Tempi Train Crash 2023 – Page 2

Greece: A few words about the ‘witch hunt’ of the Counterterrorism by anarchist comrade Fotis Tziotizis

Posted on 2024/03/05 - 2024/03/05 by darknights

I no longer cease to be amazed and wonder what the police and journalists come up with for cases that disrupt their peace. I have seen and read a lot these days about the alleged major operation of the DAEEV (Directorate for Dealing with Special Violent Crimes ΔΑΕΕΒ, Anti Terrorist) and the dismantling of a dangerous terrorist organization.

Vile absurdities were uttered, scenarios of science fiction. They even went so far as to talk about payments between those involved in order to create the narrative of organized crime and dangerous individuals. False information was published concerning the 6 detainees, using previous conversations from people who had absolutely no connection with each other, thus creating an atmosphere of confusion and misdirection.

I have been portrayed as an obsessive, dangerous person who teeters between two worlds: the political and the criminal, as they call it, with the sole objective of seeking revenge against the prosecuting authorities. What I want to say to all the Pretenderis and Evangelatos of this world is that, besides being ridiculous, you are also foolish because you are trying to convince the world of the profile of a person that serves you and at the same time how well your government, which has been feeding you all these years, is doing its job. You are the very same garbage that covers up state murders like in Tempi and you try to shield all the responsible friends of yours and primarily the then Minister Karamanlis with every ridiculous means available. You didn’t care for even a second about the children who were murdered because of you, and provocatively you shift the blame right and left, while we all know about the friendly appointments without a public examination authority, the bribery in Serres, and so on. The henchmen of your then Minister. We all remember the minister saying that it is a shame to talk about security issues on the railway, and 8 days later we become witnesses to capitalist-state crime in Tempi.

You are the same ones who remain silent when the police evict poor people from their homes for debts to your bosses, the bankers. You are the same ones who dine with golden spoons next to the real mafia of this country – politicians and businessmen – laughing at the suffering of the oppressed.

Therefore, I am happy and content that I don’t resemble you in the slightest. I have learned to look the world in the eye and not deceive them, to care for people and take a stance on whatever happens. I am proud to have grown up with values that you don’t even know.

I may be a captive in your prisons, but my soul and mind are and will remain free. So continue your witch hunt, create scenarios that serve you, and label whatever and however you want.

You were born cowards, and you will live as thugs.

‘I want to go on my way,

bypassing the hesitant

and the slow-walkers’

P.S: The above text is just a few words about the restoration of truth and a critique of the current condition. I will provide a more detailed explanation once I am called for the interrogative procedure and have the indictment in my hands.

Fotis Tziotzis

Domokos Prison
4/3/2024

Source: athens.indymedia

Greece: On the eve of the Tempi disaster an Anti-Terrorist operation has been unleashed updated

Posted on 2024/02/27 - 2024/03/05 by darknights

The anti-terrorist attack on the eve of the Tempi*

An anti-terrorist operation has been carried out since this morning in various regions of Greece. Houses have been raided and at least eight people have been brought in. They are talking about arrests as they link it to the bank bombing in Petralona. It is “interesting” that they are linking all eight to the same case. Journalistic reports are non-existent as everyone is reproducing the paper the GADA is sending them.

Source: athens.indymedia

DN: Since Tuesday morning 27th February, a major operation of the Anti-Terrorism unit is underway. At least eight people have been brought to the GADA after operations in various areas of Athens and in two prisons in the region. One person arrested apparently has been in prison formerly for bank robbery and armed actions.

According to the same information, the arrests are related to the bomb attack that took place on 25th January at a bank in Petralona. Searches are also being conducted at the homes of the arrested persons. Searches of the prisons were conducted as the cops are accusing there being communication between the accused and people in prison.

Three days after the bombing, the new organisation ‘Conspiracy Vengeance‘ had claimed responsibility. The same anarchist group had also claimed responsibility for the grenade in the car of a prison officer now serving in Korydallos prison & for the attack on the house – offices of the company ERGOMAR of the well-known businessman Dimitris Marinelis.

We will provide more information as we receive it.

* DN Note:

On 28th February 2023, a head-on collision occurred between two trains south of the Tempe Valley in Greece, about halfway between the Greek towns of Tempi and Evangelismos in the Thessaly region. The collision involved a passenger train and a freight train, killing 57 people. It was discovered that the passenger train had been allowed to proceed on the wrong track and pass signals at danger despite the presence of the freight train on the same track. Protests and riots occurred throughout Greece following the accident. Beginning on 2nd March 2023, railway workers of Hellenic Train and the Athens Metro went on strike to protest the dangers related to the crash. Following the accident, Transport Minister Kostas Karamanlis resigned, taking responsibility for the crash and for his failure to bring Greek railways to 21st-century standards. I fthis was not enough it is still being covered upo to this day that the crash was the responsibility of many governments of the past, underfunding due to the extreme austerity measures placed on Greece after the 2007-2008 financial crisis, but also rampant corruption in infrastructure projects that continues even up to the present.

We would also like to point out that the Greek state and its security forces have a habit of unleashing military junta-esque anit-terrorist operations when they feel their backs are up against the wall, whether it is the rise in urban guerrilla activity or scandals that totally expose their true nature that everyone knows about, in attempt to distract from themselves.

*Update*

The Anti-Terrorist cops who conducted the searches of 4 prisoners cells and houses of other individuals have confirmed the repressive operation is connected to the organisation ‘Conspiracy Vengeance’. Six people have been arrested, along with the 4 already inside prison. Seizure of items at houses included assault rifles, hand guns and explosives. Mobile phones have been siezed in the cells of the prisoners.

The ten people are accused of participation and membership of a terrorist organisation, criminal support and provision of essential information, attempted murder, violence against officials and judicial persons, explosion, manufacture and possession of explosives, damage to foreign property and violation of weapons legislation.

Five particular attacks have been mentioned within the case already:

1. The sending a package with explosives to the Thessaloniki Courthouse, 12/02/2024.

2. An improvised explosive device at a bank branch in Petralona on 25/01/2024.

3. An improvised explosive device on 13/11/2023 in a building complex in Kifissia, where a company is housed.

4. Throwing a grenade on 08/07/023 at a car owned by a prison officer in Haidari.

5. Throwing a grenade and exploding an improvised explosive device on 24/06/2023 in the yard of a house in Larissa.*

The ten accused will stand before the judges to make a plea on Sunday 3rd March.

Already the journalist vultures are circling, the slime media machine is in overdrive especially about the parcel bomb that was sent to the Thessaloniki court that was intended for the President of the Court of Appeal.

Nothing is over, everthing continues.

DN Note

* This is an attack that has not been claimed, that the authorities are claiming was a failed attack.

Thessaloniki, Greece: Responsibility claim for Parcel – Bomb to the President of the Court of Appeal Anastasia Anthopoulou by ‘Armed Response’

Posted on 2024/02/19 - 2024/02/19 by darknights

The work of the judicial officials is clearly aimed at torturing and impoverishing all prisoners and in general all those who unfortunately have to face their fate.

Judges, prosecutors, appellants, all together have for years created a closed group of torturers, of course with the help and complicity of the governments of the day.

Especially in recent years with the Mitsotakis government, they have been leading the country in the path of the junta and repression. The decisions made in the courtrooms and in their offices are clearly vindictive and inhumane for the people. The scum who bear the “title” of president, supreme court of appeal, etc., are the ones who give the orders to seize the homes of people with health problems, the elderly, and those facing financial crisis.

They are the ones who judge at will how long people will sit in prison, regardless of evidence and proof, because they only like to make vengeful decisions at their own so-called discretion and administer their own “justice”, without considering anyone or anything.

They think they are in a higher class of people and that they can play with everyone’s lives. Their direct connections to high level cops and politicians place them in a context of self-empowerment and corruption with no checks and balances from anyone. They sign and arrange laws for their corrupt “friends”, they give orders for surveillance of people for personal gain.

A huge chapter is about prisoners and the constant tightening of sentences, of course with some exceptions that only serve “their own”. Extensive sentences, the various provisions that are imposed overnight as it suits them, lead prisoners to the daily battle for survival in miserable conditions.

When it comes to people of their own clique, by cover-ups and short procedures, they are relieved of any responsibility. A typical example is the disaster in Tempe, where all the scum – responsible for the tragedy – continue their lives as normal. The then Transport Minister Karamanlis and his appointed minions, with the help of judges and prosecutors, have been absolved of all responsibility. The ‘famous’ friends of the Mitsotakis government, the rapists and pedophiles, Lignadis, Filippidis etc., are partially acquitted or are given the benefit of the doubt, so that they can continue their perverted work by being acquitted. On the contrary, for all those who do not belong to their debased rotten circle, the application of their laws transcends all vindictiveness. Continue reading “Thessaloniki, Greece: Responsibility claim for Parcel – Bomb to the President of the Court of Appeal Anastasia Anthopoulou by ‘Armed Response’” →

Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for the attack on a police patrol at Strefi Hill on 15/6

Posted on 2023/06/27 by darknights

We are at a juncture where, in the space of just a few months, we have counted two mass state capitalist murders, in Tempe and Pylos, which demonstrate in the most deafening way the very essence of capitalism. We are under no illusions and we know very well that in the face of the deadlock and bankruptcy of the state-capitalist system, the only answer that the state and capital have to propose is, on the one hand, to create new hotbeds of imperialist conflict and intervention in the capitalist regions, thus creating new hundreds of dead, both on the battlefields and in the debris left behind by war and the overexploitation of resources, and on the heavily guarded border lines, which have resulted in the Mediterranean becoming a vast graveyard of refugees.

On the other hand, in the capitalist centres of the West, capital and the state are looking for new areas of profitability through further class devaluation, impoverishment and death politics, which in turn create modern metropolitan guarded sweatshops in which we are forced to survive in conditions of misery with meagre wages as a result of the overvaluation of our labour power, with one worker murder after another, with the coverage of our basic material needs becoming more and more difficult, and the deterioration of the structures that cover basic social needs of transportation, health, education, etc. and with a state that is further entrenching itself by militarising its metropolises and increasing military budgets.

So at the same time as the state is generously spreading death, oppression, exploitation and destruction, it is inviting us to participate in the carnival of elections to choose which party will “save” us and which party will provide the best opposition. It invites us to entrust the management of our lives to saviours great and small, and once we have chosen we can proudly return to normality, where people are murdered at the borders, in police stations, on the streets, in the workers’ sweatshops. We can return to the normalcy of “passports” and starvation wages, of snitch journalists and exhausted and unpaid overtime, of evictions and home foreclosures. The normalcy we legitimize by voting consent and submission. In the face of their normalcy there is disobedience, resistance and rebellion. Against the vote of delegation there is collectivity, self-organization, faith in our strengths and in the potential of all the oppressed and exploited. The belief that this world will be changed by us, through collective struggles we will stand on our feet and attack the state, capital and their praetorian guard. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for the attack on a police patrol at Strefi Hill on 15/6” →

Athens, Greece: For the attack and the damage to Pharaoh in Solomou, Exarchia by Comrades, Anarchists

Posted on 2023/06/27 by darknights

As the struggle between the classes becomes wilder and the ideologies of development pave the way for the plundering of human and natural resources, turning the seas, the trees, the air we breathe into fields of profit at any cost, the upper classes become stronger and increase their wealth. As long as the lives of those from below are nothing but numbers to be managed and percentages of losses, such as the hundreds of dead displaced off Pylos, the passengers and workers on the trains of Tempi and the murdered workers in the sweatshops of the big bosses, capital is contentedly entrenching itself and preparing for new rounds of accumulation, deepening the terms of the devaluation of our lives.

The proclamation of the centre of Athens and especially of Exarchia, as a new field of profitability to which small and big businessmen are turning, is well known. Tourism and consumption have turned every hole into an opportunity. Numerous apartments are being converted into Airbnb, pushing up the remaining rents even higher, displacing poorer residents. Every public and open space, from the Strefi and Exarchia Square, to the May Day Square and the Museum, has been fenced off and included in plans to redevelop it and turn it into a supervised space for tourists and consumers. The police terrorism, the evacuation of squats and political spaces, the bullying and harassment of passers-by and residents by the ELAS men, the sealing of the Polytechnic, the increasing placement of cameras, are central repressive moves and reveal the political sign of this aggressive epicism.

In other words, for the business of white and black capital to flourish in our regions, the resistance that has taken root over the years must be silenced. The blockades of those from above that have been happening over time in the region, with the intolerable presence of politicians, exploiters and bigwigs of all kinds, must stop. To stop the precepts of solidarity among the oppressed, self-organization and opposition to the skinners of our lives and dreams.

But what they all forget is that these neighborhoods are still ours. That their well-polished storefronts can come crashing down on their heads with a bang, no matter how well they are guarded by their all manner of cops. Our small contribution to this reminder was our recent trip to Pharaoh’s on Solomou. On Friday 9 June, in broad daylight and under the nose of the anchored forces of repression at arm’s length, we interfered with the restaurant, damaging its interior and destroying their cellar of very expensive wines.

This shop, borrowing its concept from various other examples in western metropolises, jumped on the chariot of gentrification, selling alternativeism in an expensive wrapper. Pharaoh’s four entrepreneurs, Maidan columnists, TV chefs, troubadour foodies and others, gave rise to the arrival of socialites of all kinds in the area. Amidst the homeless and pissed-up sidewalks, with their expensive cars often guarded by their inflatable escorts, mob bosses, businessmen, and half the government’s cabinet have dined at this establishment. We should note here, of course, that Mitsotakis’ recent visit to this place was not as carefree as he expected, thanks to some angry residents. The clientele of this shop, therefore, validates by their presence the predestined targeting of the rotten world they represent. The opening of the field of profitability of local and foreign capital around the axis of Patision and the repression of anyone who resists it.

The war they have declared against us is sharpening and so must our struggles. Through dynamic responses and persistence, we can impose significant costs on all these would-be entrepreneurs, raising mounds to the touristization of everything and the conversion of our neighborhoods into commodities.

So that ministers, prime ministers, mayors and greasy mafiosi have no illusions that they will dine undisturbed in our parts.

To put smaller and larger cracks in their well-polished windows.

To move from questioning to conflict.

POVERTY, EXPLOITATION AND EXCLUSION
THAT’S WHAT GENTRIFICATION MEANS

SOLIDARITY WITH REFUGEES AND MIGRANTS

Comrades, Anarchists

Source: athens.indymedia

Thessaloniki, Greece: Responsibility claim for arson attack on COSMOTE van in solidarity with Giannis Michailidis & anarchist prisoners

Posted on 2023/06/04 - 2023/06/04 by darknights

VICTORY IN THE HUNGER STRIKE OF GIANNIS MICHAILIDIS

Once again dystopia is dangerously close to us. The state is constantly inventing new ways to undermine more and more our living conditions. Labour rights are now a thing of the past as partial employment contracts, the daily dismissal of trade unionists, often fatal work accidents, wage cuts, and the repayment or non-payment of bonuses under extortionate conditions are the status quo. At the same time, it is becoming increasingly shamelessly obvious how expendable our lives are to the state apparatus. The 57 murders in Tempe, the daily deportations and repatriations of migrant women on equally murderous terms, and the more ‘indirect’ method of the state’s death policy by raising the prices of everyday products, electricity and gas, as well as rents. Of course, even if you have to pay for all this, no one can guarantee that the next day you will still have a house to live in, since there is no longer any protection of the first home and the cops and prosecutors may appear one day in your living room and literally throw you out on the street within a few hours with all the things you have managed to collect.

To enable this condition to be established, a lot of money was spent on hiring cops from every service and buying official vehicles, placing them in ‘key’ places like squares, universities, hills and playgrounds. Apart from their physical presence, the state is more present than ever before through the installation of cameras on every corner, illegally or legally placed, and through the microphones and cameras on our mobile phones. No longer is the ‘big brother’ a fictional character from a novel, but the terrifying everyday life in which we live and grow up, where social control is brutal and universal.

The context of modern totalitarianism could not fail to include the further “upgrading” of the prison system and prisons. The state and those in power, known for their fetishism in punishing and torturing anyone who opposes them, are constantly reinforcing the dungeons of democracy, aiming at the complete annihilation of the imprisoned militants. Thus, in the winter of 2022, in a more comprehensive attempt to fortify the state against the social upheaval that prevailed, the new penal code is passed. According to it, type C prisons were reintroduced under the name of ”maximum security prisons”, disciplinary procedures were tightened, the conditions for granting leave and for the temporary dismissal of those prosecuted under 187A or accused of robbery and drug offences were changed, thus discrediting the position of political prisoners. It also introduces a ban on the transfer of certain categories of prisoners to rural prisons. Continue reading “Thessaloniki, Greece: Responsibility claim for arson attack on COSMOTE van in solidarity with Giannis Michailidis & anarchist prisoners” →

Greece: The day that anger swept the streets of Athens for the 57 dead of the train crash (March 8, 2023)

Posted on 2023/03/16 - 2023/03/16 by darknights

Greece: a country in mourning, still in shock, following the death of 57 people in a train crash at Tempe, the deadliest in the country and one of the worst in Europe.

8 days later the dead passengers, mainly young students, are still being buried and people continue to protest against the crime executed by the neoliberal government and a private company, that chose to sacrifice passenger safety for profit, resulting in a passenger service train, carrying more than 350 people, ramming into a freight train, just before midnight on Tuesday 28 February 2023, after they ended up on the same track mainly due to the lack of technical equipment and the incompetence of the stationmaster, causing the front carriages to burst into flames.

Ongoing revelations of staff shortages and substandard equipment have revealed the dangerous state of the privatized rail network. It was indeed an accident waiting to happen.

For 8 days, almost all protests in Athens have been brutally attacked by the so-called “mourning” riot police, under the orders of Mitsotakis government that pretends to care, while they even close down all metro stations around a protest’s starting point to deter people from joining them. Such is the government’s sincerity and repentance for the blood of 57 people on their hands. Regardless, the protest of March 8th was one of the biggest protests in Athens during the last decade, with more than 80,000 people taking part.

Just a few months before the parliamentary elections, the situation in Greece is unpredictable in a place where there is no justice, nor peace.

While the government still tries to evade assuming full responsibility for the train disaster, a general nationwide strike and new protests have been announced for Thursday, 16 March 2023.

Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for placing of explosive device at a branch of Eurobank by Cell ‘Lambros Fountas’

Posted on 2023/03/14 by darknights

On March 9, just before the day changed to 10, the day on which 13 years ago in Dafni, the short revolutionary Lambros Fountas was killed in an exchange of fire with cops, we placed a device1 in a branch of Eurobank on Papanikoli Street in Halandri.

Walking alongside or in the turmoil of the days we decided to make our statement as combatants of the social war. Apart from the timeless and undeniable symbolism of attacking a bank, we cannot fail to mention the fact that this bank, apart from being located in one of the most central nodes of Halandri, is only two blocks away from the police station of the area.

Because memory is not rubbish and the struggle against oblivion is a struggle for freedom we attempted to contribute to the aggravation of the social war. A war that the state is fighting, either indifferently, as in the case of Tempi, or by targeting, as in the case of the poverty-stricken Fragoulis and Sampanis2. Of course, in this field our own side could not fail to count losses, such as that of our comrade and member of the revolutionary organisation EA [Επαναστατικός Αγώνας, Revolutionary Struggle] , Lambros Fountas.

In no way can the Tempi incident be equated with the military choice of the state to attack the oppressed in general, let alone the deeply ideological choice of eliminating a strategic enemy of the state who fell bleeding from the fire of the cop killers in a preparatory action of the organisation. The comrade with his actions gave flesh and bones to the slogan “Fear must change sides” which is the political issue of our days, accepting and accepting the all-out attack of the state and capital, we are called to change the correlations and fight back.

To make fear change sides

To honour the memory of our own dead by attacking every symbol of sovereignty. To attack state and capitalist targets by taking revenge for every moment of oppression for our own fallen in the social war, a war that is raging and will continue to rage and can only be won.

SOLIDARITY WITH THE ANARCHIST HUNGER STRIKER ALFREDO COSPITO

STRENGTH TO THE CAPTURED COMRADES

Listen how the cop’s voice trembles tonight…

Cell “LAMBROS FOUNTAS”

Source: athens.indymedia

DN Notes

The media scum are claiming it was a ‘Γκαζάκι’ Gazaki, when camping stove gas cannisters are used alongside petrol & even sometimes a firecracker plus a rudementary delayed fuse. Even sometimes smaller versions are thrown during riots in Greece, like an explosive molotov.
Two Roma shot & killed by the Dias motorcycle cops.