Tag: Prison

Solidarity with Prosecuted, Persecuted and Imprisoned Activists

“The only protection we have is solidarity from the outside”: news from courts and prisons in Sweden, the UK and the US
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armsHere in the UK, last month saw eight people who took action against the DSEi arms fair beat the charges after the court sided with their argument that they were trying to stop illegal weapons sales, as their “belief that weapons were being sold unlawfully at DSEI was supported by … detailed expert evidence.”

The Crown Prosecution Service refused to accept this result, and are now trying to appeal, so the eight could yet find themselves dragged back to court. A joint statement from the eight defendants said: “We absolutely stand by our actions at the DSEI arms fair in seeking to prevent corporate and state support for torture and the mass indiscriminate killing of civilians.

“Our actions have continued to show where the interests of money and power truly lie. The state has invested a prolific amount of time and public money seeking to prosecute us.”

nottinghamuk05th-april-2016aiden-aslina-22-year-old-man-from-newarkhas-FWH6BBA more immediate court date is coming up for  the alleged YPG volunteer who’s facing charges for allegedly helping fight with the Kurdish resistance against ISIS. After the incompetents at the CPS delayed his first court date, he’s now due back for a court hearing on the 17th of May, and Nottingham Kurdish solidarity campaigners will be standing in solidarity with him outside the court from 1pm on the day.

While discussion between different perspectives continues about how we should understand and analyse the situation in Rojava and beyond – there’s a recent article by the Hamilton Institute that’s very useful for anyone trying to keep up with the situation – we should all hopefully be able to agree to oppose state repression against anyone who’s allegedly fighting against ISIS, so please get yourself to Nottingham Magistrates’ Court on the 17th if you can, or help spread the word if you can’t make it there yourself.

Over in Sweden, repression against the antifascist movement has been continuing: AFA Stockholm have made a public appeal for people to help them cover the €35,000 they need to pay in fines, damages and trial costs, and Brighton Anarchist Black Cross have run an interview with the first of 13 antifascists to be released from prison.

Milwaukee wobblies in solidarity with the prison strikes

Meanwhile, there’s been some big things going down in US prisons. Inmates in Alabama’s Holman prison staged a ten-day work stoppage starting on May Day that was only ended after scabs were brought in, and which may have influenced Alabama’s legislature to vote down a huge prison expansion proposal.

Meanwhile, the Texas prison strikes have been winding down, but the IWW prisoners’ union continues to grow, and prisoners report that “Since this strike action started the prison administration has been much more responsive, and we have had a much easier time getting our grievances addressed.”

For more information about what’s been going down in US prisons, see this indepth interview with a member of the IWW’s Incarcerated Worker Organizing Committee, Unity & Struggle have produced an overview of prisoner struggles in the US from 2008-2016, and a number of Nebraska prison rebels have agreed to have their contact details made public to try and build contact with those on the outside.

Free Jeremy HammondIn individual news, it’s great that anti-fascist comrade (and brother of the hacker Jeremy), Jason Hammond has now been freed. It’s less great that Janye Waller has been jailed for involvement in the Bay Area uprising that followed the Ferguson verdict – you can support him by donating here, and keep an eye on his support tumblr or facebook to find out how to write to him once he’s got a permanent address.

The prison revolt in the US is only going to continue to grow, so we should all be thinking about ways to support and spread this struggle. Prison sentences are one of the ultimate threats the state uses against any movement that seems to be becoming too effective, so we should all be thinking about what we can do to undermine that threat.pvd-iwoc-ig

from Prisoner Support with thanks

The Sting: Activist films Cops coercing and bribing him to be Police Spy

SCANDAL IN BARCELONA; Video released of Police coercing activist to spy on anarchist movement Quim Gomero video
Instead of collaborating our comrade courageously arranged for video and audio recordings that were made public and his lawyer hopes to bring a case against the police for threats and blackmail.,
Quim Gomero (pronunced Kim) is a Barcelona activist awaiting trial on ‘terrorist’ charges after the Operation Pandora  and Piñata police raids and arrests in homes and anarchist social centers last year.
The police have little or no evidence against the dozens of defendants who will spend years suffering and fighting the cases. The only case relating to a real incident The ‘firework in the Church’ has already been tried. Mónica and Francisco got 12 years each, with zero concrete evidence against them.
 Crucially Monica and Fran were aquitted of forming an anarcho-terrorist group  (the so called C AG/ FAI / FRI), which was confirmed to be non existant. Almost the only real evidence against all the other defendants in the Piñata/Pandora cases was allegedly being part of this anarchist terrorist conspiracy now confirmed by the courts to be a police invention. The police are desperately and illegally fishing for new evidence

Continue reading “The Sting: Activist films Cops coercing and bribing him to be Police Spy”

Barcelona: In solidarity with our Comrade arrested and imprisoned in the last Repressive Operation

Barcelona (Barcelonès) 13/04/2016 Sociedad Los Mossos d'Esquadra han registrado desde primera hora de esta mañana la casa okupada del Bloque Fantasma de la Salut, en la Avinguda del Coll del Portell 59. El dispositivo policial se ha activado para cumplir una orden internacional de búsqueda y captura de miembros de una banda sospechosa de atracar bancos en Alemania FOTO DANNY CAMINAL

– April 17th, 2016    Last Wednesday 13th of April, at 5 o’clock in the morning, the Mossos d’Esquadra started an operation in which they raided two houses and a social center in La Salut neighbourhood, «los Blokes Fantasma», where around twenty people that live in the building were detained for twelve hours.

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In addition to the looting and destruction that comes together with a police raid, the operation ended with the arrest of a comrade who had already been  imprisoned due to the Operation Pandora police raids, and who was under an European search warrant that was issued the 11th of April accused of participating in different bank expropriations in the German territory.

After being transferred to the Spanish Audiencia Nacional, the judge Eloy Velasco has ordered the preventive prison for our comrade, who has been transferred to the prison of Soto de Real. Given that she is also charged in the Pandora process (currently in preliminary investigation) and she herself has declared her will for not being extradited to Germany, our defense has asked for a “conditioning” to the European order of extradition, claiming that she serves the preventive prison in the Spanish State until the pending trial that she has here is held.

_mg_7654_as_smart_object-1In a maximum period of 2 months (which can be extended one month more), the Audiencia Nacional will decide if they stop temporary or not the extradition of our comrade to the German authorities. From the news published in the German press, we have learned that she is imputed of a expropriation that happened two years ago in the city of Aachen, during which -always according to the press- the assaulting group could take a big amount of money from the bank without causing any personal damage or injuring anybody.aprilraids16

However the court process evolves, we want to make public our support to the comrade, claiming as ours her revolutionary political aims, her struggle and her militant activity.

The people that know her closely we know that she deserves the solidarity from all of us. We are talking about a fighting and anarchist person, active since years in different anti-racist, feminist and libertarian projects in Barcelona, always being in solidarity with the repressed people, always ready to help wherever she could, always in the street, always being generous, happy and smiling with the people around her, always intransigent and hard against everything she considers unjust.

The media attempt to portray her as a public enemy could not be more vicious. Specially when this operation of media manipulation implies the representation of the banks as victims, changing completely the reality dignifying those who are stealing, exploiting, defrauding, evicting and cutting us for years, while they criminalize who rebels against them and dares to attack them. It makes no difference for us if the comrade is really responsible or not for these robberies.

A bank expropriation is an ethically fair and politically legitimized practice, a method of struggle that is part of the history of every revolutionary movement.1460526919_503634_1460533694_noticia_normal

Indeed, despite of the continuous attempts from the Power to reduce this method to the ‘common crime’ frame, done by personal interest and individual greed, the truth is that the expropriation of these places of accumulation of capital is a constant practice in our history: from the anarchosyndicalist groups that in the early XX century used to rob banks to support the strikes or to help the families of the comrades in prison, to the different autonomous groups from the 70s-80s like the MIL, the OLLA o the ERAT (formed by the workers of the SEAT factory) that sent the money hold by the rich to the different projects of the fighting exploited, through the maquis groups like the ones of Sabaté or Facerías that during the postwar period used to practice robberies to finance the resistance against Franco’s dictatorship.

Expropriation, whether it is a tactical expression of a political struggle in general, or in the form of social banditry trough which we take back what the banks steal from us in order to free ourselves from the slavery chains of the work exploitation and unemployment, we don’t think is something reprehensible, but the opposite. The existence of people who are tired of being pushed around and exploited systematically by the legalized mafia proves us that ”we are not just goods in hands of politicians and bankers” and that humanity resists to accept submissively the dictatorship of the capital over our lives.

Supermarket expropriations have extended to other parts of Spain, following the example of ‘Robin Hood’ mayor José Manuel Sánchez Gordillo in Andalusia. A store of the global supermarket chain Carrefour in the town of Merida in the western region of Extremadura was hit Friday by 50 members of the Platform for Basic Income in Extremadura.

The police and media hunt deployed due to these robberies in Germany, should not make us neither lose our perspective nor get confused of who is our enemy. The real public enemy is the power represented by criminals like Wolfgang Schäuble and Angela Merkel, the power that didn’t empty a couple of safety boxes, but the social wealth of entire peoples and territories. It is the power of the transnational elites that have doomed millions of people to misery in order to impose the functional austerity measures for their neoliberal and imperialist project.

Our comrade’s arrest is only one more reason to fight against these elites and the system that they represent, a system solely moved by the accumulation of money in a few hands at the cost of the suffering, dispossession and exploitation of the rest of the people. Neither the police persecution not the massive propaganda of the regime can hide what is clear for the whole world, and like the poet said, what is the robbing of a bank compared to the funding of a bank?

Immediate release for the imprisoned comrade in Madrid!
Stop the extradition process!
Solidarity with the CSO blokes fantasma and with all the persecuted fighters!
As long as there is misery, there will be rebellion!

Comrades of the imprisoned one.     15Th of April, 2016.
Barcelona

Source

Andrés Bódalo: “If they jail me, the SAT union will resist”

UPDATE:::ANDRES IS NOW IN PRISON!!! see video

The Provincial Court has ordered the entry into prison for Andrés Bódalo, for assault against authority. The union claims that the SAT agricultural union will not surrender.
andresbodalo-2

by  Carmela Negrete      Andrés Bódalo, a member of the Andalusian Union of Workers and a councillor for the Podemos (We can do it) party, during a demonstration against the Gag Law.

Strategies to crush strikes
A Court hearing condemns to 3 years in prison Andrés Bódalo of the  SAT
Andrés Bódalo is Jaén city councilor since June 2015. In the Andalusian Union of Workers (SAT) is responsible for social movements, which is linked to the Marches of Dignity and all social mobilizations. It was also in the Podemos in the Congress of Deputies by Jaen. The Provincial Court of Jaen has ordered his imprisonment for allegedly assaulting a policeman. Continue reading “Andrés Bódalo: “If they jail me, the SAT union will resist””

Anarchists Monica and Francisco Sentenced to 12 years in prison 

1fotoantonio_1Update 1st April: Pepe Galán, Francisco lawyer, says he “totally disagrees with the statement that they are the perpetrators” and thinks that “there is no evidence in this regard.” And he will appeal the verdict.

The good news that they were cleared  of being a terrorist organisation and the finding that the supposed terrorist group doesn’t exist should apply equally to all the defendants from the Pandora and Piñata anti anarchist police raids, undermining their future trials!

Today March 30, 2016, it was notified to lawyers and companions the judgment of the National Court condemning the anarchists Monica Caballero and Francisco Solar to 5 years in prison on charges of “injury”, plus 7 years for “damage with terrorist purpose “, with a total of 12 years in prison for each. They were acquitted of charges of “belonging to a terrorist organization and conspiracy” against the Monastery of Montserrat. Demonstrations will begin today against this ridiculous sentence.

‘We are presented with the challenge of extending the struggle and solidarity, to defend our ties and our ideas, denying that their world is reduced to the four walls that keep them incarcerated.Our jailed  comrades will  always be present in our struggles and our daily lives.There is no “inside”, nor is there an “outside” only enemies of the state and authority.Death to the state and long live anarchy!  (translated from Indymedia Barcelona)

….media circus inventing the ''shocking destruction'' after the ”bomb” which Monica and Fran are accused of planting in the Zaragoza Basilica, symbol of the Catholic/Fascist dictatorship… State demanded 44 yrs jail each with zero evidence.

….photo shows media circus inventing the ”shocking destruction” after the ”bomb” which Monica and Fran are accused of planting in the Zaragoza Basilica, symbol of the Catholic/Fascist dictatorship… State demanded 44 yrs jail each with zero evidence. Continue reading “Anarchists Monica and Francisco Sentenced to 12 years in prison “

Final Day: Monica and Francisco Trial. ‘Viva Anarchism!’

update March 30

Anarchists Monica and Francisco Sentenced to 12 years in prison

Today March 30, 2016, it was notified to lawyers and companions the judgment of the National Court condemning the anarchists Monica Caballero and Francisco Solar to 5 years in prison on charges of “injury”, plus 7 years for “damage with terrorist purpose “, with a total of 12 years in prison for each They were acquitted of charges of “belonging to a terrorist organization and conspiracy” against the Monastery of Montserrat. Demonstrations will begin today against this ridiculous sentence.
‘We are presented with the challenge of extending the struggle and solidarity, to defend our ties and our ideas, denying that their world is reduced to the four walls that keep them incarcerated.Our jailed  comrades will  always be present in our struggles and our daily lives.There is no “inside”, nor is there an “outside” only enemies of the state and authority.Death to the state and long live anarchy !.’

1fotoantonio_1Update 1st April: Pepe Galán, Francisco lawyer, says he “totally disagrees with the statement that they are the perpetrators” and thinks that “there is no evidence in this regard.” And he will appeal the verdict.

The good news that they were cleared  of being a terrorist organisation and the finding that the supposed terrorist group doesn’t exist should apply equally to all the defendants from the Pandora and Piñata anti anarchist police raids, undermining their future trials!

 

The defense demands absolution for Monica and Francisco and denounces the “bias of the police investigation and the judicial proceedings”  monica and francisco trial

translated from Diagonal with thanks

summary of Day 1.

The big news was that the police have no firm evidence against Fran and Moni who deny ever visiting Zaragoza! All they have is a video of 2 people leaving a bar, you can’t see their faces but the police  claim their ways of walking are similar to those of Fran and Moni. Seriously! That’s the evidence to spend 44 yrs each in jail.

The second big news was that both the judge and prosecutor chosen are extreme right wing zealots famous for their outrageous opinions and judgements. The 3 deciding magistrates (there is no jury) are the same who refused bail for over 2 years, and are openly part of the prosecution. And the police are openly trying to brand Francisco and Monica with leading a grand anarchist insurrection conspiracy, in the hope of getting a green light to attack all anarchists and progressive movements.we are seeds

On Day 1 every time Fran or Monica mentioned their anarchist beliefs the judge,   Ángela Murillo, interrupted to silence them.. we focussed on this bias. But other reporters focussed on their actual words, which turn out to be important, because both implied that as anarchists they are against terrorism as being authoritarian.

Far from wanting to become martyrs  promoting an anarchist insurrection they appeared to align themselves with the anarchist majority in Iberia, which recognises that mass public agreement is necessary first. (This could be important in the light of recent events like the ‘Black December’ actions which appear to blur the line between legitimate Direct Action and a return to tactics used a century ago).

much more on Day One HERE  http://wp.me/pIJl9-7yQ
update 2nd day:

Continue reading “Final Day: Monica and Francisco Trial. ‘Viva Anarchism!’”

Monica and Francisco: on trial for ‘Firework in the Basilica’

anarchist seeds

On 8th- 10th  March  our comrades Monica Caballero and Francisco Solar,will be judged in the Audiencia Nacional. They face a fiscal request of 44 years in prison on charges of “belonging to a criminal organization with terrorist aims forming a ‘terrorist group’… the Comando Insurreccionalismo Mateo Morral (which seems to be a made-up name for a non-existant  group)., damage, injury and conspiracy “, mainly based on the alleged action taken against the Basilica del Pilar de Zaragoza.

Monica and Fran haave already spent more than 2 years in prison awaiting trial. The Catholic Church is furious about the ‘firework in the Basilica’ and has used it’s connections, various State Ministers are prominent in the Opus Dei sect, to make an example of the alleged attackers. Continue reading “Monica and Francisco: on trial for ‘Firework in the Basilica’”