Op. Ardire – Open letter to the anarchist movement from Stefano Gabriele Fosco (Italy)
from: informa-azione.info translated by Actforfreedomnow/sysiphus
We receive and are spreading this open letter to the anarchist movement, from Stefano Gabriele Fosco, anarchist comrade, prisoner since June 13 following the operation Ardire.
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I sincerely thank all the bloggers who enter the hypertext links I refer to in order to facilitate understanding of this letter.
Open letter of Stefano Gabriele Fosco to the anarchist movement.
With due respect for the individual choices of comrades struck by the repression, I have always criticised anarchists who decided not to pronounce themselves concerning the accusations when they were arrested. Sure, it’s always good not to provide any information that could be useful to the investigations, but these silences have often come to affect solidarity itself.
If a comrade is accused of participating in some kind of direct action, for example, and the defence intends to demonstrate that they have nothing to do with the actions attributed to them, then it does not make sense for the movement to come out with the usual phrase “solidarity if innocent, even more if guilty.”
It is in this spirit that, on the contrary, I appreciated the choice of the Greek comrades of Revolutionary Struggle and of the Cells of Fire to claim their belonging to their respective organizations. It changes little at the procedural level because in the raids and subsequent mega-trials comrades totally unrelated to these organizations are always included, but within the movement it helps to interpret certain phenomena, avoiding dangerous misunderstandings.
Well, concerning what is being said in the “Ardire” operation I feel the need to confess to the anarchist movement, which for decades I have proudly belonged to:
I am not the ideologue of the Informal Anarchist Federation
I have never participated in any of the actions claimed by the FAI (Informal)
I never created or modified the symbol of the FAI / IRF
Isolation, nearly two months, and censorship have prevented me from having an open discussion with my co-defendants, some of whom I do not even know. Therefore, I speak only for myself. I want the anarchist movement to know my position concerning the charges against me, however, so that there can be no shadow of doubt.
My defence will seek to demonstrate the falsity of the accusations, the bugging and telephone eavesdropping and the blatant distortion of reality.
A prime example is the genesis of the symbol that I neither created or modified. A careful reading of the (manipulated) interceptions would suffice to understand the truth concerning that symbol. They are also in possession of information-technology evidence that incontrovertibly refutes the ridiculous reconstruction of my repressors. In time I will make all this data public. And, anyway, it is worth noting that this symbol was never used in the actions claimed by the FAI / IRF that I have been charged with.
I could go on refuting all the ridiculous speculation, because there is no proof that would lead to myself being considered the ideologue and the executor of the actions claimed by the Informal Anarchist Federation. The truth is that with this anti-anarchist repression they wanted to strike the anarchist blog Culmine for the role it had taken on an international level in the spreading of communications of direct action and of anarchist prisoners from around the world. This is the first major repressive manouvre against an anarchist blog, a blog, which like dozens of others publishes communiques that are often taken from the newspapers of the regime in the light of the sun – without resorting to silly “hidden” levels .
As already mentioned in my first communication from prison, this is my fifth 270bis (conspiracy to subvert the democratic order of the State) in 10 years, an average of one every two years. Everybody knows that whoever is under investigation for this kind of associative offence is subjected to obsessive shadowing, phonetapping and raids. Well, in these 10 years that the ROS and DIGOS throughout Italy have kept me under tight control , it has not been possible to prevent one single attack of those claimed by the FAI (informal). Is there any logical explanation? Only one (unfortunately for my repressors) is the truth: I am totally unrelated to the FAI / IRF project.
As proof, just read the posts of Culmine and Iconoclasta in which I have openly criticized the language of armed struggle, the use of abbreviations and acronyms, the use of federations, fronts or named organizations, even before the raid on March 29, 2012 . Clearly not enough, because the repressors accuse me of being behind the dangerous “Italo-Greek axis”. Well, in open letters sent to the prisoners of the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire, I – signing with my full name – openly criticized their armed-struggle[ist] language, while maintaining my anarchist solidarity towards them. Culmine ha addirittura osato citare Benito Mussolini in risposta ad un’infelice citazione della CCF . And this would be the dangerous “Italo-Greek axis”?
Before my arrest, I was dealing with the legal defence of the Greek comrades – five of the CCF and two unrelated to this organization – concerning the allegations by the prosecutor of Bologna, in the knowledge that the comrades of the CCF did not wish to defend themselves against such accusations. I strongly claim this support in solidarity with the anarchist prisoners. It’s what I have always done in the last decades of my existence. I got in contact with anarchist and libertarian prisoners around the world. And, when I had the chance, I also went to visit them, as happened with Marcelo in Chile and Gabriel in Germany.
In fact, an odious aspect of this anti-anarchist manoeuvre is that it strikes our prisoners, locked up for decades under the pretext that they would not see any solidarity actions done for them. This has been happening for centuries, and not only in the anarchist movement. It is pure idiocy to assume that with communications – in which we were quite sure of being intercepted – I and the comrade Gabriel were planning attacks and that then, once the call ended, I went and carried them out. And the repressors that were controlling me, tailing me and spying on me 24 hours out of 24, where were they?
The truth is something else, and has to do with the interpretation that an anarchist blog was trying to give to a whole new phenomenon within the anarchism of action. A phenomenon still to be deciphered, to the point that it does not even have a name that is accepted by all. There are indeed numerous writings, letters, posts that show how I had been working to decipher what was happening in the world over recent months.
In all this international debate, Culmine has faced other blogs, newspapers, anarchist prisoners and individualities.
Throughout this debate Culmine has sharply criticized the use of terms such as federations, fronts or organizations – something that has been deliberately omitted in the sea of tampered-with interceptions. The reason is quite simple: I have always been an individualist anarchist and for me individualism is necessarily antiorganisational. I could never be part of any associative pact, not even that of the FAI (informal). The situation is different concerning my personal assessment of the actions claimed by the FAI (informal) or by other organizations, but here we enter the field of opinion.
As further proof of my being estranged from this , I invite all anarchist comrades to read what I wrote in Culmine [1]quanto ho scritto su Culmine [1] after the publication of the non-claim of the Olga nucleus by “Il Corriere della Sera”. Culmine, in fact, was the only instrument of anarchist counter-information to raise a strong doubt on the reliability of that non-claim, pointing out a serious omission. That Culmine’s remark was not without foundation is shown by the fact that in the Greek translation of that statement made by prisoners of the CCF themselves, that omission was corrected, with square brackets (Source: greek Athens Indymedia) in english CCF – Bullets of words for the bullets of FAI/FRI). To claim that the Italian journalists noticed that omission, which led them to alarm the country about the next 7 (and not 8 ) objectives, is pure utopia! Sure, why should they question the official story made up by the Interior Ministry. It’s the same argument of the “smoking gun” (quotation from a leftwing rag of the regime) about the symbol never used.
This is a sensational falsity, and I shall demonstrate it.
If I have spoken extensively of the communique of the Olga nucleus it is because it is for that communique (I repeat non-claim, anyone who knows the history of the armed movements knows what I mean when I put the non-) that my high level of social danger was established, or rather my pre-trial detention for months or years.
With this investigation they want to establish that a blogger would be criminally liable for the communiques they publish, even when it is a copy-paste from newspapers of the regime.
In addition they would like anarchist prisoners to have to spend the time of their imprisonment in silence, preferably in isolation.
There will never succeed, even isolated and censored I continue to translate communiques and to be in contact with anarchist prisoners all over the world.
For anarchy always.
Prison of Pisa, July 30, 2012
On 48th day of isolation
Stefano Gabriele Fosco
Tags: Culmine, Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI), Italy, Operation Ardire, Repression, Stefano Gabriele Fosco
This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 8th, 2012 at 7:27 pm and is filed under Prison Struggle.
