Athens: for the anarchist comrade Harris Mantzouridis
On 13/10/21 the state mechanism through the ELAS ( general greek police} and more specifically the ΥΔΕΖΙ (crimes against property) service proceeded with the kidnapping of comrade Harry Mantzouridis outside his house, where he lives with his partner and their child. The tactic is well known and much used over the years, they surrounded him, ostensibly to take him to the GADA (Attica General Police Directorate) under the pretext of arraignment because after an “anonymous phone call” (sic) a week earlier, he was suspected of robbery and was summarily found handcuffed, beaten before the eyes of the surprised neighbourhood and surrounded by the security guards.
We know the character of the police officers and if there is a reason to analyze and enumerate their atrocities, it is simply so that one does not forget who we are up against and what they are capable of doing. For the organs of the state it is just a Wednesday where they use disproportionate violence to stomp on a man in front of his young child, it is just a Wednesday when they handcuffed a man who is not charged with anything and according to them is indicted, it is just a Wednesday when they defame a man and spread the word that he molested a young girl, it was just a Wednesday.
The developments from that moment onwards will be rapid, proving the pre-arranged indictment of the comrade and the unprecedented method of the police to fabricate guilty parties. It is clear that in recent times the ΕΛΑΣ ( general greek police )has been seeking the final blow to those who stubbornly resist the pervasive social numbness that prevails. The cases are numerous, the instances where the state attacked the radical part of society in the years of the pandemic are countless. Now we are seeing a substantial upgrading in that it is moving away from brutal repression at the level of street and mass demands to criminal repression aimed at the physical elimination of as many militants as possible. The constant and “infallible” weapon of state repression has been DNA for several years now. Lately, the cases of prosecutions with the sole evidence of DNA have been increasing, here we have to explain what this evidence means and how it is created by the police authorities and their laboratories. Almost all of the prosecutions involving DNA are carried out with mixtures of biological material found on movable objects. DNA in itself is not evidence (not even in pioneering America, which practiced DNA mixture analysis for decades until finally rejecting it as unsafe) and the reason it is not and could not be evidence is that even if it is fully identified with an individual the ease of its transfer has proven to be scientifically frighteningly easy.
Which clearly shows that the existence of DNA at one point does not imply the existence of that individual at the corresponding point. But beyond that, in the cases of agitator prosecutions (and beyond) the evidence is mostly mixtures of DNA from two or more people, which practically means countless possible combinations from which corresponding DNA types can easily be derived. The same is true in the case of comrade Harry, accused of a robbery that took place in 2018 in the area of Zografou in Athens ,with the only evidence being a DNA mixture found in a storeroom near the site of the robbery. Of course, because the police service knows how volatile and precarious DNA is as the only evidence, it did not fail to create the necessary climate of terror in order to achieve the pre-trial detention of the comrade. Thus, in addition to the mainstream media, which reproduced the police scenario of a dangerous anarchist terrorist, they took care to include another DNA mixture in the case file, on another mobile object (glove) found two blocks away from an arson at a car dealership in 2009. What is unprecedented in this case is not so much that a case was pulled from the file 12 years later, but the blatant mention of it in the case file in that without being evidence for a further charge (that of arson) it is included purely to help create a climate. So despite the fact that no incriminating evidence whatsoever was found in the comrade’s home, despite the fact that he was working every day and providing for his family’s financial needs, despite being the father of a young child and having a clean criminal record, he was remanded in custody.
As a result of this condition, the comrade’s mental health was shaken when suddenly, when he had just returned from work, he found himself being transferred to Korydallos. The first episode occurred on entering the waiting area of the prison where, during a panic attack, he was seriously injured in the head. He was immediately taken to Attica Hospital where he was given appropriate medical treatment. In Attica, his mental health deteriorated and it was deemed necessary to transfer him in order to protect his physical integrity. From there he was finally transferred to the Dafni psychiatric hospital, where he has been hospitalised to date. In Dafni (Psychiatric Hospital of Athens) and after medication he shows signs of improvement and so his transfer to the Korydallos prison was decided. This was a new stressor that led the comrade to another intense crisis which again endangered his life and integrity. The point of reporting all of this is not to detail the state of the comrade’s mental health, but to demonstrate an ongoing state crime taking place in Harry’s body and mind. The suffocating pressure created by the police and his unevidenced pre-trial detention was the trigger for an outburst that intensified and continues to shake the mental health of the comrade.
For us, mental health issues are neither taboo nor stigmatising as capitalistically constructed society defiantly imposes. We know that each and every one of us is experiencing a constant war of attrition just by living in a voracious system. All the more so when one is in the crosshairs of power and is directly subjected to violence and oppression. We therefore know that the responsibility lies primarily with the state apparatus itself, i.e. the capitalist system in general, and then with its organs, the police, judges and other guardians of power.
We demand his immediate release from prison so that he no longer suffers this constant torture. Every day that the comrade is under guard in Dafni (Psychiatric Hospital of Athens …) is another day of cruelty.
Comrades and friends of Harris
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translated by Act for freedom now!
