New arrests against anarchists in Barcelona and Manresa

Nieuws, gepost door: nn op 28/10/2015 10:09:03

Wanneer: 28/10/2015 - 20:45

New arrests against anarchists in Barcelona and Manresa

Summary:
28 October 2015, 7 anarchist comrades arrested in Barcelona, 2 in Manresa. 8 houses and social centers in the neighborhoods of Sant Andreu, Clot, Gràcia, and Sants raided, including the Ateneu Llibertàri de Sants and La Revoltosa in Clot. They will be taken to Madrid where it will be decided in the next days if they are to be released or imprisoned pending trial. The operation takes place the day after Monica and Francisco were brought before the Audiencia Nacional in Madrid, to decide whether they would be given an additional two years of preventive detention under the anti-terrorist law (the two comrades, who were also imprisoned and absolved in Chile in the so-called "Bombs Case" were arrested in Barcelona in November 2013).

Translated from Catalan
http://www.bllibertari.org/un-company-i-amic-detingut-a-manresa.html

28 October 2015
This morning, starting at 5am, there were raids in two houses in Manresa and two people were arrested on the orders of the Audiencia Nacional, acting against anarchist struggles. Units of the mobile brigade of the Mossos d'Esquadra also carried out raids and arrests in various houses and social centers in Barcelona. As per usual, units from the Information Brigade seized materials, including electronic equipment, money, and propaganda. This operation is a continuation of the repressive strike known as the Pandora case, which was carried out in December of 2014 with the arrest of 11 comrades who are currently awaiting trial, and is related to Operation Piñata and Operation Columna, realized by the Policia Nacional.

This new repressive blow coincides with the hearing in the Audiencia Nacional to revisit the decision of preventive detention for the two imprisoned comrades, Monica and Francisco. We understand these arrests as a police and mediatic effort to facilitate the prolongation of the imprisonment of the two comrades, who have already been locked up for two years in preventive. This very day the high court confirmed the prolongation of their preventive detention. The principal objective of the State is to crush the anarchist struggles that it has singled out as the number one internal enemy. We understand that the figure of an internal enemy is necessary for a democratic State to justify "exceptional" methods of repression that supposedly should not exist in a society of "rights and liberties."

Once again, we must signal the collaboration of the Audiencia Nacional [high court in Madrid] with the repressive forces of the Generalitat [the autonomous government of Catalunya], the Mossos d'Esquadra. Equally, the role of the media continues to give credibility to police sources and focus the case on the figure of the GAC, a public organization that in the police and media imagination has become a terrorist association.

In order to confront the repression and overcome the fear the State wishes to sow, we call for the following protests:

Manresa Pl. Sant Domènec a les 20h

Barcelona Pl. de Diamant del barri de Gràcia a les 20h

Photos of solidarity banners\
http://barcelona.indymedia.org/newswire/display/499948/index.php

Solidarity website
efectopandora.wordpress.com



Wie: 
nn

Solidarity demos now in Barcelona and Madrid for imprisoned comrades.
https://twitter.com/syndicalisms/status/659469729292251136



Wie: 
nn

Spain: Pandora 2: New comrades arrested and serial raids in Barcelona / Manresa

Wednesday, October 28, 2015 at around 6am, the mossos d’esquadra (Catalan Autonomous Police) on orders of the Audiencia Nacional in Madrid [anti-terrorist prosecutor] conducted ten raids against anarchist places (Ateneo Libertario de Sants and the Revoltosa Social Centre) and anarchists’ homes in Barcelona and Manresa. Nine comrades were arrested, seven male and two female. This operation is part of the Pandora operation against GAC (Grupos Anarquistas Coordinados), accused of being the local branch of the FAI / FRI.

In December 2014 seven comrades were arrested and then released on bail a month later with the same charges, and some details of the attacks attributed to the GAC, in Barcelona and Manresa, in addition to searches at the libertarian Athénées of Sant Andreu and Poble Sec and the squat Kasa de la Muntanya.

In March 2015 in Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Valencia and Grenada, during Operation Piñata, 17 places were raided, then in a second investigation into the GAC (6 social centres – including La Quimera, the 13-14, and La Magdalena and the Enredadera in the neighbourhoods of Lavapies, Vallecas and Tetuán in Madrid, La Redonda de Granada, and 11 private homes), resulting in the arrest of 14 people. Five were imprisoned and released three months later. In total, with the last operation, nearly 60 people have been arrested and accused of belonging to the GAC (and more than twenty indicted).

Once again the comrades are caught between the terrorism of the Catalan state and the terrorism of the Spanish national state who are competing with each other (there are two investigations at both these levels against GAC), even causing dissension of politicians in the Catalan nationalists: CUP immediately declared that the Catalan Mossos should not have obeyed a request from the Spanish Audiencia Nacional and the Spanish Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz responded today on Telemadrid that he would not hesitate to use Article 155 of the Constitution which allows the government to “give instructions” to force the autonomous authorities to “work for the general interest”. Likewise, the spokesman of the Catalan cops’ union (Sindicato de Policias de Cataluña SPC)) intervened to declare that there was “nothing new” in this operation against the comrades, as it was going on for a long time now.

Yesterday October 28 a demonstration was held at 20h in plaza del Diamant, where 1,300 people went through the districts of Sants and Gràcia behind a banner signed by a collective in Twitter style, already criticized elsewhere (#JoTambeSocanarquista). Although a number of bins were burned, and several windows of banks broken (plus journacops pushed), one could question the tranquil presence of 6 deputies of the Parliament of Catalonia and two councillors from Barcelona (all CUP party, left separatist allied with the new regional government since the elections of 27 September). Other demonstrations were held on the evening of the raids in Manresa, Igualada, Berga, Zaragoza and Madrid.

The press, which speaks of “actions of terrorism of the anarchist insurrectionalist kind” attributed to GAC, were also able to open a fruitful dialogue with the spokespersons of the Sants Athénée who gave a press conference along with neighbourhood collectives , lawyers and Embat (libertaro-leftist organization that promotes “people’s power”), pointing out that the cops had “found neither weapons nor explosives in the raids, but books, brochures and banners” in their athénée *. Poverty of preventive dissociation (what do they know about what might have been found elsewhere?)!

Finally, on October 27, the eve of this new repressive blow, the Audiencia Nacional decided to extend the imprisonment of Mónica and Francisco, arrested in November 2013, up to two additional years’ remand. They are also accused of terrorism and belonging to GAC, the state suspects them of having led the attack against Zaragoza Cathedral in October 2013.

Tomorrow Friday, October 30, the nine new arrested in Barcelona and Manresa will pass before the investigating judge Juan Pablo Gonzálezin Madrid (Audiencia Nacional) to possibly be charged with “belonging to a criminal organization with terrorist aims”.

Freedom for all!

For fun, we will also quote another pearl of the representative of the libertarian athénée of Sants nicknamed Llibert: “For years the police have been trying to link anarchism and violence, but this is not the reality: we are areas of construction and defence of housing rights, labour rights and against sexist violence” (El movimiento libertario denuncia una “operación política” tras las detenciones del caso Pandora, El Diario, 29/10/2015 – 12:43h)
[Synthesis according Indymedia Barcelona and the Spanish press]

Source: http://actforfree.nostate.net/?p=21538#more-21538

Foto: 


Wie: 
nn

Updates on Pandora II, New Arrests in Madrid

Pandora II, new arrests in Madrid, translation of statement by arrestees:

On Friday, October 30, the nine anarchists arrested two days earlier in Barcelona and Manresa in the second phase of Operation Pandora were brought before the Audiencia Nacional, a high court in Madrid. Two of them were released on provisional liberty pending trial, six of them were released on a relatively high bail, and one of them was given preventive detention, remanded to prison until trial. All of them are charged with criminal organization under Spain's anti-terrorism laws. Specifically, they are accused of belonging to the GAC-FAI-FRI, a fictitious organization stemming from the police's imaginative combination of the GAC, a public anarchist group responsible for publishing a book criticizing democratic government, and the FAI-FRI, which happens to be the only international anarchist organization considered terrorist by the European Union. Police allege that a wave of sabotage actions and politically motivated arsons that occurred between 2012 and 2013 were carried out by their fictitious organization, though neither of the two actual groups in question claimed or has been connected to any of the attacks (nor was anyone injured in any of them).

The Barcelona anarchist who is currently locked up awaiting trial was already on provisional liberty awaiting trial for charges stemming from the March 2012 general strike, in which he is accused of damages against the Corte Inglés, a large shopping mall on Plaça Catalunya. He can be written at:

Enrique Costoya Allegue
CP Madrid V Soto del Real
Ctra M-609, km3,5 Módulo 15
28791 Soto del Real (Madrid)
Spain

The arrests occurred the same day that the Audiencia Nacional decreed another two years of preventive imprisonment for Monica and Francisco, two anarchists from Chile who were already acquitted of all charges in the “Bombs Case” in that country, and who are currently accused of placing a small bomb in a cathedral in Zaragoza, an action claimed by the “Commando Mateo Moral” which produced no injuries.

In a common pattern, the Pandora II arrestees were involved in supporting those arrested in the first phase of Operation Pandora, who in turn were involved in supporting Monica and Francisco. Parallel to Operation Pandora, carried out by the Catalan police, in March 2015 the Spanish police launched Operation Piñata. In total, 63 anarchists have been arrested under the anti-terrorism law in the last three years in the Spanish state.

As is now usual, relatively large solidarity protests occurred in many cities across the Spanish state on the heels of the latest arrests. At least in Catalunya, the feeling of many people on the street is that the operations are some kind of political scam, given that few people perceive any kind of anarchist terrorism. However, a common sentiment is that the investigation, carried out by the Audiencia Nacional, is another attempt by the Madrid government to interrupt the Catalunya independence process, as though the anarchists were the radical wing of the independence movement. This widely expressed opinion does not take into account the fact that in an independent Catalan state, anarchists would be public enemy number 1, and they have been the most vocal critics of the independence process who do not support the domination of Catalunya by the Spanish state.

It is probably no coincidence that the Catalan police did not carry out the corruption-related raid against the Pujol family, a centerpiece of Catalan politics, in another investigation ordered by the Madrid courts, yet they were the ones in charge of the raids and arrests against anarchists that same week. Although all evidence acquired has been sent to Madrid, the Catalan police will retain copies in their extensive files on anarchist, in the event of an independent Catalan state.

On the other hand, it is also necessary to point out that the CUP, a far-left activist platform turned political party that is now one of the most sizeable and important minority parties in the Catalan parliament, vocally expressed solidarity with the anarchists the day of the arrests, serving to dilute the government narrative of “anarchist terrorism”.

Madrid update:
On Wednesday, November 4, five more anarchists were arrested in Madrid under the anti-terrorist law, also accused of belonging to the GAC. In this case, however, the Policia Nacional (who carried out Operation Piñata) are accusing them of the explosive artifacts that were placed in the cathedrals of La Almudena (Madrid) and El Pilar (Zaragoza). Two comrades, Monica and Francisco, have already sat two years in prison accused of the latter action, and evidence the police fed to the media upon their arrest suggested they acted as a pair, and showed blurry surveillance footage showing two people, not more. Nonetheless, the police have shown that they can claim the GAC to be dismantled and then arrest another 14 supposed members, and they can arrest as many people for the same illegal action as they want, and the media will never question them, on the contrary, it will only continue to act as their mouthpiece. In that vein, and with typical racism, the newspaper La Razon duly parroted the xenophobic police emphasis on the Latin American origins of three of the latest arrests in Madrid.

The total number of anarchists arrested on anti-terrorism charges in the Spanish state in the last three years is now 68.

Among the numerous protests and solidarity actions that have occurred in Madrid in recent days, a number of people have been injured or identified by police, and heavy fines may follow.



Wie: 
nn

Zie ook:

Spaanse worgwet in actie: razzia's tegen anarchisten, https://www.indymedia.nl/node/25871
De doos van Pandora en de naaidoos van het Spaanse antiterrorisme/Pandora's box and the hotchpotch of Spanish antiterrorism, https://www.indymedia.nl/node/25887
Privacy is geen terrorisme, https://www.indymedia.nl/node/26032
Spanish State: Conditional bail for comrades detained during Operation Pandora, https://www.indymedia.nl/node/26413
Dawn raids on squats in Spanish state, https://www.indymedia.nl/node/27335
Spaanse politie arresteert 27 personen bij operatie tegen anarchistische groepen, https://www.indymedia.nl/node/27374
Statement from the arrestees of Pandora II, https://www.indymedia.nl/node/30428
Spanje: Monica en Francisco veroordeeld tot 12 jaar celstraf, https://www.indymedia.nl/node/32776
Over de arrestatie van een anarchiste in Barcelona op verdenking van onteigeningen in Duitsland, https://www.indymedia.nl/node/32957 .


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