Letter from Anarchist Prisoner Toni Chavero on Rotating Hunger Strike in Spanish Prisons
A rotating hunger strike began this September in Spanish prisons to draw attention to the horrible situation in Spanish prisons, tortures, deaths, the basicly nonexistent medical attention, terrible food, bad communication inside/outside, isolation confinement for rebellious prisoners, etc. etc. There are thousands of denouncements of this situation in the offices of the European Union Tribunals, at least from the last 20 years. No one there cares about this nonexistent human rights in Spanish prisons! So the prisoners, with the support of solidarity groups from outside, try to continue the long tradition of struggles against this fascist prisoner system in Spain. So from last September 1st, a small group of prisoners started this rotative hungerstrike and Toni Chavero, an anarchist comrade, actually encaged in the prison of Estremera (Madrid) wrote this letter:
Letter from anarchist prisoner Toni Chavero about the rotating hunger strike in Spanish prisons
Bunker of Estremera (Prison Madrid VII)
5th September, 2019
Cheers, comrades, I am Toni Chavero. I hope that on the arrival of these letters you will find yourself with strength and courage. We need strength, determination and a firm position. I want to thank you, first of all, for joining these rotating hunger strikes. I have been on strike for five days today, but I didn’t even have to start it, the reprisals came earlier. I have been cut off from communications with three comrades for “reasons of security and good order of the establishment.” Since they lack the arguments or connections that lead to this intervention, they continue to violate our rights and freedoms through the nose, we will see what the court says. Although I know this goes on for a long time, I have set out to recover communications with my comrades.
The dentist and the oculist don’t even call me. Reprisals or a Hippocratic oath? Or hypocrite?
The objective of this strike is obvious and necessary: to demand the application of Articles 104.4 and 196 RP to the comrades with chronic diseases, their release without the fascist requirement of having to be in terminal phase, I mean, dead. We’re not gonna stand for this. At least they won’t shut us up. That’s clear to us. Continue reading
Prison of Nancy-Maxeville, France: Nuclear state = Police state
[Claim appeared on Monday, September 30, on the website nantes.indymedia.org].
On Friday, September 27th [2019], the Nancy-Maxeville prison was attacked to denounce the repression of the nuclear State.
In the pre-evening of the demo against the nuclear waste-dump – project CIGEO « Vent de Bure » at Nancy – we attacked (symbolically) the prison of Nancy-Maxeville, to send greetings to our comrades who are imprisoned and those who are charged by repression. Also to set a sign for a society without prisons in general.
We marked the walls with the paint, smash the windows of some administration buildings, launch smoke bombs and flares in the yard of the prison and greet the prisoners with pyrotechnics in the surrounding area. The action was protected by crowsfeets [metal devices to puncture car tyres] and burning barricades on the access roads.
The atomic state always implies the police state as well. The « technology of power » is generally linked to the centralization of power and has a need for a repressive system to protect it.
The answer of the state against the growing resistance in Bure is massive : people get controlled and observed, locked under interdiction of territory and even contact, getting arrested and imprisoned.
While thousands of people went to the streets on Saturday, to demonstrate against the planed waste-dump, we want to remind that some people already pay a high price for this struggle.
LOVE & RAGE to the prisoners
Fire to all prisons !
STOP CIGEO
Autonomous group
P. S.: With our action we also send smoke signs of solidarity to Hamburg/Germany where our comrades Loïc and the “three of the park bench” are kept in prisons.
[Text taken from attaque.noblogs.org].
Athens, Greece: Solidarity Demonstration for anarchist prisoner Giannis Dimitrakis
Domokos Prisons, Sunday, October 6th at 3:30 pm
GATHERING in Athens, POLITEXNEIO University, 11:00
On 12/6, the anarchists G. Dimitrakis and K. Sakkas are arrested along with the anarchist D. Syrianou (who was later released on restrictive terms) for the expropriation of money at AHEPA.
The two comrades are initially detained in Komotini and Nigrita Serres prisons respectively.
G.Dimitrakis is taken to the disciplinary offices of Komotini Prisons in revenge, in inhumane conditions, where he is held in cells of few sq.m. without windows, 6 people are stacked in two bunk beds, resulting in many inmates sleeping on the floor while deprived of the right to a courtyard. After two months, the comrade is transferred to Domokos Prisons.
This choice of our comrades is part of the diversity of the struggle and the path that shapes the movement in the raging social war. Along this route, there is always the risk of arrest, detention and prosecution.
That is why the world of struggle and solidarity is called upon to stand by those who are in prison as a result of their choices.
NO COMRADE ALONE IN THE HANDS OF THE STATE
DETERMINATION TO ANARCHISTS G. DIMITRAKIS & K. SAKKAS
SOLIDARITY TO THE COMRADE DIMITRA SYRIANOU
Assembly of solidarity with prisoners, fugitives and persecuted fighters
source
Translated by Act for freedom now!
more info:
News 25/6/19, concerning anarchist comrade Kostas Sakkas
Updates 19.6.19 , for anarchist comrades K. Sakkas and G. Dimitrakis
Thessaloniki : Video Solidarity intervention with the 3 arrested anarchists comrades
Thessaloniki: Gannis, Kostas and Dimitra, from the dungeons of the General Police headquarters
Thessaloniki, Greece: Updates 13.6.19, about the arrests of 3 anarchist comrades during an expropriation
About the arrests of 3 comrades during an expropriation
Greece: Update on the trial of imprisoned anarchist comrade Konstantinos Giagztoglou
via: 325
On Friday, September 20, 2019, in the special courtroom of the Korydallos prison, the trial against anarchist comrade Konstantinos Giagztoglou began.
CASE SUMMARY
Dinos was arrested in October 2017 in an anti-terrorist ambush when he left an apartment in central Athens, which he rented with false ID to help a persecuted comrade. He was arrested with an order issued by Special Investigator Eutychis Nikopoulos for the case of intercepted letter-bomb packages which were sent to officials of the European economic and political elite in the spring of that year. Since then he has been detained and accused of participating in a “terrorist organization”, as well as construction and dispatch of explosive devices to officials of financial institutions and rating agencies throughout Europe, as well as an attempted murder for the package that injured Loukas Papadimos, the former prime minister of Greece. The comrade has declared from the first moment of his arrest and in an open letter to the anarchist movement, that renting the apartment was a conscious choice in the context of revolutionary solidarity, but does not accept any of the other accusations.
At the same time, the German and French police were called to investigate the package received by the Federal Minister of Finance, Wolfgang Schäuble, which was identified by the security staff of the German ministry in Berlin, and for the package received by the IMF representative for Europe, Franks Jeffrey, which exploded at its headquarters in Paris. The recipients of the remaining 8 packages, identified by the ELTA Anti-Terrorist Detection Center in Kryoneri, in the order indicated in the case file, were the following: Continue reading
Sweden: Prisoner on hunger strike to the death
via 325
Long time civilian prisoner Natalia Pshenkina takes on struggle against the Swedish prison authorities with hungerstrike.
Natalia was sentenced for murder in 2005 and got in contact with political comrades in prison in 2011. She then contacted the current prisoner solidarity group Fånggruppen Syd – Prisoners group of southern sweden, for help with legal assistance. Natalias case has since been worked on as a civilan non-political side case on a personal level by individuals within the former group. Since 2018 Natalias case has more and more taken the form of organizing and fighting by juridical means for better conditions in the Swedish prison system. Natalia took this fight at the prison where she was earlier placed, KVA Ystad, in southern most of todays Sweden. The condition at KVA-Ystad has been growing worse for a long time by reasons such as over crowding and ending of all activities for prisoners due to severe lack of funding.
Because of Natalias struggle she was removed to high security prison Hinseberg in summer of 2019. There Natalia again took up the struggle and demanded better conditions for the prisoners. This was answered by utter silence by the authorities responsible for the complaints and demands by prisoners, as is the case in almost hundred percent of these requests.
Natalia was instead sent to a disciplinary facility and on from there to psychiatric prison, which sent her back. Since Monday September 9th Natalia is on total hunger strike,to the death, against the prison authorities at Hinseberg. She was last heard of on Sept 14th and then already after six days suffering from malnutrition and growing weariness. If more contact is possible with Natalia we will ask her to list the demands in her requests to JO which are the base for her hunger strike. As for the moment we don’t have these technical details. Natalias hunger strike is a fight against the prison authorities and an act of great solidarity also for other prisoners. Due to the sufferings she has takes for these desperate struggles, it is now high time to start counting Natalias case as a political struggle and support her as a prisoner after this measure. We thereby ask you to spread this message to trustworthy activists and group within the left wing groups and communities and to write to and support Natalia by letters or statements. We ask you to acknowledge that the Swedish prison system today stands as the worst example in western Europe after Italy and England. Political prisoners have been severely beaten and isolated for letters to them with political content. For prisoners classed as females, beatings are often precluded by stripping of the clothes with knife in front of male attendants and have been in severe cases been followed by being put naked in isolation cells for many days. Be careful what you write and be ready for the fact that Natalia may not anymore have the health to answer.
Our solidarity is now the only way that Natalia can pursue this struggle.
Members of prisoner solidarity groups in southern Sweden.
Natalia Pshenkina
Hinseberg 120
71892 Frövi
Sweden
Italy: Update on Operation Prometheus
via: 325
and insuscettibile di ravvedimento [IT/EN/FR]
Italy: “Prometeo” repressive operation – Update on Natascia and a few words on the reasons given to confirm her precautionary custody in prison (September 2019)
“Trials are set up for anarchists for what anarchists are, enemies of the State”.
A little more than one week ago, a public ordinance of the Milan tribunal was published, which outlined the reasons given during the review that confirmed her precautionary custody while she is awaiting trial. This previously happened with Robert and Beppe, who were also arrested on 21 May as part of a repressive operation called “Prometeo”.
A slew of reasons were subdivided into many paragraphs that were titled, “degree of harmfulness of rudimentary ordnances sent”, “the need for precautionary measures”, “evidence of serious indications of guilt” and the “juridical qualification of the offence in the perspective of some constituent elements, including under the profile of the psychological element”.
All indications point to the fact that it is what the accused represent as individuals, more than proof that is incontrovertible or incontestable. In fact the paragraph on the “degree of harmfulness of rudimentary ordnances sent” concludes with “that being said, even if we wanted to believe that the ordnances were not such as to put the lives of the recipients at risk […] the College considers that the crime and the potential […] are unveiled in any case – for the methods of conduct, the personalities of the accused and the context in which they were involved – a significant danger of the material authors, with consequent substantial irrelevance, in terms of a strictly precautionary assessment, of the effective attitude of the ordnances to disrupt the lives of people”. Continue reading
France: Update about Anarchist Vincenzo Vecchi arrested, convicted for the G8 in Genoa in 2001
Anarchist Vincenzo Vecchi was arrested on Thursday, August 8, 2019 in France. The arrest was carried out by the French cops and (as reported by the scum media) was made possible by the contribution of the agents of the “Service for the fight against extremism and internal terrorism” and of the Antiterrorism section of the DIGOS of Milan, which through “a close investigative connection” with the French police were able to identify the comrade. Against him two European arrest warrants had been issued by the prosecutors of Milan and Genoa.
Vincenzo had been “on the run” since 2012, following the final sentence of 11 years and six months that was imposed on charges of “devastation and pillage, robbery and carrying of weapons” following Black Bloc actions against the G8 summit that took place in Genoa, Italy in July 2001.
On Friday, 27 September, the Rennes Court of Appeal refused the application for release of the comrade pending extradition hearing. A new hearing is expected in the next few weeks in the same court to decide whether Vincenzo will be handed over to the Italian authorities.
On 23 August, the court ordered further information to the transalpine justice authorities, before 10 October, to clarify various points concerning convictions in Italy. In 2012, the comrade was sentenced to years in prison for actions during anti-G8 demonstrations in Genoa in 2001. Vincenzo was also sentenced to four years in prison for his participation in an anti-fascist demonstration in Milan. in 2006. About sixty relatives and companions were present before the Court of Appeal of Rennes where his request for release was studied. On 22 August, the investigating chamber ordered a feasibility investigation for possible house arrest with electronic surveillance.
At the hearing, on the 27 September, the lawyer of the Vincenzo, presented new elements: “The two European mandates are false and inaccurate.” “We have added a document that shows that one of the convictions in Italy” (note: the Milan case) has been fully executed.”
The court eventually followed the General Counsel’s submissions and refused the release of Vincenzo Vecchi. He will remain in detention in the center of Rennes-Vezin pending a future hearing.
Write / contact address:
Vincenzo Vecchi
Centre pénitentiaire de Rennes-Vezin
Rue du Petit Pré
35132 Vezin-le-Coquet
France
UK: Bang Up and Smash: Women’s Prisons, Probation and Bail Hostels , by Asbo
Bang-up and Smash is an overview of women’s prisons in the UK, and a political analysis of their physical and ideological construction.
From the moment of arrest, to coming home, Bang-up and Smash uses first hand experiences to critically engage with the procedures, concepts and apparatus the state relies on, and the economics behind the expansion of the prison industrial complex.
Bang-up and Smash is a practical guide to women’s prisons in the UK, and a rallying call to attack. Solidarity is a weapon, and abolition is not enough…
See Active Distribution for free pdf download or order print version
http://www.activedistributionshop.org/shop/books/4325-bang-up-and-smash-by-asbo.html
Also download pdf from Empty Cages website http://www.prisonabolition.org/bang-smash-womens-prisons-probation-bail-hostels/
For more information email asbo.hmp@riseup.net
Copy left. Share, discuss, dismiss…. comments welcome. Please circulate.
ASBO
Bulgaria: Antifascist Comrade Jock Palfreeman Paroled, Transferred to Immigration Detention
via: Anarchists Worldwide
20.09.19: According to the latest reports from Bulgarian media, antifascist comrade Jock Palfreeman, who was granted parole yesterday, has been released from Sofia Prison but transferred immediately to the Sofia Busmantsi Immigration Detention Centre. According to the media this is because Comrade Jock does not have a valid passport or identity documents. He will remain at the detention centre until he receives a new passport. It is not clear whether he will then remain in Bulgaria or leave the country.
Comrade Jock was filmed and photographed being escorted from the prison by plainclothes officers to a waiting car. Comrade Jock yelled out to waiting reporters “Thanks to Desislav Traykov, Deputy Chief of Prison!” before being bustled into the vehicle. Desislav Traykov recently resigned from his post following a scandal involving a 16 year old drug trafficker.
Many sectors of the Bulgarian political elite are outraged at the release of Comrade Jock, however media reports indicate that the decision to grant Jock parole is final.
