On November 29, 2017, in the Korydallos prison court, started the trial on 2nd degree (appeal court) of the comrades Argyris Dalios, Giannis Michailides, Dimitris Politis, Nikos Romanos and Gerasimos Tsakalos (member of the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire). The accusations were bank and post office expropriations, possession of ammunition, forgery, incendiary attacks, while initially (in the 1st degree) the comrades were accused of participation in the revolutionary organization Conspiracy of Cells of Fire, an accusation that falls under the antiterrorist law 187A.
In the 1st degree court (presiding judge Konstantinos Ganiatsos) the comrades were acquitted for the accusation of participation in the CCF, but the court claimed that they are “individual terrorists” and that their actions were of “terroristic” nature, sentencing them to many years of imprisonment.
In particular, the court decision of March, 26 sentences the comrades A. Dalios to 27 years (29 in the 1st degree), N. Romanos to 18 years (20 in the 1st degree), D. Politis to 12 years and 2 months (13 in the 1st degree), G. Michailides to 11 years (as in the 1st degree) and the CCF member, G. Tsakalos, to 5 years (as in the 1st degree). This is the first time in Greek court history that the article about “individual terrorism” is being implemented, at least on anarchists.
Specifically, the district attorney Sofia Apostolaki suggested that only being an anarchist is enough to characterize a person’s acts as “terroristic”, and that if a person is not a member of a group, they act as “lone wolves”. This interpretation of the deliberately vague anti-terrorist law 187A allows the state to accuse any anarchist of terrorism, creating a precedent of heavy accusations and long sentences for the anarchist movement. Till now the accusations for participation in a “terrorist” group were based on DNA samples, friendly and family relations, non-existing witnesses and “disappeared” elements, leading either to acquittal or to vindictive decisions, that were unexpected even for the civil justice. From now on, simply being an anarchist is enough of an “element” to lead to condemnation. A simple district attorney motion is enough to target the anarchist movement in total as the “internal enemy” and condemn our comrades to long sentences.
At the same time fascists, mafia members, businessmen and shipping magnates are treated favorably by the state and the law, everyone that struggles against them and the values they represent, against all kinds of oppression, are lead to the dungeons of civil democracy because of their political identity.
The gravity of this precedent, which the state attempts to establish, concerns us all, all members of the movement, who choose to act outside the framework of civil law and attack the state and its mechanisms. It concerns everyone who does not stand indifferent in the face of the capitalistic brutality and with solidarity and comradeship chooses the side of the oppressed. In this time of intense inter-systemic shocks, amidst scandals, memoranda, thousands of forthcoming foreclosure auctions and the total devaluation of our lives, this particular trial decision is a message to all who choose the difficult but necessary road of revolutionary action. A message that we, the anarchist movement, must reverse.
(Text / translation based on this call to action that appeared on Athens Indymedia, translated by Antifa Bulgaria)
