible! Let us cooperate with each other in solidarity so that we can live a dignified life. Let us realize our ideas in the here and now and already within our struggles and actions. We will not be lulled into complacency by the attempts at appeasement by those in power.

Against their technological solutions

The solutions offered by those in power for the now noticeable effects of the ecological crisis are primarily technological. This is obviously also driven by lobbying, but above all it is a strategy to legitimize themselves. The development, control and application of the “technologies of the future”, which are supposed to make growth capitalism “sustainable”, are in the hands of the state, industry and science and are inextricably linked to them. If we are being sold the illusion that climate change can be stopped technologically, then this is based on the belief that those in power only need to take the right steps, the right measures, to save this world.  For one thing, they have absolutely no interest in ending the expansionist capitalism that secures their position of power. And for another, technological reform, with the new dependencies it produces, is also doomed to failure. Examples of this could be e-mobility or technologies for the production of so-called renewable energies. The required raw materials are often procured in the course of neo-colonial environmental exploitation. The transportation of these raw materials and components is in turn highly dependent on fossil fuels. As a result, a conversion of the current industry to renewable energies before the global oil reserves dry up is unthinkable anyway. Continue reading “About the Switch Off! attack campaign” →

Greece: For Comrade Alfredo Bonanno from Nikos Maziotis, Member of Revolutionary Struggle

Posted on 2023/12/17 - 2023/12/17 by darknights

Comrade Alfredo M. Bonanno has passed away at the age of 86. He lived a whole life in the world of struggle and anarchy. He was one of the main representatives of the insurrectionary tendency of the Italian anarchist movement with a great theoretical contribution and editorial work. He was editor of the magazine Anarchismo and other anarchist publications. For his activities he was repeatedly persecuted and imprisoned by the Italian state together with other comrades in the 1990s, e.g. for the O.R.A.I. case (in 1996), the armed expropriation of the Serravalle Rural Savings Bank in the Trento area in 1994 and other attacks.

He had come to Greece several times. The first time I met him was in January 1993 when he visited me in the military hospital 424 in Thessaloniki after 50 days of a hunger strike I had carried out. I had just been released from being a prisoner in the Thessaloniki military prison for refusing to serve my military service. In 1999 he had also come to Greece and had testified as a political witness for the defence in my trial for the bombing of the Ministry of Development in December 1997 as an act of solidarity with the then dynamic struggle of the villagers of the Strymonikos Gulf villages in North Greece – Halkidiki (Olympiada, Varvara, Stavros, Asprovalta) against the installation of the Canadian multinational gold company TVX GOLD, which has been succeeded today by Hellas Gold, a subsidiary of Eldorado Gold. It was a historic political trial in the then annals of the Greek anarchist movement where for the first time in Greece after the fall of the junta there was a defence of armed-dynamic forms of action. In that trial, in addition to the Greek comrades/compañeros, in addition to Alfredo Bonanno, Costantino Cavalleri, a comrade of the insurrectionary tendency of the Italian anarchist movement, and the comrade Hellyette Bess, who was a member of the French guerrilla organization Action Directe and had been imprisoned for several years for her participation in the organization, had testified after an international call for solidarity. The 3 then imprisoned members of Action Directe, Jean-Marc Rouillan, Joëlle Aubron and Nathalie Ménigon, had also sent a written message of solidarity to the court.

The last time I saw Comrade Alfredo was in 2010-’11 in Korydallos prison when we were in custody for our participation in the Revolutionary Struggle. He was also in custody on the charge of expropriating a bank in Greece. With Comrade Alfredo, despite our different approaches to struggle and mode of action, we were connected by an invisible thread, as are so many other comrades around the world who dedicate their entire lives to the struggle to free humanity from the shackles of the state and capital.

THE COMRADE WILL LIVE ON IN MEMORY AND IN OUR STRUGGLES

Nikos Maziotis, convicted for the actions of Revolutionary Struggle.

source: https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1628067/

Via & translated for Abolition Media by Nae Midion

Athens, Greece: Text by Anarchist Pola Roupa: November 17, 2023. 50 years from the Polytechnic and my release from prison

Posted on 2023/11/22 by darknights

Pola Roupa: November 17, 2023. 50 years from the Polytechnic and my release from prison

“After 7 years of consecutive imprisonment (from the arrest of 5th January, 2017), 8.5 years together with pre-trial detention (arrested on 10/4/2010) and 13 years and 6 months in total, sentence I served for my participation in Revolutionary Struggle, I have been released. The symbolism of the day was strong as this year’s November 17th marks the 50th anniversary of the Polytechnic uprising of 1973. On that day, everyone remembers the dead of the Polytechnic but also all those who have fallen in the struggle for freedom.

For me, this day was dominated by the memory of our comrade killed in the activity of Revolutionary Struggle, Lambros Fountas. But in my thoughts is also the comrade Nikos Maziotis who, despite the fact that he has served 11 years’ “closed” prison and 14 years in a mixed prison – a very long period for a 20-year sentence -, the judicial councils of Lamia are refusing to release him. It is now clear that a unique status of exception has been imposed on Nikos Maziotis, as no prisoner in a similar situation (with charges based on 187A) and with a similar sentence (i.e. not a life sentence) has remained in prison for such a long period of time. This exceptional regime based on political criteria and motives and which in practice nullifies the institution of parole – which according to the law is mandatory and not “gratuitous”, given that it is not left to the personal will of the respective judge – this exemption regime must come to an end. In addition to the flagrant violation of his rights, this special regime of exception is reminiscent of a junta-style treatment of a political prisoner.

After spending many years in prison, it would be a lie to say that I am not thinking about the many dozens of female prisoners I have lived together with. On the occasion of the – by mistake I believe – publication that they “discovered” that I was released from prison because I am the mother of an underage child, I have to say that in addition to the fact that I have already served the years of detention required for parole, there is no provision by any penal code for discharge of a prisoner on parole because she is the mother of a minor child. Only article 105 of the Criminal Code of 2019 provides for house arrest for mothers with children under the age of 8, a measure that is not particularly applied.

Having lived with women for many years, I know that most of them have a central role in caring for people such as young children, the elderly, the sick, the disabled, and their prolonged detention has a terrible impact on the lives of those who have remained alone, without their help. Conditional release for mothers of minors and for women who take care of categories of people such as those I mentioned above, is a provision whose absence from the criminal code demonstrates that the legislators do not take into account the pivotal position of women-carers in social life. It is a lack that often costs human lives.”

19/11/2023

Source: epanastaticosagonas

Via & Translated by Act for freedom now!