Repression

Greece: Giannis Michaildis – Announcement of a hunger strike for my release

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

After 8.5 years in prison, after all these arbitrary actions against me, I decided to put an end to my 11 years of suffering, by putting a stop to the practice of pre-trial detention, or the additional punishment of escape through legal loopholes. After 5 more months of pre-trial detention, I start a hunger strike for my release. This choice, with the deep motivation of the much desired freedom, I intend to support it with the same consistency that I have supported my choices so far and for which I am being persecuted.

“Woe to those who will accept prison as a condition of life, and from the brightest sunlight, the smallest ray” – The rallying cry of the Alikarnassos prison uprising

For 11 years I have experienced state vengeance against choices in line with my values and ideas. The difficult journey, from which I choose to share some blatant vengeful acts of arbitrariness against me, began in the distant 2011, when an arrest warrant was issued against me for the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire case, for which I was eventually acquitted as there was not the slightest connection between me and the charge against me. It was the incrimination of a relationship of solidarity with wanted anarchists that put me in their place when they were arrested.

After 2 years of being on the run, I too am now walking through the heavy doors of prison, as the existence of a warrant that entails a decade of incarceration has led to certain choices and consequent mistakes. The comrades who were arrested at the time in the bank robbery in Velvento, Kozani, were tortured by the police, which is common, and then the Ministry of Public Order published photos of our swollen faces, provoking a public reaction. Of course, no police officer was accused of this by the blind Greek justice system. Continue reading “Greece: Giannis Michaildis – Announcement of a hunger strike for my release” →

Spain: Information and update on the detainees for the burning of a police vehicle

Posted on 2022/05/21 by darknights

Yesterday evening Ermann was released and today Emanuele will be released.

The boys have decided to pay the bails together with the help of the solidarity funds, the comrades, friends and relatives.

Only the bails of Danilo, Albo and Beppe (the last imprisoned) remain to be paid.

Danilo has decided to leave after June 3, because he doesn’t want to miss his university exams, Albo stays with him waiting for him in the same module.

We hope that solidarity will fill the boxes with the money needed to free them.

See you in the streets!

Source: Publicacion Refractario

Thessaloniki, Greece: Responsibility claim for arson attack on BRINKS security vehicle

Posted on 2022/05/21 by darknights

Our lives are daily subjected to the devaluation and the all-out attack of the state in all areas of socio-political reality. Understaffed hospitals where people are dying without even having the possibility of a decent hospitalization, labor sweatshops where workers are murdered as security measures are non-existent, uniformed scumbags chasing and shooting unarmed minors because they are Roma in the name of property and security, arrests with inflated charges linking people to organizations because of friendly relations. These are all examples that display the dystopia that the rulers want to establish.

In this effort, therefore, we feel the need to set up mounds of resistance and to fight back by all means and in various ways against the enemy, while giving the answer that nothing will end with arrests and detention of militants. One of the ways we use and consider an important tool in the overall struggle against the state and capital is direct action. In various places in the urban fabric there are targets waiting to be visited in order to break in practice the sense of security that the rulers try to maintain.

We take responsibility for the arson of a BRINKS security company vehicle in the Triandrias area on the evening of 16 April.

OUR IDEAS ARE NOT IMPRISONED

SOLIDARITY TO ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS

Anarchists

Source: athens.indymedia

Solidarity Poster: Solidarity with Alfredo Cospito, anarchist imprisoned in 41 bis. (Italy)

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

On May 5, imprisoned anarchist Alfredo Cospito was notified of his transfer from “High Security 2” to 41 bis. The decree was ordered by Justice Minister Marta Cartabia. The 41 bis is an afflictive penitentiary regime that provides for: isolation and silence, the absence of sociability and any internal activity, censorship of correspondence and the blocking of a good part of it, one hour of monthly interview with the dividing glass, recording of the interview itself, ten minutes of phone calls per month with an authorized and forced family member from a barracks, the prohibition to receive and buy newspapers and books, and the limitation in the availability of objects inside the cell.

This transfer is an attack on a comrade anarchist who never lowered his head: who, after his arrest and in the trial that followed, claimed head-on to have shot in the legs the CEO of Ansaldo Nucleare, Engineer Adinolfi, one of the top nuclear executives in Europe. In recent years, Alfredo has been a thorn in the side for investigators because of his constant contribution to the revolutionary movement, a contribution they would now like to silence. Continue reading “Solidarity Poster: Solidarity with Alfredo Cospito, anarchist imprisoned in 41 bis. (Italy)” →

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

Munich, Germany : About raids and a §129 procedure against anarchists and the theft of a printing space

Posted on 2022/05/14 by darknights

Munich: About raids and a §129 procedure against anarchists and the theft of a printing space

What happened?

As previously published, on Tuesday, April 26, in Munich coordinated raids were conducted against anarchists accused of forming a criminal organization (§129). Four apartments were searched (2 of them without any of the accused living there), as well as several basement storage rooms (some of the neighboring cellars of those to the accused were also searched), a printing space, and the anarchist library Frevel.

Coordinated by State Security (K43), a bunch of hooded USK cops with battering rams, partly drawn weapons and some even in chain-mail – yes, whether this cop had lost a bet or whether it was a knight-themed week, we will probably never know – stormed into the apartments at 6 a.m. sharp. This infamous testosterone-fueled bunch even rammed open a door whose key was inserted in the lock on the outside. At some of the apartments, the cops or their colleagues from K123 (Digital Forensics/Telecommunications Surveillance) must have logged into the local WLAN network beforehand, as they seemed to have a precise idea of which devices were connected to the local WLAN network at that time: equipped with power banks and presumably Faraday cages (which serve to shield radio signals) in the form of pouches, the officers immediately snatched the devices, all of them smartphones, and secured them while they were still switched on.

Following this prelude, the investigators of the K43 came to the scene and waved around the search warrants to the people concerned, and introduced all pseudo-witnesses from local municipal authorities that had come along. And then it started: for about six and a half hours, the pigs rummaged through the usual stuff like computers, storage media, and cell phones, but also printers, anarchist publications, “documents and/or files that provide information about left-wing extremist-anarchist ideas”, personal records, financial data, “documents and/or files that provide information about any attack plan of the defendants,” as well as “plans, tools and/or raw materials for the production of bombs, incendiary devices or other objects suitable for carrying out a terrorist attack”; in other words, simply everything. They seized storage media, computers (including those belonging to individuals not accused), printers, personal notes, letter correspondence, and several hundred anarchist publications in a several languages. In addition, they searched intensively for contracts of other rented premises, and probably also demanded to see contracts from the landlords of the basement rooms that were searched. Continue reading “Munich, Germany : About raids and a §129 procedure against anarchists and the theft of a printing space” →

Athens, Greece: Incendiary-explosive attack upon cop’s vehicle in solidarity with anarchist prisoners Vaggelis Stathopoulos & Dimitris Hatzivassiliadis

Posted on 2022/05/14 - 2022/05/18 by darknights

For 3 years now, the far-right government of the ND has intensified state repressive action against those who fight and stand against its brutal capitalist plans.

The repressive attacks and frame-ups and persecutions against militants are countless. In these 3 years we have witnessed demonstration bans, torture of protesters and prisoners, informal hostage-taking of anarchists under harsh restraints, mass arrests, intimidation with non-existent DNA and detention. The purpose of all these state practices is to completely cut off and isolate militants from social resistance and physically eliminate them.

The basic premise of this repressive policy is to put the management of everyday life in the hands of the police, which, with the chariot of the pandemic, has been largely conquered by placing uniformed men everywhere like an army of occupation to decide who goes out and who does not.

Police impunity and police state repression has so far resulted in hundreds of incidents of beatings, torture and arrests, even murders, as in the case of Nikos Sampanis who was gassed for not stopping at a checkpoint.

One of the first state frame-ups is the prosecution and imprisonment of the anarchist comrade Vaggelis Stathopoulos, who has been locked up in state cells for two and a half years for showing his practical solidarity with the wounded anarchist comrade Dimitris Hatzivassiliadis.

In a mock trial with a tailor-made indictment by the anti-terrorist police, held in March-April 2021, Vaggelis Stathopoulos was sentenced to 19 years in prison.

On the night of 21 April we placed an incendiary-explosive device in a cop’s vehicle in the area of Ampelokipoi, destroying it completely, in solidarity with the anarchist prisoner Vaggelis Stathopoulos, whose appeal trial begins on 18 May.

It is our belief that state framing and trumped up charges are overturned through diverse solidarity actions.

IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF ANARCHIST VAGGELIS STATHOPOULOS

FREEDOM TO THE ANARCHIST DIMITRIS HATZIVASSILIADIS WHO IS BEING PROSECUTED FOR THE SAME CASE AND TO ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS

FOR FEAR TO CHANGE SIDES

THE ANSWERS ARE GIVEN IN THE STREETS OF FIRE

Anti-State Saboteurs

Source: athens.indymedia

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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