Torture – Page 2 – Dark Nights

Athens, Greece : Update on developments regarding the health of comrades Marianna M. and Dimitra Z. (text update 3.4.25)

Posted on 2025/04/10 - 2025/04/10 by darknights

DEPRIVING PRISONERS OF MEDICAL CARE IS TORTURE

Hands off anarchist comrades Marianna M. and Dimitra Z.

On 31/10/24, following an explosion in an apartment in Ampelokipi, the anarchist armed fighter Kyriakos Xymitiris fell in the battle for social and class liberation, while the anarchist comrade Marianna M., who was also in the apartment, was severely injured, hospitalised and guarded in the ICU of the “Evangelismos” General Hospital. The following days, comrades Dimitra Z., Dimitris and Nikos R., as well as A.K., were remanded in custody.

From the very beginning, state violence was applied to comrade Marianna. With her transfer to Korydallos women’s prison just one day after the second operation she underwent, her hospitalisation was violently interrupted while she still had open wounds on her face, she could not walk or fully care for herself, was dizzy and in pain. The “Evangelismos” General Hospital discharged her as a patient in this condition, knowing full well the miserable environment of the prison to which she would be transferred, where there is not even any kind of hospital and therefore no possibility of providing her with extremely necessary medical care before she fully recovers.

Her torture in Korydallos prison continues to this day. Her serious health condition, as well as the risk of long-term complications, are the result of the deprivation of necessary medical post-operative care. From the very beginning they deprived her of the provision of pharmaceuticals and forced her to stay in cells full of cockroaches, in extremely poor sanitary conditions. While to this day – four months later – necessary and urgent diagnostic tests have not been initiated. To her request to be assessed by a doctor and immediately initiate a brain CT scan requested by an outside doctor who visited her a long time ago, the response of the prison neurologist was “if you don’t fall down with an epileptic seizure, we won’t take you to hospital.” A response that accurately reflects the condition of vindictiveness, punishment, and torture that the rulers impose on anyone who finds themselves captured in the cells of democracy.

To the already heavy situation of confinement was added the appearance of intense rashes and itching in comrade Dimitra. A short time later, the comrade Marianna also showed similar symptoms and only then was the diagnosis of scabies made, while they have been torturing Dimitra for two months with their icy indifference, attributing the symptoms to psychological reasons and administering sedatives to her without having ruled out pathological causes.

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Russia: Prisons must be destroyed

Posted on 2024/11/13 - 2024/11/13 by darknights

We defend political prisoners, but as long as prisons exist, as long as they torture and kill the most ordinary prisoners, including people who are not the most pleasant, as long as criminal cases are fabricated for the sake of “sticks” and “stars,” no one can consider themselves free.

Information about what happens behind barbed wire is rarely and belatedly received. The Verstka Telegram channel recently published information about the victims of police lawlessness in 2023. This year, at least 50 people have died in pre-trial detention centers, special reception centers, police departments, during arrests, and in police cars. These data were obtained through a thorough analysis of reports from government agencies and the media, and, of course, they are not complete.

The highest number of deaths occurred in pre-trial detention centers (SIZO) – 22 people died there over the year, 14 in police departments, five during detention, four in police cars, two in special detention facilities, and one each in court, a FSIN prisoner transport vehicle, and a hospital after being transported from SIZO.

Among the dead were 48 men and two women. The cause of death for 11 people was allegedly heart problems, another 11, according to official data, committed suicide, and nine died after they “suddenly felt bad.”

At least two people died after being tortured by police officers, one detainee in a pre-trial detention center died from a drug overdose, chronic illness, and deliberate failure to provide medical assistance, and one was killed by cellmates. The causes of death for another 13 people are unknown. Continue reading “Russia: Prisons must be destroyed” →

Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for hammer attack on Italian vehicle dealerships

Posted on 2023/05/14 - 2023/05/17 by darknights

The anarchist Alfedo Cospito, a political prisoner of the Italian state, started a hunger strike on 20/10/22 (and was finally vindicated) against the very harsh 41bis detention regime. The comrade has been in prison for more than 10 years in maximum security sections. The 41bis regime involves a series of sophisticated systems of surveillance and sensory isolation of prisoners accused of “terrorist crimes”, in common, a torture aimed at revenge and extermination of prisoners.

Prisons, as the most violent mechanism of deprivation of liberty, and especially such detention systems, are an extension of the repressive policies of states, a place designed to act as a deterrent for anyone who dares to challenge the power of the state and capital. A warehouse of souls in which thousands of people are stewed in very bad conditions, to make an example of themselves and of those ‘from below’ in general.

As anarchists we fight against all forms of oppression and power, against everything that limits our freedom. We stand in solidarity with the struggling prisoners by uniting our voices against prison brutality. We fight until the last prison is cleared.

In solidarity with Cospito, we carried out attacks with hammers on 2 Italian vehicle dealerships in Agios Eleftherios and Caesariani on 2/4.

STRUGGLE FOR THE DEMOLITION OF THE LAST PRISON

NO CRIMINAL, NO POLITICAL, STORM AND BURN EVERY PRISON.

SOLIDARITY TO THE 4 COMRADES IN CUSTODY FOR THE ATTACK ON THE PIRAEUS POLICE STATION WHO ARE ON TRIAL THESE DAYS

Anarchists

Source: athens.indymedia

Greece: Thanos Chatziangelou | 9/5/76 – ‘Living hearts in dead wings’

Posted on 2023/05/14 by darknights

Political tribute of the imprisoned member of Anarchist Action Thanos Chatziangelou on the 47th anniversary of the murder of RAF fighter Ulrike Meinhof.

Protest is when I say I don’t like this. Resistance is when I put an end to what I don’t like.

Ulrike Meinhof

9 May 1976

RAF fighter Ulrike Meinhof is murdered in Stammheim solitary confinement. This is preceded by the murder of hunger striker Holger Meins, who was constantly subjected to force-feeding, and a year later Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe are murdered in Stammheim solitary confinement cells, and Ingrid Schubert is murdered in Stadelheim.

The fighter Ulrike Meinhof was a revolutionary, flesh and blood of the armed anti-imperialist struggle, born and died on the path of contributing to the struggle for individual and collective liberation. She abandoned legitimacy during action to free the imprisoned revolutionary Andreas Baader and became an organizational member of the first generation of the Red Army Faction.

She was a charismatic person who balanced theory through practice, playing a leading role in both the theoretical formulation of the RAF’s ideological and political line, without ever leaving the operational field of armed metropolitan resistance. It was a key part of those initiatives that carried the legacy of the Latin American guerrilla movements on their backs, building the armed ‘metropolitan front’ in the European centres. Who took the hostilities to the “heart of the beast”, putting solidarity into practice with the peoples of Vietnam, Palestine and the third world countries that were fired upon by the imperialist interventions of the United States.

At a time when Schmidt’s German chancellery was an imperialist centre of decision-making and operations, carrying Nazi droplets in the mechanisms of power, the flourishing of the urban guerrilla put into practical question and annulment both the regime’s omnipotence and the oppositional tolerance of imperialist crimes by the reformist left. The history of revolt and resistance was written in the blood of those tortured in the internment hellholes, those murdered in ambushes and anti-terrorist operations by the special SoKo B/M department of the Federal Criminal Investigation Service – BKA and those executed in the death wings of the sensory isolation cells.

Comrade Ulrike was just that disobedient star. Her theoretical and practical contribution to the birth of the armed struggle in Germany and the unification of the resistances in Europe and the Middle East categorized her as a central target for elimination in the BKA’s lists. From slandering her political integrity and standing, to spreading false news of her death while she was struggling in an illegal regime, to her exterminating treatment in the isolation of the dead ward, the social democratic chancellery initiated Ulrike’s execution in the Stammheim hellhole, citing the obviousness of suicide. Indeed, state revanchism was not content with Ulrike’s death, desecrating her dead body when it removed her brain in secret to conduct investigations.

Revolutionary history is written in blood and gunpowder. In this history, personalities like Ulrike and the other RAF comrades are taken out of the matrix of the class struggle for social liberation. They stand unscathed, translucent through time like the brightest stars, with the same integrity that challenges and denigrates the monopoly of tyranny. The life and death of comrades and comrades like Ulrike are a cry to the rebellious hearts that yearn for the enduring revolutionary necessity, deafeningly declaring themselves to their persecutors: I was, am and will be.

Honour to our comrades Ulrike Meinhof, Gudrun Ensslin, Holger Meins, Andreas Baader, Ingrid Schubert who were murdered in the sensory isolation cells by the German state.

Honour to our comrades Petra Schelm, Georg Von Rauch, Thomas Weissbecker, Katharina Hammerschmidt, Ulrich Wessel, Siegfried Hausner, Werner Sauber, Brigitte Kuhlmann, Wilfriend Böse, Willi-Peter Stoll, Michael Knoll, Elisabeth Von Dyck, Juliane Plambeck, Wolfgang Beer, Sigurd Debus, Johannes Thimme, Jürgen Peemoller, Ina Zipman, Gert Albartus, Wolfgang Grams who dedicated their lives to the anti-imperialist struggle for liberation through the ranks of the German urban guerrilla .

“Behind all of us lies a common history – we will meet again on the unknown and complicated paths of liberation.”

Thanos Chatziangelou, captured member of the Anarchist Action Organization

C’ Wing, Larissa Prison

9/5/2023

Source: athens.indymedia

Zaragoza, Spain: Parcel bomb against the head of the prison guards union CSIF

Posted on 2023/02/24 - 2023/02/24 by darknights

Parcel bomb against the head of the prison guards union CSIF (Zaragoza, Spain, January 25, 2023)

Parcel bomb against the head of the prison guards’ union CSIF Zaragoza

Alfonso Peiró is not a mere jailer. For some reason he is impelled to defend corporate impunity, specifically in the macro-prison of Zuera, Zaragoza.

When the prisoners vent their anger among themselves or against themselves, everything goes on as usual. However, when someone dares to return violence to the henchmen of confinement, doubly despicable characters like Alfonso Peiró come out to bawl victimhood.

The few possible consequences of our attentions are nothing compared to what characters of his ilk and their superiors would deserve.

The package consisted of three small aluminum tubes filled with white chloroform tied together. To avoid damage to third hands, which are not our target, the package was sealed with transparent plastic.

We dedicate this action to the anarchist comrade Alfredo Cospito, prisoner in the dungeons of the Italian State, who is carrying out a hard hunger strike against the 41bis, a regime of total isolation in which they want to submit him.

THE ONLY JUSTICE IS REVOLUTIONARY JUSTICE
THAT FEAR CHANGES SIDES

impatients

[Received by e-mail and then published on https://lanemesi.noblogs.org/post/2023/02/21/paquete-explosivo-contra-responsable-del-sindicato-de-carceleros-csif-zaragoza-espana-25-de-enero-2023/]

(ES) Paquete explosivo contra responsable del sindicato de carceleros CSIF (Zaragoza, España, 25 de enero 2023)
(IT) Pacco bomba contro un responsabile del sindacato dei secondini CSIF (Saragozza, Spagna, 25 gennaio 2023)

Bucharest, Romania: Solidarity action with Alfredo Cospito at the Italian embassy

Posted on 2023/02/24 - 2023/02/24 by darknights

21/02/2023

[eng] This morning a banner of solidarity with the anarchist prisoner Alfredo Cospito, in hunger strike for the past 124 days, was shown next to the Italian embassy of Bucharest. Ever since the events of Piazza Fontana, the Italian state silences those voices that act for a world freed from oppression, while using strategies of torture and isolation through the prison system techniques such as “41bis”, aiming the physical annihilation of anyone who stands against exploitation and political injustices.

Solidarity with Alfredo Cospito, against the 41bis torture regime!

***

[it] Questa mattina uno striscione di solidarietà con il prigioniero anarchico Alfredo Cospito, in sciopero della fame da 124 giorni, è stato esposto accanto all’ambasciata italiana di Bucarest. Fin dai fatti di Piazza Fontana, lo Stato italiano mette a tacere le voci che agiscono per un mondo liberato dall’oppressione, mentre utilizza strategie di tortura e isolamento attraverso tecniche carcerarie come il “41bis”, che mirano all’annientamento fisico di chiunque si opponga allo sfruttamento e alle ingiustizie politiche.

Solidarietà ad Alfredo, contro il regime di tortura del 41bis!

Cruj, Romania: Solidarity with Alfredo Cospito stop 41bis torture! RO/EN/IT

Posted on 2023/02/21 by darknights

RO:
SOLIDARITATE CU ALFREDO COSPITO
STOP TORTURII 41BIS!

Alfredo Cospito este un anarhist italian condamnat la peste 20 de ani de închisoare și încarcerat în izolare totală. Acesta a fost pus sub regimul 41bis, echivalent cu detenție solitară (izolare) permanentă, cel mai aspru mod de tratare a deținuților în așanumita italia. Au trecut 122 zile de când Alfredo se află în greva foamei, cerând să fie eliberat din izolare. Până astăzi, autoritățile refuză acest lucru, viața lui Cospito atârnând de un fir de ață.

Ne arătăm solidaritatea cu anarhistul încarcerat Alfredo Cospito și toți prizonierii și prizonierele care suferă în acest moment din cauza sistemului capitalist patriarhic neoliberal, a tiraniei statelor și a închisorilor, peste tot în lume.

Solidaritatea noastră este mai puternică decât gratiile închisorilor, iar vocile noastre vor fi auzite! În această dimineață, un mesaj a fost afișat la intrarea Consulatului Italiei în Cluj.

Alfredo trebuie să trăiască!
Pentru anarhie și libertate! Continue reading “Cruj, Romania: Solidarity with Alfredo Cospito stop 41bis torture! RO/EN/IT” →

Athens, Greece: ‘Until the demolition of every prison. Always with anarchy.’ Document of the Open Assembly of Anarchists for the initiative in solidarity with Alfredo Cospito in front of the Italian Embassy

Posted on 2023/02/21 by darknights

‘Until the demolition of every prison. Always with anarchy.’ Document of the Open Assembly of Anarchists for the initiative in solidarity with Alfredo Cospito in front of the Italian Embassy (Athens, Greece, Feb. 16, 2023)

We publish “Until the demolition of every prison. Always with anarchy,” the call for the Feb. 16 initiative in front of the Italian Embassy in Athens in solidarity with anarchist Alfredo Cospito on hunger strike to the bitter end. The enormous movement of international solidarity that has manifested itself in recent months is proof of how to the isolation and censorship of the state and its prisons we will always oppose the tenacity and consistency of our ideas and practices. This text and the initiative of the Open Assembly of Anarchists, reaffirming the perspective of international revolutionary solidarity, are a further contribution in this regard.

* * *

UNTIL THE DEMOLITION OF EVERY PRISON. ALWAYS WITH ANARCHY

Because for those who love life, reacting when it is turned into surviving is a necessary act.
– Anna Beniamino, “Declaration of beginning hunger strike,” Nov. 7, 2022

Alfredo Cospito, imprisoned anarchist convicted of the crime “massacre” in the “Scripta Manent” trial – a charge concerning the double explosive attack on the Carabinieri Cadet School in Fossano, claimed by Rivolta Anonima e Tremenda / Federazione Anarchica Informale (RAT/FAI) – has been on hunger strike against the 41 bis prison regime and hostile life imprisonment since Oct. 20, when he was imprisoned in the Bancali prison in Sassari, Sardinia. Since May 5, and after ten years in prison, the state has chosen to reinforce the isolation of the comrade (who until then had contributed significantly to the debate among anarchists with letters, articles and interventions) through the detention regime provided for in Article 41 bis of the Italian Prison Order (the carcere duro), a law-abomination that, in essence, requalifies imprisonment into a form of special isolation even on the intellectual and sensory level. It is a suffocating stranglehold that almost completely nullifies communication and contact with the outside world, a torture of psychosomatic annihilation against militants in order to force them to political “repentance.”

Moreover, the purpose of this regime is to create a barrier to revolutionary-antiauthoritarian dialogue between comrades inside and outside prisons. Systematic censorship and the attempt to annihilate the very existence of political prisoners reveal the teeth of democracy and the fear of authoritarian forces of those who carry and spread the seed of revolt and attack for the demolition of the world of the state and capital.

Alfredo Cospito, a continuer of anarchist discourse and practice, raises the shield of the hunger strike to repel the vindictiveness of the state apparatus. The Italian state, with its fascist practices-through the last elections and beyond-has a long history of confrontational tension with anarchists, its enemies who over the years have had trials and investigations for their actions and beliefs, even at the cost of death.

Also imprisoned in the same annihilation regime are three political prisoners, members of the Red Brigades for the Construction of the Combatant Communist Party (BR-PCC) arrested in 2003, Nadia Lioce, Marco Mezzasalma and Roberto Morandi, while Diana Blefari – also a member of the BR-PCC and a longtime prisoner in the solitary confinement of the 41 bis regime – committed suicide in 2009.

With the approval of the new Penal Code and with the even more recent approval of the new Penitentiary Code by the Greek state, “maximum security” prisons or wards now have as their purpose “increased supervision” of “unruly” prisoners, apart, of course, from political prisoners, convicted under the main counterrevolutionary legal instrument par excellence applied to guerrilla warfare, 187A; all seven years after the abolition of Type C prisons thanks to the struggle waged through hunger strikes by political prisoners at the time. This latest development in the state’s legal arsenal is nothing less than a tendency to absolutize prison conditions, also placing a regulation on social confinement with surveillance and control outside the confines of the prison and opening a serious possibility for the introduction of solitary confinement and torture models (similar to 41 bis) in Greek prisons as well. Prisoners in Korydallos and Domokos prisons are still engaged in resistance mobilizations against the new and further authoritarian Penitentiary Code. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: ‘Until the demolition of every prison. Always with anarchy.’ Document of the Open Assembly of Anarchists for the initiative in solidarity with Alfredo Cospito in front of the Italian Embassy” →

Greece: Hunger Strike of Anarchists and Fighting Prisoners in Solidarity with Alfredo Cospito

Posted on 2023/02/16 - 2023/02/16 by darknights

Hunger Strike of Anarchists and Fighting Prisoners in Solidarity with Alfredo Cospito

The 41-bis prison regime is the completion of the prison structure into a masqueraded death sentence. The execution, in this case, does not end in one moment, like with a gunshot, the tightening of the noose, the application of electrical current or the injection of poison into the body, rather it lasts a lifetime in a state of social coma, in a state of non-world. And so, spread through time. Out of this world, the death sentence has evaded history, just like the state pursues oblivion for all the prisoners of the social war who are buried alive in the state of 41-bis. The 41-bis regime has already murdered one fighter, Diana Blefari Melazzi.

The 41-bis regime and the law about “massacre” are the legacy of the european counter-revolution from the time of Piazza Fontana (Strage di piazza Fontana). This civil war never ended. The states, and particularly the Italian one, carry on the counter-revolution so that the flame may never flare up again. All the systems follow, step by step, the examples first introduced as special warfare, e.g. the white cells of West Germany, the F-type prisons in Turkey and the FIES prisons in Spain to the Type-C prisons in Greece or the new high security prison system A.A.; the still active Hitler-inspired law about indefinite extension of one’s sentence on “preventative” grounds, by which comrade Thomas Meyer Falk is being held for another 10 years (25 in total) in Freiburg prison in Germany, to the different methods of extorting declarations of repentance, and from Asinara to Imrali.

Anarchist Alfredo Cospito is fighting for the flame to flare up again. Let’s reassert the fight of the comrade.

It is our duty to defend in deed the battle that Alfredo Cospito is fighting. A struggle for and against time itself. This particular hunger strike does not concern only the comrades in the italian territory, but it is internationalist, and so the star of internationalist solidarity must shine on the side of Alfredo Cospito and all those who are fighting from within a special prison regime. From Greece to every point in the planet – for all those fighting for freedom.

Because defeat is not captivity, but losing one’s faith in the possibility of wining. So, we are collectively going on a hunger strike, according to each one’s capacity, so that we may stand by the side of anarchist revolutionary Alfredo Cospito, but also, against the death regime of 41-bis.

At the same time the struggle against the new prison code in greek prisons is continuing.

Anarchist and Fighting Prisoners

Yiannis Michailedis

(1 day hunger strike)

Dimitris Chatzivasileiadis

(3 day hunger strike)

Thanos Chatziaggelou

(1 day hunger strike)

Iasonas Rodopoulos

(1 day hunger strike)

Kostas Dimalexis

(3 day hunger strike)

Labros Vougiouklakis

(1 day hunger strike)

Panagiotis Vougiouklakis

(1 day hunger strike)

Stathis Nikolouzos

(1 day hunger strike)

Stergios Kalaitzidis

(1 day hunger strike)

Fotis Daskalas

(1 day hunger strike)

Hamburg, Germany: Words in solidarity with Alfredo Cospito by an anarchist prisoner

Posted on 2023/02/16 - 2023/02/16 by darknights

Words in solidarity with Alfredo Cospito by an anarchist prisoner from Hamburg

As many imprisoned comrades worldwide before me, I want to send words in solidarity with Alfredo Cospito from the prison Billwerder in Hamburg, Germany.

The italian state wants to bury an inconvenient anarchist alive in it’s torture-isolation-prison.-system „41bis“. Alfredo is fighting with a hunger-strike till the end against his situation and against 41bis in total.

This is a continuation of a life full of struggle. Alfredos way was also present here in the north. The attack against nuclear-boss Adinolfi, the courtcase in Genoa and Alfredo’s and Nicola’s dignified stand in it and also the written contributions over the years of imprisonment found their way to us.

Worldwide but specifically strong in Italy, anarchists showed over the last months, that we stand with Alfredo. That we will not let him die quiet in the hands of the state. Alfredos dignified struggle created a moment more complex than the fight of a simple human for it’s life. Together with Alfredo we scream against a numb society that a free life can not exist under this condition!

That we will never accept a world of prisons, neither 41 bis, nor reformist institutions. That we will always fight states, borders and all domination and authority. And in this, often tragic way, for us as anarchists lies a beauty with all the fear, joy, anger, love…we will meet and feel. A beatuy in which we will recognize each other no matter where we will end up.

Shoulder to shoulder with Alfredo!
A revolutionary embrace from the heart to the comrades in the prison cells, on the run, on the streets and in the nights.

Source: Act for freedom now!