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Tag: Operation Adream

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” →

Posted in GeneralTagged Anarchist Prisoners, COINTELPRO, G4S, Gabriel Pombo da Silva, Gustavo Rodriguez, HMP Parc, Incendiary Dialogues, International Solidarity, Letter, Operation Adream, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Anarchist Black Cross, Toby Shone, UK, USA, Wales

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!

Posted in Prison StruggleTagged 325, Anarchist Prisoners, Barcelona, Fortress Europe, HMP Parc, International Solidarity, J11 International Day of Solidarity with Marius Mason & All Long-Term Anarchist Prisoners, Juan Sorroche, Operation Adream, Repression, Toby Shone, UK, Wales

UK: Contribution from anarchist comrade Toby Shone for a postponed prison abolition event hosted by Bristol Anti-Repression Campaign

Posted on 2022/05/21 - 2022/05/21 by darknights

This statement from Toby Shone on prison abolition was recorded and transcribed from HM Prison Parc in Bridgend, Wales, UK. It was his contribution to a prison abolition event due to be hosted by Bristol Anti-Repression Campaign on 8 May 2022 but which was postponed until a later date yet to be decided.

Hello Everyone

This is Toby Shone. I’m an imprisoned anarchist held in G4S Parc. It’s a slave labour camp holding 1,800 men in South Wales run by the security multinational on a government contract providing dirt cheap labour for private companies.

I was captured by the anti-terrorist unit during Operation Adream in November 2020. First I want to thank you for listening and also the opportunity provided by Bristol Anti-Repression Coalition. Moments like this break the isolation we feel as prisoners and they also give us a chance to participate and to speak out. There are many reasons to oppose prisons and the current judicial system and as an anarchist I can’t separate the anti-prison struggle from the struggle against the State and civilisation and I’m going to return to this later. But now I’ll briefly give an account of some of the joint struggles inside prison.

I’ve never sought to hide my perspectives while I’ve been here and I’ve been subject to a lot of State intimidation and scrutiny because of that and I’ve never backed down. The prisons in the UK are mostly filthy and overcrowded, lacking basic resources, degrading and decaying.

In London I was held in the prison within the prison alongside Jihadis, Russian-Italian-Ukrainian mafia, postcode war gang members, high level money launderers and so on. Overall we all got on well with each other, even with high levels of violence and on average one death or suicide each month. There we had a laundry room where we could meet, play cards, and talk. We’d exchange books and ideas as well as our hopes and fears. And because of this social area, the administration moved to shut down our laundry and move it off wing. So we had a small struggle to keep it open, spreading a unity between all the groups, collecting 200 signatures for our petition and also it was almost every man that signed it there on H block. It might seem a minor struggle but in prison everything small becomes of a huge significance because you have almost nothing but your dignity and only you can give that away. And it’s important for our decency to have clean clothes and bedsheets, pillowcases and so on. And if the laundry was moved off wing this couldn’t be guaranteed and nobody wanted to have their clothes stolen or damaged and it’s almost impossible to get any more. And it would also mean that we would have to suffer the inability to wash our clothes more than once a week and that’s even if the scheme ran correctly. In practice, in prison, nothing works as it should and it’s intended to be that way, to make life as difficult as possible. Suffice to say, our petition was completely ignored by the authorities and the imprisoned fellow in charge of running the laundry lost his job and was moved prison as a kind of punishment because he was blamed for stirring up trouble. In prisons, the administrations are very scared of anything even slightly challenging to their power. We have to consider these intermediate struggles very well, but we must never give up our stances. Continue reading “UK: Contribution from anarchist comrade Toby Shone for a postponed prison abolition event hosted by Bristol Anti-Repression Campaign” →

Posted in Prison StruggleTagged Anarchist Prisoners, Anti-Prison, Brigend, Bristol, Bristol Anti-Repression Campaign, HMP Parc, Operation Adream, Prison, Prison Abolition, SCPO (Serious Crime Prevention Orders), Text, Toby Shone, UK, Wales

UK: Statement by anarchist comrade Toby Shone after strip and cell search by G4S Parc

Posted on 2022/05/19 by darknights

The cell search described by Toby Shone is believed to be an attempt at intimidation by G4S Parc following a month of concerted efforts by those on the outside to call to account Gareth Kite, Post Room Manager, for withholding mail and books from Toby. Although Kite has responded by dribbling Toby small amounts of mail, some of it from months ago – whilst continuing to claim that Toby has no mail – we know that there is a lot of mail outstanding, both from HMP Bristol and HM Prison Parc, and particularly letters and cards of solidarity from political groups and letter-writing nights. Gareth Kite can be contacted at secretariat.parc@uk.g4s.com

18 MAY 2022
HM Prison Parc

This morning at around 9.40, a team from the Security Department, entered my cell, subjected me to a strip search and proceeded to turn my pad upside down, going through all my possessions – legal papers, letters, photos and books – in the name of “intelligence” that they had received. They refused to say what this “intelligence” consisted of and told me to contact my lawyer. Before I could do so, they removed me and put me in a sterile cell until they had finished the invasion. Suffice to say, these lackeys of G4S didn’t find anything, but decided in their impotence to take away a set of shelves, rip a solidarity card I received from London off the wall, take my duvet, my radio antenna and a bottle of medicine for a skin condition issued by the doctor. Incidents like this are part of daily life for us in prison, but as a revolutionary prisoner, I will never let such provocations pass unanswered. One of the team saw fit to ask me, “Where is your Koran?” for which many things could be said, but I’ll leave it there for now as rhetoric is cheap and facts are self-evident.

“An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.” Oscar Wilde

Posted in Prison StruggleTagged Anarchist Prisoners, Cell Search, FUCK G4S!, G4S, Gareth Kite, HMP Parc, Operation Adream, Repression, Strip Search, Toby Shone, UK, Wales

UK: Statement from anarchist prisoner Toby Shone 10th May 2022

Posted on 2022/05/11 by darknights

Statement from Toby Shone
10th May 2022

Thanks to all those who came to express their solidarity and rage at Bristol Crown Court on Friday. After 15 months of solitary confinement, it was the most amount of comrades I had seen in a long time. Your strength and warmth stays in my heart.

This was a major defeat and humiliation for the anti-terrorist prosecutors and police, but we should not rest easy. A state methodology has been put together which they will use to attack others in the anarchist space when they can.

Operation Adream is also still not closed and so we should remain ready. There are many lessons to be learnt here and a more complete analysis will come out in time.

I am due for release in late December and will be on license until November 2024. The prison Offender Management Unit (OMU) confirmed to me that the anti-terrorist units still intend to keep me under surveillance after my release. I am sure they will try to take revenge, but with the love and complicity of all the comrades, we’ll turn up the heat. Liberty and discord are one and the same. Always unrepentant, always anarchist.

Nothing is over, everything continues.

Source: Act for freedom now!

Posted in Prison StruggleTagged Because nothing is over and everything continues..., Bristol, Bristol Crown Court, HMP Parc, Offender Management Unit (OMU), Operation Adream, Repression, Toby Shone, UK, Wales

Bristol, UK: Anarchist comrade Toby Shone’s SCPO was rejected by the court!

Posted on 2022/05/06 - 2022/05/09 by darknights

To the wild celebrations in the public gallery, the presiding judge rejected the application for anarchist comrade Toby Shone’s Serious Crime Prevention Order, declaring there were no grounds for it to be applied under the circumstances. Shouts of ‘Not one step back!’ were responded to with Toby shouting ‘The Revolution is inevitable!’

The result of the court means that comrade Toby will now be released at the earliest in August of this year, if his application for electronic tag is permitted. It is highly likely that it will be refused. If refused, he will be released on December 28th 2022 on automatic halfway release. The extreme conditions of surveillance and control, that would have led to him not only being cut off from his comrades, but his family, friends and partner. It would have restricted his way of living, his ability to fuction as an anarchist, with many conditions that have been listed before, such as his use of electronic devices through to him having to declare who visits his residence. It would have lasted 5 years and could have been renewed. If it had been broken by Toby it would have led to him serving 5 years in the hellholes of the UK prison system.

The SCPO was a direct attack on Toby as an anarchist, his alternative way of living and his connections to those he is close to. It was clearly linked to the anti-terrorist cops attempting to apply repressive measures on him after the terrorist charges in his previous original trial were dropped.

The move by the anti-terrorist cops sets a new repressive environment on this prison island, that now just like in other European countries such as we have seen with the many repressive operations against comrades in Italy and Greece, that anarchists are deemed as terrorists by the state, that anyone daring to fight back against authority will be subject to such repression. Also it is clear that the British state wants to attack the connections, the affinities, the friendships, even love, of those they want to punish. This a similar vindictive tactic we have seen been used in other countries as well, such as the targetting of partners and family members of revolutionary organisation Conspiracy Cells of Fire members in Greece.

‘Operation Adream’, the repressive attack on Toby, on 325, is also an attack on the anarchist circles and alternative lifestyles as a whole. The years of imprisonment are piling up for those who dared to rebel during the Kill The Bill protest last year, that was attacked by cops and led to a riot. Those who live ‘off-grid’, from Roma/Gypsies/Irish travellers through to van or carvan or boat dwellers, along with squatters are also feeling the full force of British state’s, the Tories, Boris Johnson’s and Priti Patel’s repressive shaping of racist right wing ‘Build Back Better’ UK.

There is indeed a ‘storm coming on the horizon’ as comrade Toby mentioned, it is time for all of us who feel it to move towards it, to revolt against the destruction of our lives, our very existence.

This is only the beginning, ‘Nothing Is Over, The Conflict Continues!’

Some anarchists in solidarity with anarchist comrade Toby Shone

Posted in Prison StruggleTagged 'Not one step back', 'The Revolution is inevitable', 325, Bristol, Bristol Crown Court, Kill The Bill, Kill The Bill Bristol Riot, Operation Adream, Repression, Roma, SCPO (Serious Crime Prevention Orders), Toby Shone, Trial

UK: Two statements from anarchist prisoner Toby Shone

Posted on 2022/05/02 by darknights

First of May 2022

01/05/22

As a minimal gesture I refuse to eat from the prison servery to mark the Revolutionary 1st of May, to join in the demonstrations around the world using my body as a means of solidarity and to protest the denial of my correspondence by the security company G4S. I will not be isolated from my family, friends and comrades and I continue to define my anti-political convictions. Honour and dignity to all those who have fallen.

Remember Haymarket.

Toby Shone
G4S Parc, UK.


Statement for J11 International Day of Solidarity with Marius Mason & All Long-Term Anarchist Prisoners

“We will have to go to sea and embark on a journey into the unknown. It is up to us to choose the course from the march. We are free to make mistakes.” Gustavo Rodriguez – ‘Brief Informative Report About The Weather’.

An embrace of life, fire and complicity to all imprisoned anarchist comrades for this June 11th. I have been invited to participate by the comrades in North America, for which they have my thanks and agreement. Whilst I am not condemned to a particularly long sentence, I faced well over a decade at my trial last October in “Operation Adream” and next week I will go to trial again in Bristol on the 6th of May. This time the “anti-terrorist” prosecutors demand up to five years house arrest and special surveillance, which could see me returning to prison frequently. It also has a precedent for the rest of the anarchist space in the UK if the State is successful. International mobilisations are essential for learning about and combining our shared struggles. Opening a space for discussion and praxis enables us to escape the walls and barbed wire which divides and isolates us. I’m locked up for 23 hours a day in a solitary cell, subject to enhanced monitoring and censorship, categorised as “high risk” and placed on the “escape list”. I could not care less. I will leave this place without stepping back one millimetre.

“One who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” – F. Nietzsche.

There are storms gathering on the horizon.

Toby Shone

Written on the eve of Revolutionary 1st of May, 2022. G4S Parc, UK.

Source: Brighton ABC

Posted in Prison StruggleTagged Bristol, G4S, HMP Parc, J11 International Day of Solidarity with Marius Mason & All Long-Term Anarchist Prisoners, May 1st, Operation Adream, Repression, SCPO (Serious Crime Prevention Orders), Special Surveillance, Toby Shone, Wales

Bristol, UK: Soldarity Demo for imprisoned anarchist comrade Toby Shone, 6th May 2022

Posted on 2022/04/23 - 2022/05/02 by darknights

Posted in Prison StruggleTagged 325, Bristol, Bristol Crown Court, Operation Adream, Poster, Repression, SCPO (Serious Crime Prevention Orders), Solidarity Demo, Surveillance, Toby Shone

Bristol, UK: Toby Shone speaks from the dungeons of Bristol prison, explaining his case. EN/ES/FR/DE/PO/RU/GR/IT

Posted on 2022/01/05 - 2022/01/06 by darknights

https://darknights.noblogs.org/files/2022/01/audio-toby-explains-his-case-from-prison.mp3

My name is Toby Shone, and I’m an imprisoned anarchist held in Bristol prison who was kidnapped at gunpoint by the anti-terrorist unit, as part of Operation Adream in the UK. The repression was aimed to target the anarchist group of critique and practice, 325 collective and the website 325.nostate.net. Operation Adream is an attack by the British State in conjunction with European partners against anarchist direct action groups, counter-information projects, prisoner solidarity initiatives and the new anarchist critique of the technological singularity and the fourth and fifth industrial revolution. Operation Adream is the first time that anti-terrorist legislation has been used against the anarchist movement in the UK.

I was taken hostage by the regime on the 18th of November 2020 by a team of tactical fire arms cops after a car chase through the remote Forest of Dean, which is on the border with South Wales, one hour north of Bristol. At the same time coordinated raids took place at five addresses in the Forest of Dean against collective living projects, hangouts and a storage unit. I was taken under armed guard to a nearby police station where I was held in incommunicado and interrogated many, many times. I refused to speak during the interrogations and I did not cooperate with the murderers in uniform.

I was charged with four counts of terrorism. One charge of Section 2, dissemination of terrorist publications as a suspected administrator 325.nostate.net. Two charges of section 58, possession of information useful for the purposes of terrorism. Those being two videos. One of which showed how to improvise an explosive shaped charge. And the other demonstrated how to burn down a mobile phone transmitter. I was charged with Section 15, funding terrorism, which was related to cryptocurrency wallets hosted on 325.nostate.net which were for the support of anarchist prisoners and publications. I denied all the charges.

I was also accused during the interrogations of membership of FAI/IRF, the Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front. I was accused of writing five documents and carrying out several actions in the Bristol area, which were claimed by cells of the FAI as well as those of the Earth- and Animal Liberation Fronts. These included an incendiary attack against the police station, the burning down of a mobile phone transmitter and liberation of animals.

Bristol is an area of the UK where there has been countless anarchist sabotages and direct actions taking place over the last two decades and which remain unsolved by police, despite multi-million pound investigations and joint media witch hunts against anarchists in the city. Continue reading “Bristol, UK: Toby Shone speaks from the dungeons of Bristol prison, explaining his case. EN/ES/FR/DE/PO/RU/GR/IT” →

Posted in Prison Struggle, Social ControlTagged 325, 325 Magazine, 4th Industrial Revolution, 5th Industrial Revolution, Animal Liberation Front - ALF, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Black International Editions, Bristol, Conspiracy of Cells of Fire, Earth Liberation Front - ELF, HMP Bristol, Incendiary Dialogues, Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI), Informal Anarchist Federation - International Revolutionary Front (FAI/IRF), Isolation, Operation Adream, Repression, Revolutionary Organisation 17 November, Toby Shone, UK

UK: Update on the situation of anarchist comrade Toby Shone

Posted on 2021/10/09 - 2021/10/09 by darknights

Toby’s trial began on 6th October at Bristol Crown Court. The charges for administration of 325.nostate.net, funding of terrorism through the website and dissemination of and collection of material useful to terrorists have now been dropped due to lack of evidence.

The other charges of possession of Class A and B drugs with intent to supply, producing a class B drug and a further count of class AA drug possession are still being pursued. At this present time we understand this could carry a jail term of 3-6 years imprisonment.

The Operation Adream that has been unleashed by the British state is an attempt to destroy 325 & its publications, an attack on counter-information that is connected to the repression that has been ramped up on this island since the pandemic and resulting lockdowns, a repression that has always existed, an attack on any form of active revolt here.

We do not believe in guilt and innocence, neither in passivity, only in solidarity that contributes to the continuation of the conflict against the existent.

Strength & Solidarity to anarchist comrade Toby Shone!

Nothing is over, the conflict continues!

Dark Nights Collective

Posted in Social ControlTagged 325, Counter-Information, Operation Adream, Repression, Toby Shone, UK

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