Comrades, we are writing to you from the penitentiary hellholes of Korydallos and Avloras, two more detention centres, both of which aim at our physical confinement and remorse of our political conscience. By making our case public, we would like the reason for our detention and evidence of the practices of the EΛ.ΑΣ National Police used against us to come out.
In the early hours of 14 November 2021 we didn’t stop during a check carried out by a DIAS cops bikes team in the area of New Faliro. Immediately a chase was launched against us by a civilian vehicle that did not bear the characteristics of the service. As white people, we did not receive a plethora of bullets, but in the area of Moschato, the car rammed us while we were moving and threw us on the road (with a high risk of being fatally injured). Our arrest was linked to an attack on the Piraeus traffic police earlier that night, which took place more than three kilometers from the checkpoint (the checkpoint was being controlled by fixed units outside the stinking Skye channel). We were taken to the ΓΑΔΑ, (Athens Police HQ) where we refused to give fingerprints, which, as well as genetic material, were ordered to be compulsorily taken a day before we went before an interrogator in an attempt to identify us with the evidence found in the attack and with previous cases. With invalid evidence against us, it was decided to remand us in custody on the pretext of identical clothing, as shown by video footage from the department.
This case is a fiasco and a desperate attempt by the police to win a major victory and legitimize the new criminal code in the eyes of the public. A decisive role in this is played by the state disinformation media, which first ran to prejudge us, using against us evidence with no legal basis – they talked about a yafka house(safe-house), an explosives manufacturing plant and spread false news about the first Molotov cocktail detention in Greece, thus exaggerating the work of the police and the necessity of the changes in the criminal code. The changes to article 272 and how they relate to the changes to 264 and 270 are intended to spread terror in the anarchist/anti-racist movement, to anyone who resists or questions the sovereignty of the state and its partners. As anarchists we are not surprised by this case and how it has developed so far, we do not believe in bourgeois justice and have no illusions about who it serves.
For Korydallos: Absolutely no one will be surprised by the following reference to the inhumane treatment and degrading living conditions that prevail in this facility. A well-established business that has long since exceeded its capacity for prisoners is strutting behind its luxurious laundering facade.
As an indication, the majority of the 6 square meters correspond to 4 carcasses of people suffocating not only for the freedom they were deprived of, but literally for breath. It’s kind of funny how the only things that move around here are the bugs and cockroaches that go from cell to cell, body to body, food to food. Of course, they too are persecuted by man. From the shelf a book by Kafka looks at us and smiles. A store that is unable to meet our pharmaceutical needs, understaffed key organic positions such as medical and educational. Recently a fellow inmate who was infected by the pandemic passed away, the responsibility of course lies with the central management of the shop, which is systematically unable and indifferent to take effective measures for the care of the inmates. In the ritual of sentencing there is always an emphatic affirmation of power. The ritual of torture, respectively, is a piece of the unseen side of the penal process that embodies and satisfies its cannibalistic tendencies. A typical example is the incident on 4/1/22, when a man was left on the floor of the doctor’s office until he was finished. The murderous attitude held towards him by the human guards is actually the cause of his death. They vulgarly disrespected a man who could not move or communicate. In his last breaths, the otherwise impartial prison doctor told him “if you don’t get up, I will leave you there,” and he did.
A silent event that belongs to the sad daily life of the institution and confirms that civil justice and the criminal system neither reform nor correct, but instead punish and avenge. Only the human guards hold their positions well, who, taking advantage of the prison service’s standard tactic of silencing and exterminating the prison population, traffic in heroin, taking advantage of misery and human suffering, everything to maintain the altar of obscenity, their rotten system.
For the Avlona prison: The living conditions in the wings of this rotting old building are intolerable, a building so old and poorly maintained, which “accommodates” young people without offering them even basic hygiene, so that their living is characterized by lack of dignity.
Even the gym facilities, which are one of the few things a prisoner can spend some time in from his miserable daily life, consist of a single bar and a crooked discus, and these with access only for a few hours during the day. As for the sanitary conditions in each cell, I will tell you that the hollow walls that confine us are filled with countless cockroaches, while the cleaning of the cell is both an expense and a practical burden to those who reside in it, since the service does not take care to supply us with basic hygiene materials. The 4 beds assigned to each cell often have to accommodate many more people, who either sleep on the floor, making it difficult for the other prisoners to access the toilet and kitchen area, or 2 people sleep on a single mattress, making it uncomfortable for the 2 who can hardly sleep (one cell accommodated 10 people for about a month). Again, the food portions are not sufficient for everyone and often there are cells that end up without food, especially if they do not go straight out with their plates. Every day, especially in the evenings, it is very common for the power to go off, so that several times, unless some prison officer cares, prisoners are left like this all night and freeze to death, since the heaters stop working. Recently there have been many cases of coronavirus, resulting in most of the prison wings being quarantined for 1-2 weeks, forcing prisoners to stay locked in their cells, with the irresponsibility of the prison officers bordering on madness, leaving them locked up without giving them even 10 minutes to clean, thus the cell fills up with garbage which they have no means of throwing away. A tactic of extermination, showing once again how little the lives of the prisoners matter to them (there is a correctional officer who many times on duty is trying to or has fallen asleep, while if any prisoner needs something he won’t even get out of his chair, his feet spread on the desk and disregarding their needs).
A new great struggle is beginning, but we are not alone and we felt this from the first moment of our imprisonment, from the practical solidarity shown by comrades inside and outside the prisons. The hellhouses are being torn down, but not consciences. Now that everything fits into nothing we have found the strength to write about all that fills us with rage. They want to silence us, but they don’t know what they’ve set off. Neither your incarceration nor your misanthropy can suppress what we feel.
You unrepentant enemies with your penitentiary illusions, one day we will meet you out there, we will fight from everywhere for all that you have deprived us of. Rest assured compliance was never, nor will it be, a road we will travel, the path has been charted and the fire within us will not be extinguished. Good strength in the struggles ahead, in the better days that will not come, but we will bring them. We from behind the bars and you from the streets together will abolish the state and the laws. Until the last prison is torn down.
