On June 28, the Lamia Court of Appeal secured for the unrepentant murderer Korkoneas the mitigating circumstance which opens the way for his release for the second time. No thinking person was surprised by this decision, which was the logical continuation of the favourable criminal treatment of the cop-killers by the civil justice system.
A look back at the recent post-communist history of incidents of police brutality confirms our claim. Dozens of deaths from police guns and batons were covered up under tons of media mud, Administrative Inquiries that ended up in drawers, Disciplinary Prosecutions that were withdrawn, court decisions that put them on easy street or exonerated them, political decisions that rewarded their murderous services to the Greek state directly or indirectly.
It must be made clear that we are not faced with the exception but with the absolute rule where civil justice plays its role. The institutional defence of the state monopoly on violence.
The political and historical responsibility of those whose attitude contributed to the depoliticisation of the case is enormous, those who made sure that the events were presented in a way that was detached from the historical and social environment in which they took place, those who with political expediency established in the courtroom of Lamia a climate of confrontation of legal arguments as if it were a simple criminal and not a political case, where criminal laws and legal interpretations will allow developments cut off from the social factor. Continue reading Greece: Text by Nikos Romanos on the release of Korkoneas cop killer of Alexis Grigoropoulos.
The punitive mechanism and its illusion of its penitentiary character collapse in the face of the fierce resistance of the prisoners where they consciously choose to stand up against the conformity, discipline and compromise that domination tries to impose.
Comrade Giannis Michailidis, without renouncing his political identity, without signing statements of repentance, is fighting a long and difficult struggle for his freedom against the special regime of exception that the judicial process, bourgeois justice, has formed. Prison is a mechanism of coercion, the ultimate mechanism of control and recording, a system of surveillance and extermination, of forced transformation of character, but Giannis has endured.
Continue reading Text of imprisoned comrades for Giannis Michailidis (Greece) →