actforfreedomnow
Updates on anarchist/anti-authoritarian prisoners in Greece
Information about the 6 arrested alleged "terrorists"
On Tuesday 7th of December 2010 the first 2 of the 6 arrested allegedly part of a "terrorist organization" were imprisoned.
Alexandros Mitrousias was sent to Patras prisons and Kostas Sakkas to the prisons of Navplio.
THE WEAPONS FOUND IN AGRINIO WERE ALSO FOUND TO BE "CLEAN" AFTER EXTENSIVE BALLISTICS EXAMINATION.
As it appears, the efforts of the anti-terrorist police to connect the guns that were found in the possession of A. Mitrousias and K.Sakkas, and those that were found in the house in Agrinio, with terrorist attacks and specifically with actions of the Sect of Revolutionaries were fruitless. Specifically, the ballistic examination showed that the guns that were found in a"safehouse" on the corner of Daskalopoulou and Praidou street have not been used in any terrorist action.
THE OTHER FOUR OF THE ARRESTED ALLEGEDLY PART OF A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION ARE IMPRISONED FACING 4 FELONIES AND 2 DELINQUENCIES BASED ON THE ANTI-TERRORIST LAWS
The imprisoned are Stella Antoniou, Dimitris Michail, Christos Politis and Giorgos Karagiannidis who, after the completion of their pleas before the interrogator and the public prosecutor are confronted with charges concerning "offences" of constitution and integration in a "terrorist organisation", "terrorist organisation", "terrorist actions", "possession and manufacturing of explosives" and "aggravated case of gun possession".
All that remains is to see what attitude the alleged terrorists will maintain.
Athens Assembly
Stella Antoniou
Klistes Filakes Gynaikon Korydallou
T.K. 1811O
KORYDALLOS
ATHENS
GREECE
Dimitris Michail
Filakes Trikalon
42100 Trikala
Greece
Letter of comrade Dimitris Michail
Clik to read: http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=en&article;_id=1251755
Xpistos Politis
Geniko Katastima Fylakon
Grebenon
51100 GREBENA
GREECE
letter from imprisoned comrade Christos Politis
CLIK TO READ:http://actforfreedomnow.blogspot.com/2011/01/2-letter-from-imprisoned-comrade.html
Kostas Sakkas
AGROTIKI FILAKI
TIRYNTHIAS
T.K. 21 100
NAVPLIO
GREECE
Letter from Kostas Sakkas, a comrade accused of belonging to a "terrorist organisation", in which he analizes the economic crisis and urges resistance.
CLIK TO READ: http://actforfreedomnow.blogspot.com/2011/01/letter-of-kostas-sakkas-from-navplio.html
Alexandros Mitrousias
KLISTI FILAKI PATRAS
T.K. 26110
PATRA
GREECE
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Thodoris Delis
Alikarnassos Prison
T.K. 71601
ALIKARNASSOS
HRAKLEIO
CRETE
GREECE
The following letter from Thodoris Delis, who is charged with robbing a bank on the island of Rhodes, was recently published in the first issue of Storming the Bastille: Voices from the Inside, which brings together a number of texts and letters written by prisoners in struggle. The publication is one of the supplementary projects stemming from the Solidarity Fund for Prisoners in Struggle initiative.
Letter from Thodoris Delis
Clik to read:http://thisisourjob.wordpress.com/2010/11/20/letter-from-thodoris-delis/.
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Panayiotis Giannos (released!)
Here is the letter from Panagiotis /http://thisisourjob.wordpress.com/2010/11/30/letter-from-panayiotis-giannos/
Panayiotis Giannou was arrested on October 7 for "possession of an incendiary device," a charge that in the past has sometimes landed people in pre-trial detention, and sometimes not. History is also very ambiguous when camping gas canisters are involved. There have been trials in which they were considered "incendiary devices," but there have been plenty of cases in which they were designated as "explosive devices."
AFTER THREE MONTHS IN PRISON ON JANUARY 2011 PANAGIOTHS GIANNOU IS OUT...! RELEASED.
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Imprisoned Members of the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire
Haris Hatzimichelakis
Dikastikes Filakes Korydallou -A Pteryga
Koridallos
T.K. 18110
Athens
Greece.
Statement of Responsibility Claim from Haris Hadjimihelakis 23 Nov. 2010
CLIK TO READ:http:/ actforfreedomnow.blogspot.com/2010/11/statement-of-responsibility-claim-from.html
Panayiotis Argyrou
Dikastiki Filaki Koridallou-A Pteryga
T.K. 18110 Korydallos
Athens
Greece
Panayiotis had a warrant out for his arrest since October 2009 on charges of participating in the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire. He was arrested on November 1, 2010 in connection with the mailing of a number of package-bombs. His trial for the Fire Cells Conspiracy charges start on January 17, 2011, at Korydallos prison court
Gerasimos Tsakalos
Katastima Kratisis Malandrinou
T.K. 33053
Malandrino
Greece
Letter from Gerasimos Tsakalos, Conspiracy of Cells of Fire : Imprisoned Members Cell. Tsakalos writes about the 1st Nov 2010 arrest of himself and his comrade, Panagiotis Argirou in Athens, plus his own anti-political ideas of anti-social anarchism and revolutionary nihilism.
LETTER FROM GERASIMOS TSAKALOS Member of the Cell of Imprisoned Members of the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire click to read..
http://actforfreedomnow.blogspot.com/2011/01/letter-from-gerasimos-tsakalos-member.html
Mixalis Nikolopoulos
Filakes Trikalon
T. K. 42100
Trikala
Greece
One more arrest for the 'Conspiracy of Cells of Fire' case On January 26th Michalis Nikolopoulos was arrested in Kifissia (northern Athens), accused in the case of Conspiracy of Cells of Fire. On January 28th he was taken to the Evelpidon Courts where a solidarity gathering was also held. He appeared before the prosecutor (Loukareos court) for the execution of an arrest warrant that had been pending for nearly a year and a half, since he was a fugitive. The comrade refused to testify, saying that he does not recognize the procedure and he was imprisoned. In 3/2, he also claimed political responsibility for his participation in the revolutionary organization 'Conspiracy of Cells of Fire' (his brief statement in English)). Clik to read: http://actforfreedomnow.blogspot.com/2011/02/one-more-arrest-for-conspiracy-of-cells.html
The 3 anarchists accused of being members of the "Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire" case
Kostantina Karakatsani
Filakes Gynaikon Korydallou
T.K. 1811O
KORYDALLOS
ATHENS
GREECE
Panagiotis Masouras
Dikastiki Filaki Koridallou-A Pteryga
T.K. 1811O
KORYDALLOS
ATHENS
GREECE
Georgios Karagiannidis
Dikastiki Filaki Koridallou-A Pteryga
T.K. 1811O
KORYDALLOS
ATHENS
GREECE
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Alfredo Bonanno was sentenced to 4 years imprisonment (which practically means that with the time served so far and the fact that he is over 70 years old HE WAS RELEASED on 23 November!! 2010 a statement by one of the comrades: CLIK TO READ: http://aftertrikala.blogspot.com/2010/11/larissa-greece-22-november-trial-of.html
Christos Stratigopoulos
Dikastikes Filakes Koridallos
T.K. 18110
Athens
Greece
Christos Stratigopoulos (who took responsibility for the action) was sentenced to 8 years and 9 months, and with the Greek law will probably be released at the end 2011.
THE PASSION FOR FREEDOM IS STRONGER THAN THE PRISON CELLS!!
Comrade Ilias Nikolaou RELEASED from prison
Ilias Nikolau was arrested on January 13, 2009 and charged with planting an incendiary device at the Evosmos police station in Thessaloniki. On December 4, 2009, he was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison.Thessaloniki 25th October 2010
Today comrade Ilias, after the hearing on Thursday 21/10/10, of his application for release until the appeals court, was RELEASED with the condition that he pays bail of 15.000 euro.
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Giorgos Voutsis-Vogiatsis has already been out for almost 2 months!!! since September 2010
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Yiannis Dimitrakis
Filakes Domokou
T.K.35010
Fthiotida Greece
Anarchist sentenced to 35 years for armed robbery of a bank 2006
Letter from Anarchist Giannis Dimitrakis, from Koridallos prison 2006 clik to read: http://fotiastakelia.blogspot.com/2010/07/letter-from-anarchist-giannis.html
GIANNIS DIMITRAKIS TRIAL UPDATE
SENTENCED ANNOUNCED
23/12/10
Today the final sentence was announced at the Court of Appeal for comrade Giannis Dimitrakis. The sentence after the fusions is 12,5 years of imprisonment (less than the 35 years he got at the first trial).
All together he was found guilty of the robbery in the National Bank on Solonos str, (7 years imprisonment), guilty of psychological support in the attempted homicide of the bank guard (6 years imprisonment), guilty of participating in a gang (4 years imprisonment), guilty of using a gun (2 years imprisonment). He did not get any mitigation (Giannis was shot and severly injured by cops outside the bank) with but with the fusion of the sentences the final sentence is 12.5 years. The sentence he still has to serve in prison is 3/5ths of the total, so Giannis still has 7.5 years to do. He has already served almost 5 years.
The room was full of supporters, that burst out in slogans and clapping after the announcement of the decision. The presence of the cops was discreet without EKAM (Greek special forces) and masked ones as at previous trials. The speeches and points made by the defence lawyers were remarkable and they didn't speak of a "victory" of course but of a "proportional sentence that corresponds to the charges"
The comrade was led again to prison with his fists raised and in the next days he is expected to be sent to Domokos prison from the prisons of Koridallos where he was held temporarily for the trial.
THE PASSION FOR FREEDOM
IS STRONGER THAN THEIR PRISONS
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The 3 members of Revolutionary Struggle
Letter from the Revolutionary Struggle Three
On April 10, 2010, the Anti-terrorist Department of the Greek Police arrested six people in Athens :
Nikos Maziotis, Panagiota "Pola" Roupa, Kostas Gournas, Vaggelis Stathopoulos, Sarandos Nikitopoulos, and Christoforos Kortesis. All were known for their long presence in the anarchist/anti-authoritarian movement. Two weeks later, Nikos Maziotis, Pola Roupa, and Kostas Gournas admitted to participating in the organization known as Revolutionary Struggle (Epanastatikos Agonas). Stathopoulos, Nikitopoulos, and Kortesis denied the charges and stated that they were being persecuted for their years of anarchist activity and their comradely political relationships with the others.
The following is the complete declaration of the Revolutionary Struggle Three:
A POLITICAL LETTER TO SOCIETY
We are taking responsibility for our participation in Revolutionary Struggle. We declare that comrade Lambros Foundas, who died in Dafni on March 10, 2010 after a battle with the police, also participated in Revolutionary Struggle. The battle was part of the subversive project decided on collectively by Revolutionary Struggle. It was a battle for revolution and freedom.
READ THE REST: http://revolutionarystrugglecase.blogspot.com/2010/09/greece-letter-from-revolutionary.html
Panagiota Roupa
Klistes Filakes Gynaikon Korydllou
T.K. 1811O
KORYDALLOS
ATHENS
GREECE
Kostas Gournas
Dikastiki Filaki Koridallou ST' PTERIGA
T.K.18110
KORYDALLOS
ATHENS
Greece
Nikos Maziotis
Dikastiki Filaki Koridallou ST' PTERIGA
T.K. 18110
KORYDALLOS
ATHENS
GREECE
These 3 comrades are being prosecuted for the "Revolutionary Struggle" case
Vaggelis Stathopoulos
Filakes Trikalon
42100
TRIKALA
GREECE
LETTER FROM IMPRISONED COMRADE VAGGELIS STATHOPOULOS
http://revolutionarystrugglecase.blogspot.com/2010/09/letter-from-imprisoned-comrade-vaggelis.html
"Mixing me up in the Revolutionary Struggle case is a consequence of my political convictions. I do not condemn any type or method of struggle. My political activity has always taken place in broad daylight." 12/4/10 Greece
Xristoforos Kortesis
Dikastiki filaki Korinthou
T.K. 20100
KORINTHOS
GREECE
A letter from Christoforos Kortesis, an imprisoned comrade
Tuesday, May 4, 2010 CLIK TO READ: http://revolutionarystrugglecase.blogspot.com/2010/09/letter-from-christoforos-kortesis.html
SarantosNikitopoulos
Dikastiki filaki Koridallou ST' PTERIGA
T.K. 18110
ATHENS
GREECE
Letter of anarchist Sarantos Nikitopoulos (who is prosecuted for the case of the revolutionary group Epanastatikos Agonas - Revolutionary Struggle) from Koridallos prison. Wednesday, September 22, 2010 READ : http://revolutionarystrugglecase.blogspot.com/2010/09/anarchists-sarantos-nikitopoulos-who-is_28.htm
Those accused of involvement in the kidnapping of a senior economic official.
on February 17.2010, anarchists Polys Georgiades and Vaggelis Chrysohoides were being handed convictions of 22 years and 3 months imprisonment each. The two received near to the maximum sentences allowed for the kidnapping on June 10, 2008 of Georgios Mylonas – the boss of Alumil SA, one of the larger aluminium system suppliers in Europe, and president of the Northern Greece Industrialists at the time (gaining a questonable fame with declarations such as “workers need to fasten their belts harder”).
more info:http://rioter.info/2010/02/08/daily-update-on-industrialist-kidnapping-trial/
Polykarpos Georgiadis
Klisti Filaki Kerkiras
49100 [ Corfu ]
KERKIRA
GREECE
sentenced to 22 years...
Euaggelos Xrisoxoidis
Dikastiki Filaki Komotinis
T.K.69100
KOMOTINI
GREECE
sentenced to 22 years..
ARIS SEIRINIDIS
Dikastikes Filakes Koridallos A' PTERIGA
T.K. 18110
ATHENS
GREECE.
Statement of Aris Sirinidis clik to read: http://actforfreedomnow.blogspot.com/2010/10/statement-of-aris-sirinidis.html
Baggelis Pallis
Klisti Filaki Trikalon
T.K . 42100
TRIKALA
GREECE
Simos Seisidis is an anarchist arrested on May 3d by cops in Athens. Simos has had a price on his head for a long time, accused of being a member of the so-called “robbers in black” (oi listes me ta maura) who were, allegedly, a group to which imprisoned anarchist Yiannis Dimitrakis also belonged to.
During his arrest on May 4th, 2010 Simos was shot in the leg by cops and injured heavily; he was also beaten badly on the spot. all the news here: http://actforfreedomnow.blogspot.com/search/label/SIMOS%20SEISIDIS?max-results=20
Simos Seisidis
St. Paul Hospital...
Koridallos
ATHENS
GREECE
Alexandros Kossubas
DIKASTIKI FILAKI A' PTERIGA
KORIDALLOS
T.K. 18110
ATHENS
GREECE
Mixalis Traikapis
DIKASTIKI FILAKI A' PTERIGA
KORIDALLOS
T.K. 18110
ATHENS
GREECE
clik to read: Letter from the three accused of the robbery in Evia, central Greece 19/10/10 http://actforfreedomnow.blogspot.com/search/label/Letter%20from%20the%20three%20accused%20of%20the%20robbery%20in%20Evia
On 13/1/2011 comrades Fessas, Tsilianidis, Tzifkas and Dimtsiadis who were wanted since 13/10/2010 for the Skouloudis case are arrested in Athens and accused of forming and participating in a criminal organization. The three are imprisoned in the 1st wing of Koridallos prisons and Tzifkas in Avlona prisons.
Giannis Skouloudis
Filakes Anilikon Avlona
19011
ATTIKI
GREECE
Letter from comrade Giannis Skouloudis clik to read:http://actforfreedomnow.blogspot.com/2011/01/2nd-letter-of-giannis-skouloudis-from.html
Sokratis Tzifkas
Filakes Anilikon Avlona
19011
AVLONA
ATTIKI
GREECE
Xaralampos Tsilianidis
DIKASTIKI FILAKI A' PTERIGA
KORIDALLOS
T.K. 18110
ATHENS
GREECE
Dimitrios Dimitsianis
DIKASTIKI FILAKI A' PTERIGA
KORIDALLOS
T.K.18110
ATHENS
GREECE
Dimitrios Fessas
DIKASTIKI FILAKI A' PTERIGA
KORIDALLOS
T.K. 18110
ATHENS
GREECE
On 4/12/2010 Anarchist squat Nadir is raided in the framework of the methodical repression before the 6th of December. 9 people are arrested inside Nadir and 3 people in the centre of Thessaloniki . They are charged with occupying a building, possession of weapons (some flags that are used at protests etc.), running an illegal radio station as well as forming a criminal organization. Three comrades are still imprisoned, two in Avlona prisons and one in Diavata prisons.
Anastasiadis P.
Filakes Anilikon Avlona
19011 AVLONA
ATTIKI
GREECE
Anastasiadis S.
Filakes Anilikon Avlona
19011 AVLONA
ATTIKI
GREECE
.
Letter of the 2 imprisoned brothers in Avlona prison for the Nadir case in Saloniki Greece clik to read: http://actforfreedomnow.blogspot.com/2010/12/letter-of-2-imprisoned-in-avlona.html
IVAN..G.
Dikastikes Fylakes Diabaton
THESSALONIKI
GREECE
Letter from I.G. on remand for the Nadir Case in Thessaloniki 15th January 2011clik to read: http://actforfreedomnow.blogspot.com/2011/01/letter-from-ig-on-remand-for-nadir-case.html
Xrisobalantis Pouziaritis
Dikastikes Fylakes Diabaton
THESSALONIKI
GREECE
He was walking in the centre of Thessaloniki on the night of December 6th 2009. He was arrested on a charge of gang organization and possession of molotov cocktails. On December 13th, 2010 in Edessa he was on trial with no evidence, 2 cops for witnesses and was sentenced to 9 years and 6 months imprisonment.
A society that punishes/the condition of incarceration/the prison of the mind/the prison as punishment/the rage of the damned will sound on the ruins of prisons/those denying obedience and misery of our era even within its hellholes/will dance together on the ruins of every last prison/with the flame of rebellion avenging whatever creates prisons.
We stand in solidarity and anger until the destruction of every last prison.
FIRE TO ALL PRISONS
ARSON AND WILDFIRE FOR EVERY PRISON
OUR PASSION IS STRONGER THAN THE PRISONS!!
FREEDOM NOW!!
TO ALL ANARCHIST COMRADES IN GREECE !!
SOLIDARITY TO ALL PRISONERS IN GREECE !
Friday, 11 February 2011
Thursday, 23 December 2010
Escape from oblivion, by Yiannis Dimitrakis
I always have in mind this image of myself, every time I passed outside a prison, unconsciously looking up at the high walls with the barbed wire on top. Which prison do I mean? Well, every time I went to visit some friends in the Nikea neighborhood on my motorbike and passed down Grigoriou Lambraki street, Koridallos prison with its stone walls magnetized my gaze. I don't know why this happened. Was it because there were times I was on the streets near the prison, on the occasion of solidarity demos with imprisoned comrades, but never within breathing distance as all the passages to get closer were completely blocked by the police? Or was it perhaps because that huge impotent building that hid with incredible diligence everything that happened in its depths, an unknown world with its own rules and laws, full of peoples' stories, some heroic some of torture, provoked my curiosity?
Now that I think about it, I remember I was once again in front of a prison. I think it was the spring of 2003 when we demonstrated outside the “correctional” institution of Larissa. One more dungeon located in a suburb of that city, next to a school. There, the prisoner has the unfortunate privilege of feeling the psychotic climate of the Thessaly plain on his own skin. In the summer, boiling in his skin with temperatures around 43 º C and in winter searching for some heat under a pile of blankets in order to escape the one-or two-digit Celcius degrees below zero. Pure madness. I obtained this information later from prisoners who were there or who had passed through, and Vagelis Pallis also confirmed it to me in the summer of 2008 when we communicated daily.
The rally was convened in the city's central plaza surrounded by cafes. I had the impression that the local people looked at us puzzled as if they had seen something that was completely foreign and alien to them. We had come up to Larissa because there were rumors that they were constructing a new wing, also of an isolation type, intended to receive the people involved in the case of the revolutionary organization 17 November. This meant that they would be transferred from the special wing in Koridallos where they were already being held, thereby causing many problems for themselves, their families and lawyers, considering the distance from Athens. It's not easy to travel 700km there and back in one day for an hour or a half an hour visit. So, immediate reflexes and the black swarm takes up a position of combat in Larissa square and then a demo up to the prison. Naturally, when the demo started it attracted the attention of the locals and, as expected, as soon as we approached our destination 2 or 3 buses of riot police and lined-up green uniforms containing something resembling humans were waiting for us, forbidding any closer approach to the prison.
Slogans and shouting from us, hands that reached out as far as they could through the bars of their cells, greeting us by waving tops and sheets, whistling loudly. The distance forbiding any recognition of their faces, each had to draw in our mind the fantasy image of a person desperately trying to return what they received: Solidarity or simply the human presence? Who knows ...
The demo left us all with a good feeling. It had been vibrant, intense, with a lot of people and zest. However, what has been deeply carved into my memory from that day was a picture, which I have no idea if any or how many had the fortune to take in. At the time when we were at the final stretch before the prison and we were passing the last houses of the city and the air vibrated with our slogans, which became stronger and stronger so that we could be heard by those inside the walls, my eyes alighted upon a figure on the balcony of a fairly old, two-storey house. Looking more carefully I noticed, astounded, that it was an old man, some 80 years old, who, obviously touched, was waving at the demo with tears in his eyes! I wonder what we reminded him of? What kind of memories did we draw from the depths of his mind, which he compared to what he saw at that moment? It remains unknown and of minor significance. What matters is the fact itself and the resulting flood of sensations, on the one and the other side. It is not a small thing to realize in the present that what you are doing is matched by two nostalgic tears of a person that moisten the traces of his past, who in a curious way is encountering the future, which is however your present. A present that on the one hand you are creating mutually in comradeship with others, and on the other you also experience uniquelly as a unique and different being within a group of people.
Anyway, whatever my reason for being stuck with the image of the prison, finally curiosity “killed” the cat. And what a cat! Armed to the teeth and ready for everything or at least that's what I thought. To tell the truth, as a "promising" youth and anarchist then, at the twilight of 1997 and in subsequent years during which I ran, immersing myself without a second thought, into the cauldron of social fermentations, I was convinced that they would never catch me. Me, the cat! But alas, what an illusion! Although a cool retrospective of my records can verify that, as they say in the street, I lasted for a bit. Not for long, but I managed to withstand walking like an “anastenaris” (fire-walker) over glowing coals for nearly 8 years, until finally my fur got singed. Because I was walking on the coals in the way I had decided to participate in the preparatory works, those necessary, according to my evaluation, to pave the ground for the advent of the future and deeply desired revolution.
So it didn't take long for things to go wrong, and a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and a little also due to my damn luck that left me hanging in one of the most critical moments of my life, fighting alone with three angry cops' bullets with my name writen on them, bullets that seemed destined to accompany me on my journey of no return - but that in the end, like a real cat with seven lives, for reasons unknown I was left on the pier without embarking on the boat of the famous boatman dressed in black - I ended up there where I was before, itching with curiosity to see what was going on. There where, as I already mentioned, I did not expect to go when I was a young and promising anarchist.
Behind the bars ...
A new chapter opened in my life from that moment and it still refuses to close. It is, you see, that I was caught for a very serious offence, according to their penal codes. A bank robbery with 110 thousand euro in loot, mixed artfully with another six cases and a heap of other felonies, which the jackals up at the police headquarters found easy to charge me with - accomplishing their sacred vocation with the perfect sense of professionalism and honesty that has always characterized them - and also search and arrest warrants for three friends and comrades. Marios, Grigoris and Simos: named as my accomplices and codefendants who over time were renamed arch-thieves and a connecting link that would help dismantle the domestic armed guerrilla groups and who knows what else written in various "distinguished" stinking newspapers or said by television reporters of “unquestionable ethics and merit" spouting police propaganda. The result? In October 2009 the newly established parliamentary terrorist organization PASOK put out a 600,000 euros bounty on their heads, making life even more difficult for them, because also before they were fleeing the law and hiding from view of the persecutory bodies, since they had already refused to accept the warrants.
And if things had stopped going wrong there one could perhaps, with difficulty of course, have swallowed this bitter cup. But no, the devil had to break a leg again. This time not for me, but for Simos. And this time he not only broke it but literally lost it. An armed robbery at the hypermarket "Praktiker" on Piraeus street, near Gazi. Screams, gunfire, wounded people, total chaos. The police arrive at the incident site and listen to an eyewitness saying that one of the criminals was tall, and already the butterfly had flapped its wings in Vietnam so the hurricane strikes in the neighbourhood of Keramikos in Athens. Even twice, as apart from the coincidental tracking down, arrest and serious injury of Simos, another friend and comrade, Aris, was caught in the same area and then imprisoned with the most ridiculous and completely prefabricated charges. A late finding by the persecuting authorities inside the inquisitor's office, just moments before he was set free for the misdemeanours he was accused of during his arrest in Keramikos. And as if it was not enough that freedom be stolen from him at the last moment, they also deprived him of his father, a comrade for us, as his heart could not take so much injustice, anger and indignation and he said goodbye to us forever. And if I start to tell you everything that has happened in recent times, from the day that this damn 2010 dawned with all these sad and disturbing developments within the anarchist milieu, I only want to do this for the names of those involved, memories careful not to forget any comrade. Like Lambros, for whom a police bullet with his name on it took away his life in the alleys of Dafni at the moment when he was expropriating a car as part of broader plans related to the class war. Like Haris, Panagiotis, Konstantina, Ilias, Giorgos, Polikarpos, Vagelis, Christos, Alfredo, Pola, Nikos, Vagelis, Kostas, Hristoforos and Sarandos.
Leaving aside for now the sad and tragic evaluation of 2010 and rejoining my writing to the dark days of my past, to the beginnings of an iron-clad life, the "search" on my biological hard drive stops somewhere at the end of January 2006.
I still remember that sunny morning when the cops at the General Hospital of Athens notified me that I had to prepare for transfer to the prison hospital "Agios Pavlos". I have a vivid recollection of the moment because it marked the end of a snow blizzard that had struck the whole of Greece, bringing chaos and mayhem over urban areas, paralyzing almost everything, removing, if only for a few days, the organized structure of large cities, cancelling all forms of transportation and plans, as well as everyday workings throughout the public and private sector.
It was that snow blizzard, or at least a strong stroke of bad weather according to the weather broadcasts, that we were expecting to assist us in achieving our unholy objectives. To rob the National Bank at the intersection of Solonos and Ipokratus streets. A central point in the heart of Athens and our optimistic anticipations about a big booty, but of course accompanied by a disproportionate, almost prohibitive, risk. Not that we would postpone the day of the hit in the case that the weather was not in our favour. We were not those kind of kids. The day had been decided. Monday 16 January. A pretty bad day for attempting to carry out such an action, as in the beginning of the week all are poised and ready to fulfill their duties, especially cops. Yet there was something that kept frantically driving us to the brink.
Finally, the weather played a bad trick on us and that Monday morning, the sun, triumphant and proud of its victory in the full heart of winter, rose high above and, unhindered, was blasting its hot rays on the citizens of Attika. The result? On the one hand everyone was out and about doing errands or having a stroll, a fact that functioned positively for us the unholies, since the centre looked like a viscous human river in which you could move only with difficulty, on the other hand I, along with the others in the car, butt jersey, winter jacket and military means of expropriation, flushed and sweating, were cursing our bad luck while watching all those foot patrols in the centre of Athens parading with a smile in the sunshine.
Pensive and nervous having seen the first bad signs, we arrived at the meeting point from which we had to get moving toward our final destination. There we found the others. A strange feeling was cerainly surrounding as all. We were a small circle of conspirators, far removed from everything going on around us, strangers to the general climate of joy that was emerging in the atmosphere from all those that had come to the centre of the city to enjoy the sunny day. Our own universe was at this time and in the moments that would follow, light years away in relation to the one all the others belonged to. Our universe would be colliding with theirs, and actually violently, making our presence tangible within a few minutes, when we would be upsetting the parallel and rarely intersecting courses of our different lives. A momentary invasion of one word into another that would create an uncontrollable chain of events. A further slap in the face of normality, one more slap in the face of the horizontal and rectilinearly coordinated sequence of things. Something like a pileup on the motorway, when the act of a fast or careless driver also carries with it the fate of other passengers, disrupting and blocking the normal flow of traffic according to the size of the pileup.
Those who were already waiting for us at the meeting point had some bad news. As they were coming to meet us they passed a police blockade that was so near the place of the attack that it posed a serious threat to the whole operation, made it almost impossible. Immediate reactions of the sort "who gives a shit, we go and whatever" or "fuck it, lets defer and see some other time" were balanced out by some going to check if the blockade was still there, and then act accordingly. Finally the cops had gone, but "are gone" is so relative in the centre of Athens and even more at the point where the bank was as is a supermarket frozen pizza compared to one made at a good pizzeria. Thus, since, as I said, something was pushing us over the edge, we decided to go through with it as the cops had “gone”. What followed that of course has to do exactly with Murphy's Law, which says that if you drop a piece of toast with jam on it, 9 times out of 10 it will fall to the floor jam side down. The fact that everything went pear-shaped definitely belongs to this story with the jam, those damned factors of uncerainty that can overturn everything and above all the unpredictable nature of human character and behaviour. A whirlwind of faces and things which after stopping its manic spinning washes ashore an urban area, a stupid bank guard injured by his equally incredibly stupid willingness to stop the flight of the robbers in a totally wrong and distorted perception of the limits of his duty, in addition to a car that never started, a bag with arms and money, three people who frantically dissolve in the neutral crowd and yours truly left injured in the hands of his pursuers.
The same indifferent to what happens a thousand million miles from him sun, that warmed that wintry day in January, was the one that made a presence in the hospital that morning, creating these parallel memory projections.
I expected it to happen at some point. I knew they had put pressure to get me out of the intensive care unit sooner and I had learned that they were in a rush to take me to the prison hospital. To get rid of me. I still had the stitches, bits of metal in the form of a Greek P, similar to those with which they nail the upholstery onto the skeleton of a sofa, from the chest to the pubic area and in general a few little fixes, but no matter how strongly I protested that I should still not be moved from the hospital, the pigs had their orders from their superior. And since the superior had said it, what could I do? With great effort and pain I started to gather my things, crippled and incapable of even straightening my own body. Just some minor details as far as the superior was concerned. Obviously this was also included in the price I had already started to pay for my choices.
However, the finishing touches of my abrupt dismissal from the hospital were still to come. Before two dozen police radios, weapons, boots and another so many problematic brains were able to coordinate the operation "safe departure", just then my mother makes her appearance arriving early for the standard visit to her beloved son.
My mother ... Mrs Eleni, who is seperated by only 17 years from her son, and so in the 90's, whenever we opened the door together to some bookseller, they always asked us "where is your mother?" Mrs Eleni, who upon hearing the news that I was involved in a bank robbery that ended with me seriously injured, was a breath away from having a nervous breakdown. Although not completely so, as ultimately the cops at the Police Headquarters failed to obtain any statement from her, as she started screaming out of control: "I want to see myyyy chiiiild.....” The cops lost it by the reaction of my mother and, well, what could they do? She was a mother worried about her son. Give her a beating? Throw her in the detention room so they don't have to listen to her? It would have been like that or worse if we went back 60 or 35 years into the past, either to the dark days of the civil war in 1946 or to the later seven-year period of the audacious cowarldly scum of the Junta. However it was 2006 and we were already traversing 30 years of pseudodemocratic parliamentary oligarchy, where the fascistic and harsh authoritarian behaviour was hidden behind other, more flexible and perhaps more effective forms of violence . In any case, the screams of my mother brought her in no time to the hospital where I was being held and the statement was given at a later time. As if those bright brains would have forgotten all about it!
So, this mixture of a woman with strong doses of maternal instinct who as a genuine female turned into a mother lioness, into a wild beast, when she felt that one of her children was in danger and under threat - especially when compared with her usual everyday stance in regards to institutions, powers and voluntary rules - appeared unprepared that morning for what was happening at the moment, but in combative mode as every true mother and ready to oppose anything that would endanger my physical and psychological integrity.
As one can easily imagine, my abduction-transfer to the prison hospital for a few moments remained in the air, until the "responsible power", meaning my mother, returned with the doctors who took care of me and who, as she said, were the only ones suitable to decide whether to discharge me. And so it was. A crowd of white shirts, clearly disturbed and surprised, with my mother in the front row, appeared from a distance heading towards the stretcher that was already in course for departure.
- Who ordered the transfer of the patient? , one of the doctors' asked the cops.
- We have orders from above sir, it's not our decision.
- Maybe I can talk to your superior?
- One moment, I have to confirm ...
And while those in authority and those responsible were involved in a verbal duel, my stretcher was brought back to the room in order to – as the outcome of the battle between the cops and doctors finally turned out - give me a last look. The last stitches were removed, medications were prescribed and confirmations were given that the most difficult part and the most important care for my injuries was over, and that the only thing left was for my strength to return through rest and abundant food. That certainly was a half truth, or rather a lie well-wrapped up in its package of powerlessness. The fight between the doctors, my mom and the cops reached my ears, with those first insisting that I'm still not fit to be discharged and those last monotonously repeating that they were simply following orders.Obviously, as was expected, the following of orders prevailed.
But this was not the first time the scale tilted in favor of the cops and their fucking orders. Hadn't the same situation already taken place on the issue of guarding me inside the Intensive Care Unit? Then, the medical team for two days managed to resist pressure from security forces who wanted to invade my room, with their key argument being that something like that would be dangerous not only for my health but also for other patients'. However, it would be naive to believe that fundamental human values would be able to prevail over the new dogma of "repression and security."
Hadn't the same thing happened when the head of the ICU came to announce to me, crestfallen, that he was unable to keep me any longer under his own supervision, even though the state of my health required it, as he was under extreme pressure by the prosecuting authorities, who wanted him to sign my discharge from the 24 hour Monitoring Unit and the continuation of my hospitalization in the Eye Department! Why there and not in the surgical depatment? But of course for security reasons. The cops demanded the evacuation of an entire chamber in the surgical department from all other patients so that they can guard me better, as they believed it should be, something that was impossible for the hospital. So, I was taken to a room in the eye department, which was already prepared, because, as I was informed, it had "hosted" Dimitris Koufodinas during the hunger strike carried out demanding the removal of the mesh placed above the yard in which he and others of the 17th November armed group were imprisoned. Prepared ... Yes it was prepared. That is, there was nothing inside, or better yet they had removed or fixed everything, according to them always, that could be used by the inmate in a possible suicide attempt or an attack on the guards, and of course the balcony door had bars. Square logic of stupidity at its height.
Was it not the dogma of security and intimidation which, in the twinkling of an eye wiped out every trace of human dignity and integrity in this room? Was it not pure sadism and revenge that drove these subhumans to monitor my mother when she was cleaning my shit as I lay still bed-ridden, without even diverting their eyes for a moment? Was it not their boorish behavior during all those days I was in their suffocating "embrace" which resulted in the interrogator and prosecutor who came for my statement finding me dozing, sleepless and exhausted? Or was there I wonder even a trace of humanity in the chief torturer I. Diotis, when he payed me a visit in a hurry to take my statement while I was still intubated, obviously unable to whisper even a whole sentence, thus not only ignoring but also posing a threat to my tragic health condition?
These are of course rhetorical questions and there are not posed as another cry of protest against the trampling of democratic rights or something like that, but as a record of the terms in which the conflict between two countervailing forces, between two completely different worlds, is carried out. On one side we have those who dream of a society totally subjugated and enslaved at the service of the oligarchic appetites of insatiable idlers and on the other side those who fight for true equality, justice and freedom, which create a new reality away from terms such as gain, competitiveness, exploitation and hierarchy.
While the wheels of the stretcher passed quickly over the small irregularities in the hospitable floor, with each one being translated as a sharp pain on my operated back, the savage pack escorting me amidst shouting and consecutive contradicting orders led me, to its great relief, towards my final exit from the General Hospital of Athens. The first rays of warm light that I encountered on the patio, there where the ambulance and escort cars for my safe transfer to the prison hospital "Agios Pavlos" were awaiting, were something really liberating, something that seemed to atone for these three weeks of my coexistence with Cerberus in uniform. Those few seconds that passed until they placed me inside the ambulance was for me the last chance to breathe fresh air and watch the sun without the interference of fences and barbed wire. With the sun as my comrade I bed my final farewell to freedom and entered the deepest winter of my life.
To be continued...
Yiannis Dimitrakis
Domokos Prisons
10/9/2010
Now that I think about it, I remember I was once again in front of a prison. I think it was the spring of 2003 when we demonstrated outside the “correctional” institution of Larissa. One more dungeon located in a suburb of that city, next to a school. There, the prisoner has the unfortunate privilege of feeling the psychotic climate of the Thessaly plain on his own skin. In the summer, boiling in his skin with temperatures around 43 º C and in winter searching for some heat under a pile of blankets in order to escape the one-or two-digit Celcius degrees below zero. Pure madness. I obtained this information later from prisoners who were there or who had passed through, and Vagelis Pallis also confirmed it to me in the summer of 2008 when we communicated daily.
The rally was convened in the city's central plaza surrounded by cafes. I had the impression that the local people looked at us puzzled as if they had seen something that was completely foreign and alien to them. We had come up to Larissa because there were rumors that they were constructing a new wing, also of an isolation type, intended to receive the people involved in the case of the revolutionary organization 17 November. This meant that they would be transferred from the special wing in Koridallos where they were already being held, thereby causing many problems for themselves, their families and lawyers, considering the distance from Athens. It's not easy to travel 700km there and back in one day for an hour or a half an hour visit. So, immediate reflexes and the black swarm takes up a position of combat in Larissa square and then a demo up to the prison. Naturally, when the demo started it attracted the attention of the locals and, as expected, as soon as we approached our destination 2 or 3 buses of riot police and lined-up green uniforms containing something resembling humans were waiting for us, forbidding any closer approach to the prison.
Slogans and shouting from us, hands that reached out as far as they could through the bars of their cells, greeting us by waving tops and sheets, whistling loudly. The distance forbiding any recognition of their faces, each had to draw in our mind the fantasy image of a person desperately trying to return what they received: Solidarity or simply the human presence? Who knows ...
The demo left us all with a good feeling. It had been vibrant, intense, with a lot of people and zest. However, what has been deeply carved into my memory from that day was a picture, which I have no idea if any or how many had the fortune to take in. At the time when we were at the final stretch before the prison and we were passing the last houses of the city and the air vibrated with our slogans, which became stronger and stronger so that we could be heard by those inside the walls, my eyes alighted upon a figure on the balcony of a fairly old, two-storey house. Looking more carefully I noticed, astounded, that it was an old man, some 80 years old, who, obviously touched, was waving at the demo with tears in his eyes! I wonder what we reminded him of? What kind of memories did we draw from the depths of his mind, which he compared to what he saw at that moment? It remains unknown and of minor significance. What matters is the fact itself and the resulting flood of sensations, on the one and the other side. It is not a small thing to realize in the present that what you are doing is matched by two nostalgic tears of a person that moisten the traces of his past, who in a curious way is encountering the future, which is however your present. A present that on the one hand you are creating mutually in comradeship with others, and on the other you also experience uniquelly as a unique and different being within a group of people.
Anyway, whatever my reason for being stuck with the image of the prison, finally curiosity “killed” the cat. And what a cat! Armed to the teeth and ready for everything or at least that's what I thought. To tell the truth, as a "promising" youth and anarchist then, at the twilight of 1997 and in subsequent years during which I ran, immersing myself without a second thought, into the cauldron of social fermentations, I was convinced that they would never catch me. Me, the cat! But alas, what an illusion! Although a cool retrospective of my records can verify that, as they say in the street, I lasted for a bit. Not for long, but I managed to withstand walking like an “anastenaris” (fire-walker) over glowing coals for nearly 8 years, until finally my fur got singed. Because I was walking on the coals in the way I had decided to participate in the preparatory works, those necessary, according to my evaluation, to pave the ground for the advent of the future and deeply desired revolution.
So it didn't take long for things to go wrong, and a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and a little also due to my damn luck that left me hanging in one of the most critical moments of my life, fighting alone with three angry cops' bullets with my name writen on them, bullets that seemed destined to accompany me on my journey of no return - but that in the end, like a real cat with seven lives, for reasons unknown I was left on the pier without embarking on the boat of the famous boatman dressed in black - I ended up there where I was before, itching with curiosity to see what was going on. There where, as I already mentioned, I did not expect to go when I was a young and promising anarchist.
Behind the bars ...
A new chapter opened in my life from that moment and it still refuses to close. It is, you see, that I was caught for a very serious offence, according to their penal codes. A bank robbery with 110 thousand euro in loot, mixed artfully with another six cases and a heap of other felonies, which the jackals up at the police headquarters found easy to charge me with - accomplishing their sacred vocation with the perfect sense of professionalism and honesty that has always characterized them - and also search and arrest warrants for three friends and comrades. Marios, Grigoris and Simos: named as my accomplices and codefendants who over time were renamed arch-thieves and a connecting link that would help dismantle the domestic armed guerrilla groups and who knows what else written in various "distinguished" stinking newspapers or said by television reporters of “unquestionable ethics and merit" spouting police propaganda. The result? In October 2009 the newly established parliamentary terrorist organization PASOK put out a 600,000 euros bounty on their heads, making life even more difficult for them, because also before they were fleeing the law and hiding from view of the persecutory bodies, since they had already refused to accept the warrants.
And if things had stopped going wrong there one could perhaps, with difficulty of course, have swallowed this bitter cup. But no, the devil had to break a leg again. This time not for me, but for Simos. And this time he not only broke it but literally lost it. An armed robbery at the hypermarket "Praktiker" on Piraeus street, near Gazi. Screams, gunfire, wounded people, total chaos. The police arrive at the incident site and listen to an eyewitness saying that one of the criminals was tall, and already the butterfly had flapped its wings in Vietnam so the hurricane strikes in the neighbourhood of Keramikos in Athens. Even twice, as apart from the coincidental tracking down, arrest and serious injury of Simos, another friend and comrade, Aris, was caught in the same area and then imprisoned with the most ridiculous and completely prefabricated charges. A late finding by the persecuting authorities inside the inquisitor's office, just moments before he was set free for the misdemeanours he was accused of during his arrest in Keramikos. And as if it was not enough that freedom be stolen from him at the last moment, they also deprived him of his father, a comrade for us, as his heart could not take so much injustice, anger and indignation and he said goodbye to us forever. And if I start to tell you everything that has happened in recent times, from the day that this damn 2010 dawned with all these sad and disturbing developments within the anarchist milieu, I only want to do this for the names of those involved, memories careful not to forget any comrade. Like Lambros, for whom a police bullet with his name on it took away his life in the alleys of Dafni at the moment when he was expropriating a car as part of broader plans related to the class war. Like Haris, Panagiotis, Konstantina, Ilias, Giorgos, Polikarpos, Vagelis, Christos, Alfredo, Pola, Nikos, Vagelis, Kostas, Hristoforos and Sarandos.
Leaving aside for now the sad and tragic evaluation of 2010 and rejoining my writing to the dark days of my past, to the beginnings of an iron-clad life, the "search" on my biological hard drive stops somewhere at the end of January 2006.
I still remember that sunny morning when the cops at the General Hospital of Athens notified me that I had to prepare for transfer to the prison hospital "Agios Pavlos". I have a vivid recollection of the moment because it marked the end of a snow blizzard that had struck the whole of Greece, bringing chaos and mayhem over urban areas, paralyzing almost everything, removing, if only for a few days, the organized structure of large cities, cancelling all forms of transportation and plans, as well as everyday workings throughout the public and private sector.
It was that snow blizzard, or at least a strong stroke of bad weather according to the weather broadcasts, that we were expecting to assist us in achieving our unholy objectives. To rob the National Bank at the intersection of Solonos and Ipokratus streets. A central point in the heart of Athens and our optimistic anticipations about a big booty, but of course accompanied by a disproportionate, almost prohibitive, risk. Not that we would postpone the day of the hit in the case that the weather was not in our favour. We were not those kind of kids. The day had been decided. Monday 16 January. A pretty bad day for attempting to carry out such an action, as in the beginning of the week all are poised and ready to fulfill their duties, especially cops. Yet there was something that kept frantically driving us to the brink.
Finally, the weather played a bad trick on us and that Monday morning, the sun, triumphant and proud of its victory in the full heart of winter, rose high above and, unhindered, was blasting its hot rays on the citizens of Attika. The result? On the one hand everyone was out and about doing errands or having a stroll, a fact that functioned positively for us the unholies, since the centre looked like a viscous human river in which you could move only with difficulty, on the other hand I, along with the others in the car, butt jersey, winter jacket and military means of expropriation, flushed and sweating, were cursing our bad luck while watching all those foot patrols in the centre of Athens parading with a smile in the sunshine.
Pensive and nervous having seen the first bad signs, we arrived at the meeting point from which we had to get moving toward our final destination. There we found the others. A strange feeling was cerainly surrounding as all. We were a small circle of conspirators, far removed from everything going on around us, strangers to the general climate of joy that was emerging in the atmosphere from all those that had come to the centre of the city to enjoy the sunny day. Our own universe was at this time and in the moments that would follow, light years away in relation to the one all the others belonged to. Our universe would be colliding with theirs, and actually violently, making our presence tangible within a few minutes, when we would be upsetting the parallel and rarely intersecting courses of our different lives. A momentary invasion of one word into another that would create an uncontrollable chain of events. A further slap in the face of normality, one more slap in the face of the horizontal and rectilinearly coordinated sequence of things. Something like a pileup on the motorway, when the act of a fast or careless driver also carries with it the fate of other passengers, disrupting and blocking the normal flow of traffic according to the size of the pileup.
Those who were already waiting for us at the meeting point had some bad news. As they were coming to meet us they passed a police blockade that was so near the place of the attack that it posed a serious threat to the whole operation, made it almost impossible. Immediate reactions of the sort "who gives a shit, we go and whatever" or "fuck it, lets defer and see some other time" were balanced out by some going to check if the blockade was still there, and then act accordingly. Finally the cops had gone, but "are gone" is so relative in the centre of Athens and even more at the point where the bank was as is a supermarket frozen pizza compared to one made at a good pizzeria. Thus, since, as I said, something was pushing us over the edge, we decided to go through with it as the cops had “gone”. What followed that of course has to do exactly with Murphy's Law, which says that if you drop a piece of toast with jam on it, 9 times out of 10 it will fall to the floor jam side down. The fact that everything went pear-shaped definitely belongs to this story with the jam, those damned factors of uncerainty that can overturn everything and above all the unpredictable nature of human character and behaviour. A whirlwind of faces and things which after stopping its manic spinning washes ashore an urban area, a stupid bank guard injured by his equally incredibly stupid willingness to stop the flight of the robbers in a totally wrong and distorted perception of the limits of his duty, in addition to a car that never started, a bag with arms and money, three people who frantically dissolve in the neutral crowd and yours truly left injured in the hands of his pursuers.
The same indifferent to what happens a thousand million miles from him sun, that warmed that wintry day in January, was the one that made a presence in the hospital that morning, creating these parallel memory projections.
I expected it to happen at some point. I knew they had put pressure to get me out of the intensive care unit sooner and I had learned that they were in a rush to take me to the prison hospital. To get rid of me. I still had the stitches, bits of metal in the form of a Greek P, similar to those with which they nail the upholstery onto the skeleton of a sofa, from the chest to the pubic area and in general a few little fixes, but no matter how strongly I protested that I should still not be moved from the hospital, the pigs had their orders from their superior. And since the superior had said it, what could I do? With great effort and pain I started to gather my things, crippled and incapable of even straightening my own body. Just some minor details as far as the superior was concerned. Obviously this was also included in the price I had already started to pay for my choices.
However, the finishing touches of my abrupt dismissal from the hospital were still to come. Before two dozen police radios, weapons, boots and another so many problematic brains were able to coordinate the operation "safe departure", just then my mother makes her appearance arriving early for the standard visit to her beloved son.
My mother ... Mrs Eleni, who is seperated by only 17 years from her son, and so in the 90's, whenever we opened the door together to some bookseller, they always asked us "where is your mother?" Mrs Eleni, who upon hearing the news that I was involved in a bank robbery that ended with me seriously injured, was a breath away from having a nervous breakdown. Although not completely so, as ultimately the cops at the Police Headquarters failed to obtain any statement from her, as she started screaming out of control: "I want to see myyyy chiiiild.....” The cops lost it by the reaction of my mother and, well, what could they do? She was a mother worried about her son. Give her a beating? Throw her in the detention room so they don't have to listen to her? It would have been like that or worse if we went back 60 or 35 years into the past, either to the dark days of the civil war in 1946 or to the later seven-year period of the audacious cowarldly scum of the Junta. However it was 2006 and we were already traversing 30 years of pseudodemocratic parliamentary oligarchy, where the fascistic and harsh authoritarian behaviour was hidden behind other, more flexible and perhaps more effective forms of violence . In any case, the screams of my mother brought her in no time to the hospital where I was being held and the statement was given at a later time. As if those bright brains would have forgotten all about it!
So, this mixture of a woman with strong doses of maternal instinct who as a genuine female turned into a mother lioness, into a wild beast, when she felt that one of her children was in danger and under threat - especially when compared with her usual everyday stance in regards to institutions, powers and voluntary rules - appeared unprepared that morning for what was happening at the moment, but in combative mode as every true mother and ready to oppose anything that would endanger my physical and psychological integrity.
As one can easily imagine, my abduction-transfer to the prison hospital for a few moments remained in the air, until the "responsible power", meaning my mother, returned with the doctors who took care of me and who, as she said, were the only ones suitable to decide whether to discharge me. And so it was. A crowd of white shirts, clearly disturbed and surprised, with my mother in the front row, appeared from a distance heading towards the stretcher that was already in course for departure.
- Who ordered the transfer of the patient? , one of the doctors' asked the cops.
- We have orders from above sir, it's not our decision.
- Maybe I can talk to your superior?
- One moment, I have to confirm ...
And while those in authority and those responsible were involved in a verbal duel, my stretcher was brought back to the room in order to – as the outcome of the battle between the cops and doctors finally turned out - give me a last look. The last stitches were removed, medications were prescribed and confirmations were given that the most difficult part and the most important care for my injuries was over, and that the only thing left was for my strength to return through rest and abundant food. That certainly was a half truth, or rather a lie well-wrapped up in its package of powerlessness. The fight between the doctors, my mom and the cops reached my ears, with those first insisting that I'm still not fit to be discharged and those last monotonously repeating that they were simply following orders.Obviously, as was expected, the following of orders prevailed.
But this was not the first time the scale tilted in favor of the cops and their fucking orders. Hadn't the same situation already taken place on the issue of guarding me inside the Intensive Care Unit? Then, the medical team for two days managed to resist pressure from security forces who wanted to invade my room, with their key argument being that something like that would be dangerous not only for my health but also for other patients'. However, it would be naive to believe that fundamental human values would be able to prevail over the new dogma of "repression and security."
Hadn't the same thing happened when the head of the ICU came to announce to me, crestfallen, that he was unable to keep me any longer under his own supervision, even though the state of my health required it, as he was under extreme pressure by the prosecuting authorities, who wanted him to sign my discharge from the 24 hour Monitoring Unit and the continuation of my hospitalization in the Eye Department! Why there and not in the surgical depatment? But of course for security reasons. The cops demanded the evacuation of an entire chamber in the surgical department from all other patients so that they can guard me better, as they believed it should be, something that was impossible for the hospital. So, I was taken to a room in the eye department, which was already prepared, because, as I was informed, it had "hosted" Dimitris Koufodinas during the hunger strike carried out demanding the removal of the mesh placed above the yard in which he and others of the 17th November armed group were imprisoned. Prepared ... Yes it was prepared. That is, there was nothing inside, or better yet they had removed or fixed everything, according to them always, that could be used by the inmate in a possible suicide attempt or an attack on the guards, and of course the balcony door had bars. Square logic of stupidity at its height.
Was it not the dogma of security and intimidation which, in the twinkling of an eye wiped out every trace of human dignity and integrity in this room? Was it not pure sadism and revenge that drove these subhumans to monitor my mother when she was cleaning my shit as I lay still bed-ridden, without even diverting their eyes for a moment? Was it not their boorish behavior during all those days I was in their suffocating "embrace" which resulted in the interrogator and prosecutor who came for my statement finding me dozing, sleepless and exhausted? Or was there I wonder even a trace of humanity in the chief torturer I. Diotis, when he payed me a visit in a hurry to take my statement while I was still intubated, obviously unable to whisper even a whole sentence, thus not only ignoring but also posing a threat to my tragic health condition?
These are of course rhetorical questions and there are not posed as another cry of protest against the trampling of democratic rights or something like that, but as a record of the terms in which the conflict between two countervailing forces, between two completely different worlds, is carried out. On one side we have those who dream of a society totally subjugated and enslaved at the service of the oligarchic appetites of insatiable idlers and on the other side those who fight for true equality, justice and freedom, which create a new reality away from terms such as gain, competitiveness, exploitation and hierarchy.
While the wheels of the stretcher passed quickly over the small irregularities in the hospitable floor, with each one being translated as a sharp pain on my operated back, the savage pack escorting me amidst shouting and consecutive contradicting orders led me, to its great relief, towards my final exit from the General Hospital of Athens. The first rays of warm light that I encountered on the patio, there where the ambulance and escort cars for my safe transfer to the prison hospital "Agios Pavlos" were awaiting, were something really liberating, something that seemed to atone for these three weeks of my coexistence with Cerberus in uniform. Those few seconds that passed until they placed me inside the ambulance was for me the last chance to breathe fresh air and watch the sun without the interference of fences and barbed wire. With the sun as my comrade I bed my final farewell to freedom and entered the deepest winter of my life.
To be continued...
Yiannis Dimitrakis
Domokos Prisons
10/9/2010
Wednesday, 22 December 2010
LETTER FROM THE SPECIAL BASEMENT OF THE 6TH WING OF KORIDALLOS PRISONS ( ATHENS GREECE)
boubourAs translation for actforfreedomno
22 December 2010
Since the 29th of November, we the three political prisoners of the underground special wing 6 of Koridallos, defendants for the case of Revolutionary Struggle, participated in the mobilizations of the prisoners of all prisons who either with prison food abstention, or with hunger strikes are fighting for the improvement of certain provisions of the C.C. (Correctional Code) regarding the leave days, the probations and disciplinary matters, decent treatment and improvement of the conditions of detention, the abolition of certain draconian penal provisions, special detainment conditions, reduction of the life sentence as well as the release of disabled prisoners and cancer patients.
In the frames of these demands it is also claimed that the special antiterrorist legislations that occasionally have been voted are abolished, with the most recent that passed in August which the “progressive” Kastanidis passed secretly and where it's allowed for anonymous witnesses to testify in trials of cases of armed revolutionary organizations and “organized crime” as well as the penalization of violent action of demonstrators in mass mobilizations as “terrorist actions”.
The situation in which they passed these two provisions is not accidental since the present minister of “Justice” Kastanidis participates in a government of traitors of the Greek people that executes the commands of the lenders of the international economic elite.
It is natural that along with the application of the Memorandum, there is State repression for the defense of the regime since they await social explosions that can put at risk its very existence.
Also among the demands of the prisoners is the abolishment of the special regime of detention of political prisoners whether it's the special wing in the F.P.K. (female prisons of Koridallos) where those sentenced for the 17N (17November organization) are detained, or the basement of the 6th wing.
The 6th wing is an isolated small wing and the basement in which we are kept has 8 cells of 2 people.
The 6th was a building - warehouse which was transformed into a detainment space in 2002 when the 17N arrests happened.
For many months, the arrested of the 17N experienced a regime of isolation where they were locked in the cells 23 hours a day, without free access to information and correspondence, while to the courtyard - grave 20 x 10 meters that sees only to the sky through a barbwire, they came out 1 hour 2 people at a time escorted by a prison guard.
Even though this special regime was abolished, the basement of the 6th continues to function despite all the insufficiencies of the building infrastructure in air, lighting and the great lack of space since outside the cells there is only a narrow corridor 10 x 2,5 m for the prisoners to walk.
As anyone can realize we have the same space that the domestic animals have in a cage or in a pen.
To the basement of the 6th, the prison authorities sends either prisoners like us political, with the decision of the Ministry, or prisoners that are branded dangerous (e.g. could escape) and are sent here for isolation, or prisoners who have problems with other prisoners from other wings.
Despite all this, recently, the prison authorities have crammed 20 detainees into the basement of the 6th, putting a third person in the cells of two, who slept on the floor, while the maximum capacity is 16 individuals in such a narrow space.
On Friday the 10th of December in the afternoon, some of us protested this situation to the sergeant on shift who although justified us regarding that this situation offends human dignity, declared to us he cannot do anything because there is no other space to put the extra prisoners.
After few hours and just before the prison closed, we were informed that the minister of “Justice” of the troika, Kastanidis, was visiting the prisons of Koridallos to “discuss” with a “delegation” of detainees the demands which have been placed with the mobilizations that are taking place all over Greece in all prisons.
Then we decided the 19 prisoners of the basement, in common defiance, to refuse to enter the cells at 8.00pm in the evening as is the regulation of the prison and demanded that the minister himself to come and visit the basement of the 6th and see the situation for himself.
Since we realize that the minister came to Koridallos in order to make another political “communication funfair” meeting with a non-existent “elected self-organized committee of struggle”, we refused as it was proposed to us by the prison authorities that 2 individuals go as representatives of the basement of the 6th and we insisted that he should come down to the basement and that we would not enter the cells if he did not come. We had no intention of “discussing” with someone that, because of his political identity, the fake promises and the “I will” of his profession, e.g. he had promised when he was in the opposition to abolish the “hoodlaw” (law which says that if you cause damage while wearing a hood or mask, it's a terrorist action) while now as minister of the troika of the International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank. and the E.U. applies even more draconian laws.
Naturally our demand that the minister comes to the basement of the 6th was not accepted either because the “honorable” minister denied, or because the sergeant denied to transmit our demand.
We then decided that we are not going to enter the cells all night if the basement of the 6th is not relieved of the overcrowding, which means the transport of the extra prisoners, something that finally happened at 11.30 at night.
Nothing of course guarantees that we will not have similar situations in the future.
The obvious that we demand is dignity and this consists of the abolishment of the Basement of the 6th wing, the abolishment of the special division where they keep the sentenced of the 17N, the abolishment of every special regime of detainment for any category of prisoners, while we support all the demands of our fellow prisoners that are participating in the mobilizations.
The most and real criminals are not behind the prison walls. The real robbers and murderers, those that rob the Greek people, that plunder the wages and the pensions, those that deprive care and health, are in the “Megaro Maximou” (Maximou mansion, the Greek equivalent of the White House, in the ministerial offices, in the seats of parliament, in the bourgeois districts, in the villas and in the luxurious offices of the bankers, the businessmen and the shipowners.
K. Gournas, S. Nikitopoulos, N. Maziotis
22 December 2010
Since the 29th of November, we the three political prisoners of the underground special wing 6 of Koridallos, defendants for the case of Revolutionary Struggle, participated in the mobilizations of the prisoners of all prisons who either with prison food abstention, or with hunger strikes are fighting for the improvement of certain provisions of the C.C. (Correctional Code) regarding the leave days, the probations and disciplinary matters, decent treatment and improvement of the conditions of detention, the abolition of certain draconian penal provisions, special detainment conditions, reduction of the life sentence as well as the release of disabled prisoners and cancer patients.
In the frames of these demands it is also claimed that the special antiterrorist legislations that occasionally have been voted are abolished, with the most recent that passed in August which the “progressive” Kastanidis passed secretly and where it's allowed for anonymous witnesses to testify in trials of cases of armed revolutionary organizations and “organized crime” as well as the penalization of violent action of demonstrators in mass mobilizations as “terrorist actions”.
The situation in which they passed these two provisions is not accidental since the present minister of “Justice” Kastanidis participates in a government of traitors of the Greek people that executes the commands of the lenders of the international economic elite.
It is natural that along with the application of the Memorandum, there is State repression for the defense of the regime since they await social explosions that can put at risk its very existence.
Also among the demands of the prisoners is the abolishment of the special regime of detention of political prisoners whether it's the special wing in the F.P.K. (female prisons of Koridallos) where those sentenced for the 17N (17November organization) are detained, or the basement of the 6th wing.
The 6th wing is an isolated small wing and the basement in which we are kept has 8 cells of 2 people.
The 6th was a building - warehouse which was transformed into a detainment space in 2002 when the 17N arrests happened.
For many months, the arrested of the 17N experienced a regime of isolation where they were locked in the cells 23 hours a day, without free access to information and correspondence, while to the courtyard - grave 20 x 10 meters that sees only to the sky through a barbwire, they came out 1 hour 2 people at a time escorted by a prison guard.
Even though this special regime was abolished, the basement of the 6th continues to function despite all the insufficiencies of the building infrastructure in air, lighting and the great lack of space since outside the cells there is only a narrow corridor 10 x 2,5 m for the prisoners to walk.
As anyone can realize we have the same space that the domestic animals have in a cage or in a pen.
To the basement of the 6th, the prison authorities sends either prisoners like us political, with the decision of the Ministry, or prisoners that are branded dangerous (e.g. could escape) and are sent here for isolation, or prisoners who have problems with other prisoners from other wings.
Despite all this, recently, the prison authorities have crammed 20 detainees into the basement of the 6th, putting a third person in the cells of two, who slept on the floor, while the maximum capacity is 16 individuals in such a narrow space.
On Friday the 10th of December in the afternoon, some of us protested this situation to the sergeant on shift who although justified us regarding that this situation offends human dignity, declared to us he cannot do anything because there is no other space to put the extra prisoners.
After few hours and just before the prison closed, we were informed that the minister of “Justice” of the troika, Kastanidis, was visiting the prisons of Koridallos to “discuss” with a “delegation” of detainees the demands which have been placed with the mobilizations that are taking place all over Greece in all prisons.
Then we decided the 19 prisoners of the basement, in common defiance, to refuse to enter the cells at 8.00pm in the evening as is the regulation of the prison and demanded that the minister himself to come and visit the basement of the 6th and see the situation for himself.
Since we realize that the minister came to Koridallos in order to make another political “communication funfair” meeting with a non-existent “elected self-organized committee of struggle”, we refused as it was proposed to us by the prison authorities that 2 individuals go as representatives of the basement of the 6th and we insisted that he should come down to the basement and that we would not enter the cells if he did not come. We had no intention of “discussing” with someone that, because of his political identity, the fake promises and the “I will” of his profession, e.g. he had promised when he was in the opposition to abolish the “hoodlaw” (law which says that if you cause damage while wearing a hood or mask, it's a terrorist action) while now as minister of the troika of the International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank. and the E.U. applies even more draconian laws.
Naturally our demand that the minister comes to the basement of the 6th was not accepted either because the “honorable” minister denied, or because the sergeant denied to transmit our demand.
We then decided that we are not going to enter the cells all night if the basement of the 6th is not relieved of the overcrowding, which means the transport of the extra prisoners, something that finally happened at 11.30 at night.
Nothing of course guarantees that we will not have similar situations in the future.
The obvious that we demand is dignity and this consists of the abolishment of the Basement of the 6th wing, the abolishment of the special division where they keep the sentenced of the 17N, the abolishment of every special regime of detainment for any category of prisoners, while we support all the demands of our fellow prisoners that are participating in the mobilizations.
The most and real criminals are not behind the prison walls. The real robbers and murderers, those that rob the Greek people, that plunder the wages and the pensions, those that deprive care and health, are in the “Megaro Maximou” (Maximou mansion, the Greek equivalent of the White House, in the ministerial offices, in the seats of parliament, in the bourgeois districts, in the villas and in the luxurious offices of the bankers, the businessmen and the shipowners.
K. Gournas, S. Nikitopoulos, N. Maziotis
Tuesday, 14 December 2010
9 December. Revolutionary StruggIe: International call for solidarity
actforfreedomnow!
9 December 2010
INTERNATIONAL CALL FOR SOLIDARITY
Comrades,
We are three political prisoners, members of the armed group Revolutionary Struggle [Epanastatikos Agonas], and we send you militant greetings from the Greek prisons.
We were arrested in April 2010 along with other three comrades who are being accused of involvement in the organization. Since then, we have been on pretrial detention [under the terrorism act], waiting to be referred to a trial in the first months of 2011.
In an open political letter to society, the three of us claimed political responsibility for our participation in the organization of Revolutionary Struggle. In this way, we defended our actions which were directed against the Capital and the State, and contributed through practice and speech towards the overthrowal of the State and capitalism, aiming at social revolution, at a non-statist, anti-authoritarian, communal and communist society, in which assemblies and councils of the people will undertake social, political and economic operation and management.
By claiming political responsibility, we also want to defend armed struggle, and to highlight its timelessness and importance within the broader struggle for overthrowal and social revolution. Most importantly, we want to highlight its relevance and necessity for our times. It is our belief that the appropriate objective conditions for the overthrowal of capitalism have developed in this era of global economic crisis more than in any other time since the Second World War.
Also, by undertaking political responsibility we wanted to restore the memory and honour of our comrade Lambros Foundas, who was a member of the Revolutionary Struggle and was killed in an armed clash with cops in March 2010 during an attempted expropriation of a car – a preparatory action of a wider action plan of our organization.
The political, economic and social environment in which the Revolutionary Struggle was formed and has developed its action is very different from that of the Western-European urban guerrilla groups, which were active from the 1970s and 1980s up until the early 1990s. Back then the bipolar, the competition between the US-USSR and their political-economic systems were dominant. It was the time when the model of Keynesianism was sinking into crisis and political devaluation, as Capital regained its strength against the proletariat, governments of Western countries one after the other abandoned state intervention in the economy – the so-called ‘economics of demand’ – and replaced them with ‘economics of supply’, while the States began the assault on labor and social gains, defending the interests of the economically powerful and imposing the neoliberal financial and political model of governance.
The economic and political environment in which Revolutionary Struggle was formed was set by the USA monocracy, economic globalization, neoliberalism and the fight against terrorism, which is the peak of political-military globalization. Because, for us, both the “fight against terrorism” and the totalitarianism of the markets are two sides of the same coin; they are the political and economic nature of globalization. Whenever and wherever globalization is not able to be imposed by the weapons of the capitalists and international financial institutions (IMF, WB, WTO, ECB, FED), by the financial tools of international stock markets, by poverty, hunger and marginalization, it is imposed by the sharpening of state violence and power, by repression, war and military incursions, by fire and iron.
The period from 2003, when the Revolutionary Struggle started its action, up to 2007, while the growing social crisis was creating strong social dissatisfaction, the neoliberal consensus was strong, due to the fact that capitalist development was continued ‘smoothly’ using bank loans, as a global scale bubble growing against the successive financial crises that were shaking the planet (Southeast Asia crisis, economic collapse in Argentina, Dot.com crisis in the US).
Since 2007, year of the first ‘bursting of the bubble’ of the residential mortgage loans in the US, which gave the onset of the global financial crisis, the failure of the neoliberal consensus started, leading to deeper and deeper political and social scorn for the regime.
During its first period Revolutionary Struggle set as cutting-edge issues the ‘fight against terrorism’ with the military operations of the US and their Western allies to the countries of the region, and with the intensity of state violence, repression and terrorism in the countries of the capitalist centre and the semi-periphery, in which substantially Greece belongs (rocket attack against the US Embassy, attack against the former minister of Public Order, against police targets and courts), the neoliberal invasion, the marketization of all the economic and social functions left, the attack of Capital against labor gains (bomb attacks against Ministries of Employment and Economy).
Then, since 2008, the global financial crisis was a true challenge for us in order to upgrade our action, making attacks against economic structures and institutions such as the stock market, Citibank and Eurobank. Our ambition was to hurt the vulnerable – due to the crisis – system as long as possible, to strongly sabotage the political choices of the Greek government and the ‘rescue-of-the-country’ plans imposed by the troika (IMF, EU, ECB).
This was the reason that PASOK government was so afraid of Revolutionary Struggle, since – according to the statements of a member of the government – the organization ‘could blow up the financial measures.’ That’s why our arrests, which took place a few days before the IMF, the EU and the ECB entirely take the reins of power in Greece, were characterized by the Greek government and other European and American political factors as a great success.
For us, the financial crisis we live today is the first truly global crisis in history and the only one since the Great Depression of the early 1930s that affects so intensely all the countries of the capitalist centre, while its character is systemic; it concerns the nature of capitalism itself and the nature of the market economy, and it is multi-dimensional, because other than financial it is political, social and environmental.
On the occasion of the current crisis, both economic and political elites around the world are conducting a frontal attack against societies; former achievements of the labor movement are permanently buried in the name of competitiveness, the welfare state is long past, while institutions of the system such as the nation state lose their importance, concepts such as sovereignty have no real meaning, and representative democracy in many countries such as Greece, which come under the supervision of the transnational elite and economic institutions (IMF, Central banks, etc.) is humiliated, since in fact a series of constitutional provisions are cancelled, and it becomes the vehicle for the establishment of a globalized totalitarianism, that of markets, multinationals, bankers and their political institutions.
Against this charge of the political and economical elites there is no room for the implementation of Keynesian experiments and reforms. This has been obvious by the governments’ respond to the crisis, by unleashing their wildest neoliberal attack against the middle and lower classes, against the willing of the majority of people. On the occasion of the financial crisis, they forward the greatest robbery and looting in human history and the greatest transaction of wealth from the basis to the top of the social hierarchy, driving more and more people to hunger, impoverishment and death.
For vast parts of the societies both of the periphery and the centre of the capitalist world, the neoliberal model of development has bankrupt alongside the general economic regime. Next in line to fall is the political system of representative democracy.
The lack of social consent doesn’t stop the European governments from a series of political coup d’état with the excuse of over-passing the crisis while supported only by minorities. In this way, they provoke the rage and exasperation of the social majorities, which quite often are expressed in violent ways on the streets of European cities (of France, England, Greece, Ireland, Italy…).
All the above record a series of political and social conditions that, for us, are the most appropriate in order to put into practice the international proletarian counterattack, to accomplish the overthrowal of capitalism and the State, to undertake the revolution. Because today the dilemma of the fighters but also the people repressed is one: social revolution or total submission and death.
Our obligation is to create the subjective circumstances, namely to contribute to the creation of a polymorphic revolutionary movement at national and international level that will form the conditions for the realization of the social revolution.
Within this political and social situation, the armed struggle can be of particular importance and may hold a central role, as it may reflect the overall political conflict with the regime, to herald the armed proletarian counterattack of peoples and to propagandize in the most dynamic way the overthrowal and social revolution.
We want our trial to be a political step to express in public these political positions; we want it to be registered in history as a moment of the struggle for freedom. To highlight the importance of the social revolution as the only answer to the crisis that condemns the largest parts of society to economic and social devastation.
[We want our trial] to become a public condemnation of the system and all its collaborationists no matter their political accession. To highlight that the armed struggle, despite the attacks by the system, is vivid and well-timed but also important in our days in order to promote the revolutionary process. We want to speak out the need for the formation of revolutionary movements everywhere, which will persuade the accomplishment of the social revolution.
In such a trial we believe that the best ‘witnesses of defense’ are the comrades who have chosen their dynamic clash with the system. These are the fighters who have been members of guerilla groups and have remained immovable and impenitent in their choices, by defending their struggles, their comrades who died in prison, those who were imprisoned for many years.
With their political statement in court, they will testify their own experiences, their own struggles as these were expressed through different social and economical conditions. They will speak about the timelessness and historical continuity of the social and class struggle that will be waged until the total destruction of the capitalist system. They will also speak about the struggle that is continued inside prison cells by the prisoners of this war. Because we do not choose the path of struggle to accept the conditions of imprisonment imposed by our enemy in order to morally defeat us and lead us to political or even physical extermination.
For us, that would be the best expression of solidarity; to make this trial a cry for freedom.
Pola Rupa, Nikos Maziotis, Kostas Gournas
9 December 2010
INTERNATIONAL CALL FOR SOLIDARITY
Comrades,
We are three political prisoners, members of the armed group Revolutionary Struggle [Epanastatikos Agonas], and we send you militant greetings from the Greek prisons.
We were arrested in April 2010 along with other three comrades who are being accused of involvement in the organization. Since then, we have been on pretrial detention [under the terrorism act], waiting to be referred to a trial in the first months of 2011.
In an open political letter to society, the three of us claimed political responsibility for our participation in the organization of Revolutionary Struggle. In this way, we defended our actions which were directed against the Capital and the State, and contributed through practice and speech towards the overthrowal of the State and capitalism, aiming at social revolution, at a non-statist, anti-authoritarian, communal and communist society, in which assemblies and councils of the people will undertake social, political and economic operation and management.
By claiming political responsibility, we also want to defend armed struggle, and to highlight its timelessness and importance within the broader struggle for overthrowal and social revolution. Most importantly, we want to highlight its relevance and necessity for our times. It is our belief that the appropriate objective conditions for the overthrowal of capitalism have developed in this era of global economic crisis more than in any other time since the Second World War.
Also, by undertaking political responsibility we wanted to restore the memory and honour of our comrade Lambros Foundas, who was a member of the Revolutionary Struggle and was killed in an armed clash with cops in March 2010 during an attempted expropriation of a car – a preparatory action of a wider action plan of our organization.
The political, economic and social environment in which the Revolutionary Struggle was formed and has developed its action is very different from that of the Western-European urban guerrilla groups, which were active from the 1970s and 1980s up until the early 1990s. Back then the bipolar, the competition between the US-USSR and their political-economic systems were dominant. It was the time when the model of Keynesianism was sinking into crisis and political devaluation, as Capital regained its strength against the proletariat, governments of Western countries one after the other abandoned state intervention in the economy – the so-called ‘economics of demand’ – and replaced them with ‘economics of supply’, while the States began the assault on labor and social gains, defending the interests of the economically powerful and imposing the neoliberal financial and political model of governance.
The economic and political environment in which Revolutionary Struggle was formed was set by the USA monocracy, economic globalization, neoliberalism and the fight against terrorism, which is the peak of political-military globalization. Because, for us, both the “fight against terrorism” and the totalitarianism of the markets are two sides of the same coin; they are the political and economic nature of globalization. Whenever and wherever globalization is not able to be imposed by the weapons of the capitalists and international financial institutions (IMF, WB, WTO, ECB, FED), by the financial tools of international stock markets, by poverty, hunger and marginalization, it is imposed by the sharpening of state violence and power, by repression, war and military incursions, by fire and iron.
The period from 2003, when the Revolutionary Struggle started its action, up to 2007, while the growing social crisis was creating strong social dissatisfaction, the neoliberal consensus was strong, due to the fact that capitalist development was continued ‘smoothly’ using bank loans, as a global scale bubble growing against the successive financial crises that were shaking the planet (Southeast Asia crisis, economic collapse in Argentina, Dot.com crisis in the US).
Since 2007, year of the first ‘bursting of the bubble’ of the residential mortgage loans in the US, which gave the onset of the global financial crisis, the failure of the neoliberal consensus started, leading to deeper and deeper political and social scorn for the regime.
During its first period Revolutionary Struggle set as cutting-edge issues the ‘fight against terrorism’ with the military operations of the US and their Western allies to the countries of the region, and with the intensity of state violence, repression and terrorism in the countries of the capitalist centre and the semi-periphery, in which substantially Greece belongs (rocket attack against the US Embassy, attack against the former minister of Public Order, against police targets and courts), the neoliberal invasion, the marketization of all the economic and social functions left, the attack of Capital against labor gains (bomb attacks against Ministries of Employment and Economy).
Then, since 2008, the global financial crisis was a true challenge for us in order to upgrade our action, making attacks against economic structures and institutions such as the stock market, Citibank and Eurobank. Our ambition was to hurt the vulnerable – due to the crisis – system as long as possible, to strongly sabotage the political choices of the Greek government and the ‘rescue-of-the-country’ plans imposed by the troika (IMF, EU, ECB).
This was the reason that PASOK government was so afraid of Revolutionary Struggle, since – according to the statements of a member of the government – the organization ‘could blow up the financial measures.’ That’s why our arrests, which took place a few days before the IMF, the EU and the ECB entirely take the reins of power in Greece, were characterized by the Greek government and other European and American political factors as a great success.
For us, the financial crisis we live today is the first truly global crisis in history and the only one since the Great Depression of the early 1930s that affects so intensely all the countries of the capitalist centre, while its character is systemic; it concerns the nature of capitalism itself and the nature of the market economy, and it is multi-dimensional, because other than financial it is political, social and environmental.
On the occasion of the current crisis, both economic and political elites around the world are conducting a frontal attack against societies; former achievements of the labor movement are permanently buried in the name of competitiveness, the welfare state is long past, while institutions of the system such as the nation state lose their importance, concepts such as sovereignty have no real meaning, and representative democracy in many countries such as Greece, which come under the supervision of the transnational elite and economic institutions (IMF, Central banks, etc.) is humiliated, since in fact a series of constitutional provisions are cancelled, and it becomes the vehicle for the establishment of a globalized totalitarianism, that of markets, multinationals, bankers and their political institutions.
Against this charge of the political and economical elites there is no room for the implementation of Keynesian experiments and reforms. This has been obvious by the governments’ respond to the crisis, by unleashing their wildest neoliberal attack against the middle and lower classes, against the willing of the majority of people. On the occasion of the financial crisis, they forward the greatest robbery and looting in human history and the greatest transaction of wealth from the basis to the top of the social hierarchy, driving more and more people to hunger, impoverishment and death.
For vast parts of the societies both of the periphery and the centre of the capitalist world, the neoliberal model of development has bankrupt alongside the general economic regime. Next in line to fall is the political system of representative democracy.
The lack of social consent doesn’t stop the European governments from a series of political coup d’état with the excuse of over-passing the crisis while supported only by minorities. In this way, they provoke the rage and exasperation of the social majorities, which quite often are expressed in violent ways on the streets of European cities (of France, England, Greece, Ireland, Italy…).
All the above record a series of political and social conditions that, for us, are the most appropriate in order to put into practice the international proletarian counterattack, to accomplish the overthrowal of capitalism and the State, to undertake the revolution. Because today the dilemma of the fighters but also the people repressed is one: social revolution or total submission and death.
Our obligation is to create the subjective circumstances, namely to contribute to the creation of a polymorphic revolutionary movement at national and international level that will form the conditions for the realization of the social revolution.
Within this political and social situation, the armed struggle can be of particular importance and may hold a central role, as it may reflect the overall political conflict with the regime, to herald the armed proletarian counterattack of peoples and to propagandize in the most dynamic way the overthrowal and social revolution.
We want our trial to be a political step to express in public these political positions; we want it to be registered in history as a moment of the struggle for freedom. To highlight the importance of the social revolution as the only answer to the crisis that condemns the largest parts of society to economic and social devastation.
[We want our trial] to become a public condemnation of the system and all its collaborationists no matter their political accession. To highlight that the armed struggle, despite the attacks by the system, is vivid and well-timed but also important in our days in order to promote the revolutionary process. We want to speak out the need for the formation of revolutionary movements everywhere, which will persuade the accomplishment of the social revolution.
In such a trial we believe that the best ‘witnesses of defense’ are the comrades who have chosen their dynamic clash with the system. These are the fighters who have been members of guerilla groups and have remained immovable and impenitent in their choices, by defending their struggles, their comrades who died in prison, those who were imprisoned for many years.
With their political statement in court, they will testify their own experiences, their own struggles as these were expressed through different social and economical conditions. They will speak about the timelessness and historical continuity of the social and class struggle that will be waged until the total destruction of the capitalist system. They will also speak about the struggle that is continued inside prison cells by the prisoners of this war. Because we do not choose the path of struggle to accept the conditions of imprisonment imposed by our enemy in order to morally defeat us and lead us to political or even physical extermination.
For us, that would be the best expression of solidarity; to make this trial a cry for freedom.
Pola Rupa, Nikos Maziotis, Kostas Gournas
Sunday, 5 December 2010
FOR DECEMBER. Giannis Dimitrakis
FOR DECEMBER
Yiannis Dimitrakis
Memories that need to be recalled, emotions and images. All of them exiled and buried deep in the depths of the soul and the mind. It’s a painful procedure to describe how you experienced a situation in which you weren’t present but your whole being raged to be there.
The murder of a child and the fragile and hollow social balance tumbles down like a house made of cards. The mass media are late to realize the magnitude of the chain reactions that the death of Alexandros Grigoropoulos will unleash and the first clashes with the pigs in uniform on the dawn of December 7th are considered the beginning and the end of a small and anticipated protest. The next hours and days will prove otherwise.
In the background of an insurrection and around it, a different and parallel reality, in its own space/time, exists and takes breaths. It listens carefully to the beats of a society that is awake from its slumber and desperately seeks to join it, in a common course. It is my own, personal, individual reality. Wrapped in a shroud for the last three years, “protected” by bars, walls and CCTV, and although it has had its own small insurrections-breaks of illegality and of abolition of everyday normality behind the prison walls nonetheless it lusts for freer, more comradely, more incendiary moments to clash with the existent.
My operational inability in transferring the external reality to the prison body, infecting it with the insurrectional virus tuning in also other individuals to the rhythm of a generalized clash against those who hold life tied in chains, creates disappointment and sadness. The apparent, personal defeat against the prison, the communication bridges with the fellow prisoners that are already dissolving or have already long ago crumbled, the emotional charge with everything that is happening out there leads me with mathematical precision to complete isolation.
Confined within the confined, the evening of December 7th I lay empty and breathless in the detention cell of some prison, trying to understand how I ended up thrown away in a wet and filthy dungeon as a hunger striker demanding my transfer to another hellhole(!) while outside the walls all my friends, acquaintances, comrades are living days of unparalleled magic. The magic that life has when you arm yourself and together with others you attempt the impossible, the ideal, the oneiric. When you allow a rush of emotions to overflow which are then transformed into energy and action.
Four walls, a disciplinary cell, dark and cold, with two squalid mattresses thrown on the filthy floor, without natural light and with a yellow lamp that is slowly frying the last of your brain functions. And, as a topping off to the ill-favored and martyric scenery the endless and unbearable irony of getting a television in the middle of the cell, with the “possibility” it provides to observe from nearly a breath away the fires, the street clashes and everything taking place, a friendly nearly comradely being that commands the mind and the soul to a one and only duty. To stare with absolute devotion at every image it projects and to listen to every upstart screaming like a hysteric about the ordeals and the end of the world possibly coming after the days of December or every wishy-washy attempting to find a psychological alibi for the insurgents in order to demonstrate his philanthropic understanding but of course also his disagreement with acts of “blind violence”.
It is certain that if my punishment for transgressing the laws and moral codes of this society could have a metaphysical texture, this would have been my own individual eternal hell. The posthumous cauldron deriving from a fictitious christian inspiration in which I will stew in repayment for my mortal sin. The sin of walking in streets of liberation. Streets of self-knowledge and self-consciousness.
To be bound down to a standstill by the weight of personal and other bonds, to adopt the role of a spectator without having a choice, at the same time that you would sell your soul to the devil to be free, participating in an endless festival of fire, is a torture that is difficult to match even if it does not entail physical pain.
A knot in the throat, a tight feeling in the stomach and a tidal wave of emotions shaking me violently whenever I share the ecstasy, the joy, the intensity and the anguish of comrades who in those days were a part of this insurrection. Moments immersed in contradiction. The deceptive feeling of living the lives of others is completely stripped naked and I am brought back to the harsh reality, where action defines life.
Every memory from those days an open wound and the pain festers in silence. It’s been years now that my eyes can’t shed any tears, only black clouds shadow my face every time that like a castaway on a desert island I look into the distant horizon at another ship passing me by.
With comradely greetings
Yiannis Dimitrakis
8/5/09
A communication from the Assembly for Solidarity (Athens)
It's been more than four years since the morning of January 16th 2006, when the anarchist Giannis Dimitrakis was arrested, heavily wounded by police fire, after a robbery at a branch of the National Bank in the center of Athens.
From the very first moment a storm of constructed information broke out, systematically supplied by the police and readily carried out by the mass media. The police constructed "the gang of robbers in black," so that other comrades could be named as members, to which was attributed a string of robberies but also a close association to armed revolutionary groups, and then it was proclaimed that the whole of the anarchist- anti-authoritarian movement is closely connected to organized crime !!
Gianni's arrest, the slander and the manhunt unleashed against his three supposed accomplices (which were later on declared wanted for astronomic rewards) - four comrades known for their many years of political activity - on the one hand aims for their legal annihilation and on the other, promotes a holistic plan of stripping of meaning and criminalization of anarchists, anti-authoritarians and class struggle. Because of his political identity, the state moved with rage against him from the first moment.
Parallel to the crescendo of misinformation and impression creating by the media, the district attorney tried to interrogate him in the emergency room while he was bedridden and under pharmaceutical influence. The charges against him were based on the "anti-terror" law and enriched with six unsolved robberies, attempted manslaughter and money laundering. He was probably the first man in custody to be held at Malandrino maximum security prison, which is intended to hold convicts only, while attacks by prison guards, vindictive transfers and disciplinary sentences, the exhausting sentence of the first trial (an unheard of for a robbery sentence of 35 years) and the provocative deprivation of basic rights for the preparation of his defense at the court of appeals supplement the oppressive aggressiveness against him.
In these extreme conditions, the comrade defended from the beginning his choice to expropriate a bank, without statements of remorse and with clarity as towards his motives and intentions. He gave meaning to his act as a moment in his critique and action against the system of wage slavery and exploitation, against the antisocial role of the banks and as a part of the polymorphic social struggle.
urthermore, in the wretched reality of the prisons, he stood dynamically and with dignity from the beginning. He participated in all of the prisoner's struggles happening the past years in Greece. Advancing to hunger strikes and abstinence from the prison meals - despite the permanent health problems given him by the cop's bullets - showing his solidarity for his fellow prisoners and fighting for the terms of his survival and existence in the difficult position of imprisonment. Along with other imprisoned anti-authoritarians he was an interactive channel of communication with the grandiose prisoner's movements in the fall of 2008.
All these reasons - and because Giannis Dimitrakis and the other three anarchists are some of us, comrades and co fighters in the diversity of the struggles for freedom - fired off a mass of actions of solidarity and political defense for them in many cities in Greece. From the posters, texts and brochures to the flyers, banners and slogans on walls and from the attack actions against banks, other economic targets or government vehicles to the massive presence of people at the public events in the amphitheaters, the march in the center of Athens and the demonstrations outside of the prisons of Malandrino, Koridallos, Neapolis and Alikarnasso, the anarchists and anti-authoritarians made clear the way in which they respond to their comrades being held hostage by the state.
For active solidarity to Giannis Dimitrakis!
With comradely greetings,
Assembly for Solidarity (Athens)
Yiannis Dimitrakis
Memories that need to be recalled, emotions and images. All of them exiled and buried deep in the depths of the soul and the mind. It’s a painful procedure to describe how you experienced a situation in which you weren’t present but your whole being raged to be there.
The murder of a child and the fragile and hollow social balance tumbles down like a house made of cards. The mass media are late to realize the magnitude of the chain reactions that the death of Alexandros Grigoropoulos will unleash and the first clashes with the pigs in uniform on the dawn of December 7th are considered the beginning and the end of a small and anticipated protest. The next hours and days will prove otherwise.
In the background of an insurrection and around it, a different and parallel reality, in its own space/time, exists and takes breaths. It listens carefully to the beats of a society that is awake from its slumber and desperately seeks to join it, in a common course. It is my own, personal, individual reality. Wrapped in a shroud for the last three years, “protected” by bars, walls and CCTV, and although it has had its own small insurrections-breaks of illegality and of abolition of everyday normality behind the prison walls nonetheless it lusts for freer, more comradely, more incendiary moments to clash with the existent.
My operational inability in transferring the external reality to the prison body, infecting it with the insurrectional virus tuning in also other individuals to the rhythm of a generalized clash against those who hold life tied in chains, creates disappointment and sadness. The apparent, personal defeat against the prison, the communication bridges with the fellow prisoners that are already dissolving or have already long ago crumbled, the emotional charge with everything that is happening out there leads me with mathematical precision to complete isolation.
Confined within the confined, the evening of December 7th I lay empty and breathless in the detention cell of some prison, trying to understand how I ended up thrown away in a wet and filthy dungeon as a hunger striker demanding my transfer to another hellhole(!) while outside the walls all my friends, acquaintances, comrades are living days of unparalleled magic. The magic that life has when you arm yourself and together with others you attempt the impossible, the ideal, the oneiric. When you allow a rush of emotions to overflow which are then transformed into energy and action.
Four walls, a disciplinary cell, dark and cold, with two squalid mattresses thrown on the filthy floor, without natural light and with a yellow lamp that is slowly frying the last of your brain functions. And, as a topping off to the ill-favored and martyric scenery the endless and unbearable irony of getting a television in the middle of the cell, with the “possibility” it provides to observe from nearly a breath away the fires, the street clashes and everything taking place, a friendly nearly comradely being that commands the mind and the soul to a one and only duty. To stare with absolute devotion at every image it projects and to listen to every upstart screaming like a hysteric about the ordeals and the end of the world possibly coming after the days of December or every wishy-washy attempting to find a psychological alibi for the insurgents in order to demonstrate his philanthropic understanding but of course also his disagreement with acts of “blind violence”.
It is certain that if my punishment for transgressing the laws and moral codes of this society could have a metaphysical texture, this would have been my own individual eternal hell. The posthumous cauldron deriving from a fictitious christian inspiration in which I will stew in repayment for my mortal sin. The sin of walking in streets of liberation. Streets of self-knowledge and self-consciousness.
To be bound down to a standstill by the weight of personal and other bonds, to adopt the role of a spectator without having a choice, at the same time that you would sell your soul to the devil to be free, participating in an endless festival of fire, is a torture that is difficult to match even if it does not entail physical pain.
A knot in the throat, a tight feeling in the stomach and a tidal wave of emotions shaking me violently whenever I share the ecstasy, the joy, the intensity and the anguish of comrades who in those days were a part of this insurrection. Moments immersed in contradiction. The deceptive feeling of living the lives of others is completely stripped naked and I am brought back to the harsh reality, where action defines life.
Every memory from those days an open wound and the pain festers in silence. It’s been years now that my eyes can’t shed any tears, only black clouds shadow my face every time that like a castaway on a desert island I look into the distant horizon at another ship passing me by.
With comradely greetings
Yiannis Dimitrakis
8/5/09
A communication from the Assembly for Solidarity (Athens)
It's been more than four years since the morning of January 16th 2006, when the anarchist Giannis Dimitrakis was arrested, heavily wounded by police fire, after a robbery at a branch of the National Bank in the center of Athens.
From the very first moment a storm of constructed information broke out, systematically supplied by the police and readily carried out by the mass media. The police constructed "the gang of robbers in black," so that other comrades could be named as members, to which was attributed a string of robberies but also a close association to armed revolutionary groups, and then it was proclaimed that the whole of the anarchist- anti-authoritarian movement is closely connected to organized crime !!
Gianni's arrest, the slander and the manhunt unleashed against his three supposed accomplices (which were later on declared wanted for astronomic rewards) - four comrades known for their many years of political activity - on the one hand aims for their legal annihilation and on the other, promotes a holistic plan of stripping of meaning and criminalization of anarchists, anti-authoritarians and class struggle. Because of his political identity, the state moved with rage against him from the first moment.
Parallel to the crescendo of misinformation and impression creating by the media, the district attorney tried to interrogate him in the emergency room while he was bedridden and under pharmaceutical influence. The charges against him were based on the "anti-terror" law and enriched with six unsolved robberies, attempted manslaughter and money laundering. He was probably the first man in custody to be held at Malandrino maximum security prison, which is intended to hold convicts only, while attacks by prison guards, vindictive transfers and disciplinary sentences, the exhausting sentence of the first trial (an unheard of for a robbery sentence of 35 years) and the provocative deprivation of basic rights for the preparation of his defense at the court of appeals supplement the oppressive aggressiveness against him.
In these extreme conditions, the comrade defended from the beginning his choice to expropriate a bank, without statements of remorse and with clarity as towards his motives and intentions. He gave meaning to his act as a moment in his critique and action against the system of wage slavery and exploitation, against the antisocial role of the banks and as a part of the polymorphic social struggle.
urthermore, in the wretched reality of the prisons, he stood dynamically and with dignity from the beginning. He participated in all of the prisoner's struggles happening the past years in Greece. Advancing to hunger strikes and abstinence from the prison meals - despite the permanent health problems given him by the cop's bullets - showing his solidarity for his fellow prisoners and fighting for the terms of his survival and existence in the difficult position of imprisonment. Along with other imprisoned anti-authoritarians he was an interactive channel of communication with the grandiose prisoner's movements in the fall of 2008.
All these reasons - and because Giannis Dimitrakis and the other three anarchists are some of us, comrades and co fighters in the diversity of the struggles for freedom - fired off a mass of actions of solidarity and political defense for them in many cities in Greece. From the posters, texts and brochures to the flyers, banners and slogans on walls and from the attack actions against banks, other economic targets or government vehicles to the massive presence of people at the public events in the amphitheaters, the march in the center of Athens and the demonstrations outside of the prisons of Malandrino, Koridallos, Neapolis and Alikarnasso, the anarchists and anti-authoritarians made clear the way in which they respond to their comrades being held hostage by the state.
For active solidarity to Giannis Dimitrakis!
With comradely greetings,
Assembly for Solidarity (Athens)
Thursday, 23 September 2010
Sofoklis Nigdelis, roommate of Vangelis Pallis for many years, answers to the monstrosity of the regime's information from the Greek prison.
actforfreedomnow!
Sofoklis Nigdelis, room-mate of Vaggelis Pallis for many years, answers to the monstrosity of the regime's information.
The situation of the great fighter Vaggelis Pallis remains crucial but steady.
As for the slaves of the system that have as a profession journalism, I have a message for some of them: Fascists and servants of the rotten state mechanism that you recycle and like goats re-chew false and forged news, stop the unofficial, unconfirmed, provocative announcements that you put out against Vaggelis Pallis, because don't forget that human-wolves are hungry and one morning while your going to work, which is none other than to promote imaginary stories to fit the mold of your snitching boss.. that a wolf will jump on you and will start eating you starting from the tongue. You, the specific snitches, remember that wolves are always hungry. My warm hello to your colleague Sokratis Giolias and his family. Solidarity and comrade collectiveness are some of our destructive weapons.
Regards and strength to the comrades in solidarity with Vaggelis Pallis, inside and outside the walls.
Sofoklis Nigdelis 30/8/10
Grevena prisons.
Sofoklis Nigdelis, room-mate of Vaggelis Pallis for many years, answers to the monstrosity of the regime's information.
The situation of the great fighter Vaggelis Pallis remains crucial but steady.
As for the slaves of the system that have as a profession journalism, I have a message for some of them: Fascists and servants of the rotten state mechanism that you recycle and like goats re-chew false and forged news, stop the unofficial, unconfirmed, provocative announcements that you put out against Vaggelis Pallis, because don't forget that human-wolves are hungry and one morning while your going to work, which is none other than to promote imaginary stories to fit the mold of your snitching boss.. that a wolf will jump on you and will start eating you starting from the tongue. You, the specific snitches, remember that wolves are always hungry. My warm hello to your colleague Sokratis Giolias and his family. Solidarity and comrade collectiveness are some of our destructive weapons.
Regards and strength to the comrades in solidarity with Vaggelis Pallis, inside and outside the walls.
Sofoklis Nigdelis 30/8/10
Grevena prisons.
ANOTHER PRISONER INJURY IN GREECE
actforfreedomnow!
29 August, 2010 - The injury of another prisoner in Grevena prisons has caused riot today. Prisoners burnt their mattresses demanding better living conditions, more leave days etc. The conditions in most of democracy s hell holes are inhuman.
FIRE TO THE PRISONS
29 August, 2010 - The injury of another prisoner in Grevena prisons has caused riot today. Prisoners burnt their mattresses demanding better living conditions, more leave days etc. The conditions in most of democracy s hell holes are inhuman.
FIRE TO THE PRISONS
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