Nancy,Boris convicted on appeal for the fire of two relay antennas
sent to Lille Indymedia 01/22/24 by abc
translated by others a little later
On September 25, 2023, the Nancy Court of Appeal tried again the anarchist comrade Boris (transl. as is customary the word companion is used in the French, which highlights more the sense that everyone is fighting their own struggle), for having burned the relay antenna of the four telecoms operators, as well as that of the cops and gendarmes, in April 2020 on the Mont Poupet (Jura).
Following this attack which had mobilized in full capacity technicians of the Ministry of the Interior until the bottom of the Jura valley to try to restore their communications as soon as possible, the DNA of the comrade had been found on the spot. After months of eavesdropping and surveillance conducted by the Anti-Terrorist Group (GAT) of Dijon and members of the GIGN specially come from Versailles (transl. equiv. to SAS or Special Ops), and as part of an investigation entrusted to the Specialized Inter-regional Jurisdiction (JIRS) of Nancy, Boris had been arrested in Besançon on September 22, 2020.
Incarcerated on remand at the Nancy-Maxéville prison, he will be sentenced at first instance on May 19, 2021 to 4 years in prison, being two years definitely served with a recallable probation of two years (with the obligation to work, to reimburse the civil parties and prohibition on carrying a weapon). Tried without a lawyer and in a court guarded by riot police to prohibit access to all the solidarity companions present on the spot (under the pretext of restrictions related to covid-19), Boris appeals within the following days. He also releases a public letter from behind bars in June, in which he will defend the reasons for this double attack (https://sansnom.noblogs.org/archives/7006)
On August 7, 2021, and while the appeal date had been set for the end of September, a fire in the cell he was locked in seriously hurt him (most notably leaving him paralysed from the neck down). Plunged several months into a coma and prognosed as struggling for his life, his room was guarded by two gendarmes until the lifting of these conditions by the Court of Appeal of Nancy on September 20, 2021. The rest is a long medical journey of the comrade in different hospitals, where he had to continue to fight both against medical authority and other judicial bodies (notably against an attempt to put him under custodianship at the request of the chief physician of the palliative service of Besançon). On the side of the Court of Appeal of Nancy, while the fixing of a date of hearing for the fire of the antennas remained suspended sine die for two years in view of the state of health of Boris, it was in the middle of July of this year 2023 that they suddenly decided to reconvene. For this, they used the vile pretext that the comrade had managed to express himself in video from the hospital before another jurisdiction, in March 2023, in order to successfully inform a judge that he opposed any custodianship (of the State as well as of the family)!
Now housed in a center for adapted living, Boris finally chose to accept this hearing of September 25, 2023 before the Court of Appeal (telecommuted), so that this story could be over. While some companions were present in the courtroom of Nancy with his lawyer, others were alongside Boris in his room, especially to help him face the vagaries of wi-fi and tracheotomy. For the sake of the anecdote, Boris had also taken care to adjust the angle of the small camera so that appearing behind him and in front of the judges was the poster “From the Shadows of the Towns the Glimmer of Insurrection”. (https://cestdejatoutdesuite.noblogs.org/2013/01/11/de-lombre-des-villes-aux-lueurs-de-linsurrection/)
As for the hearing itself, everything was odious, as is the daily lot of any court where trash in robes allow themselves to judge the lives of others and send a large part of them into this instrument of institutional torture that is prison. With here any words can be used to characterise these kinds of scavengers when confronted with individuals who deviate from the norm. While the physical state of the comrade was well known to him, this did not prevent Judge Pascal Bridey from repeatedly asking the companion to raise his hand if he wanted to speak. Or the prosecutor Hadrien Baron to communicate in his indictment his sense of irony over the fact that Boris had been the victim of a cell fire (accidental according to the expert report) while he himself had burned antennas. A kind of divine punishment, in a way, according to this sub-shit in the service of the coldest of cold monsters. As for the lawyer of the company Orange, come down specially from the capital, he did not resist pointing out that if Boris was against technology, the latter could still be very useful to him… like this videoconference allowing him to be judged without having to move (sic).
For his part, Boris showed a big smile when reading the file by the judge, which included the fire of the technical room of an SFR antenna on Mont Bregille (Besançon) two weeks before those in the Jura, and for which the comrade had finally been dismissed. Just as he will do when reading this excerpt from his statement in custody, or when he asks, “How did you feel after committing this act?” , he said, “I was happy to have succeeded in this challenge, to have surpassed myself and to have dealt a blow to the development of this new technology”, before concluding, “I was all alone and I take responsibility for these facts”. Following this unambiguous summary, the judge asks Boris if he had something to add, more than three years after the facts. During this rare speech before the court, the comrade soberly let go: “that’s for sure, at the time I was determined“, before deciding to remain silent to let his lawyer continue in his place.
At the conclusion of this one-hour hearing, Boris’ lawyer first asked herself aloud about “the meaning of the sentence“ in view of the companion’s heavy medical situation, before specifying that even if the cell fire had not been accidental but a gesture of revolt or despair as it happens regularly in prison, it would not remove anything from the primary responsibility of the executioners who locked him and others up. Then she finished her argument on the fact that although Boris could no longer continue to put his ideas into practice in the same way as in April 2020, it was not because he had changed his convictions, on the contrary! Needless to say, the comrade was rather pleased with this explicit defence, and that at the judge’s final attempt at humiliation, asking him with a dripping paternalism, “Did you understand what your lawyer said?” , he replied from the dock “yes, and I agree with her!”.
For their part, the two lawyers of the civil parties (Orange and the judicial agent of the State for the antennae of the cops and gendarmes) coldly claimed their money for the damage caused, blaming as expected the great seriousness of this financial matter. As for the prosecutor, he had previously recalled that this attack was not isolated at the time (with 175 for the whole year 2020, almost one every two days), and that the State had then feared that their multiplication, “if they had been coupled with others against energy and water”, could bring “the country to its knees in three days”. He justified by this presumption of coordinated actions the means of anti-terrorist investigation deployed against the companion, as well as the heavy verdict of first instance (although the association of criminals was finally abandoned at the closure of the investigation)… before claiming now “taking into account the serious harm inflicted on Mr X during his detention”, a sentence of 8 months “covering his pre-trial detention” (according to his bad maths).
The final judgment fell on October 25, 2023, by unsurprisingly condemning Boris to a sentence equivalent to his pre-trial detention, ie one year in prison, plus 1,000 euros paid to Orange and the judicial agent of the State for their lawyers, plus 169 euros for appealing and being found guilty, plus a confirmation of the “reparations” granted to civil parties at first instance (about 91,500 euros to Orange, Enedis and the agent of the State, the other mobile companies having dropped the case). For information, it was communicated to the lawyers of the latter at the exit of the court that if ever their representatives dared to try to make a buck off the comrade in the near future (that is to say concretely on his disability benefit) it would certainly give them publicity that they would rather prefer to avoid…
At present, only one legal proceeding is pending, that in the hands of an investigating judge of Nancy concerning the cell fire. Once again, strength and courage to Boris, who also received in mid-November the famous ‘high-flight’ wheelchair, for which he thanks those who participated in financing it through solidarity, and who now offers him new opportunities for autonomy.
Anarchists in complicity and solidarity,
16 January 2024