From comrades in Barcelona we have been informed that five members of ‘Black Flag’ have been detained in dawn raids on the anarchist-syndicalist CNT centre in Sabadell near Barcelona, Spain. They are accused of belonging to a terrorist group. The Police broke into and searched the Anarchist Workers Centre (Ateneo Libertari) in Sabadell. The operations included another raid and search in Sabadell and two more in other municipalities in Catalonia, one of them in Avignon (Bages County). On the same day police evicted the Can Piella ‘Land and Liberty’ squat. International solidarity is requested.

UPDATE: a statement from the FIJL (Federation of Iberian Libertarian Youth) has been released and is published below at end of article.

Thirty Mossos police have now taken over the anarchist centre in Sabadell, after smashing down the door down before 9.00 a.m. according to a member of the CNT union that occupies part of the premises with Bandera Negra (‘Black Flag’). The ‘Mossos’ – whose origins are military – have a long history of carrying out beatings in police stations and it is hoped comrades will not be harmed.

The Ateneo de Sabadell, which is owned by the CNT, is a space open to all working people of Sabadell, which many groups and people from Sabadell and elsewhere have used for recreational, cultural and social events over many years. Other citizens of the city, including the 15M Take The Streets movement and Occupy, make use of the building and have begun demonstrations in support of the five arrested. The premises at Sabadell have now been sealed off.

The five arrested people are scheduled to appear before the Audiencia Nacional in Madrid on Friday. In addition to Sabadell, sources close to the anarchist movement say that Catalonian regional police are launching further raids at the behest of the Audiencia Nacional in other towns in Catalonia.

The following statement has been received regarding reports of five anarchists arrested on ‘terrorism’ charges after a raid by Mossos police, yesterday, on the premises of the Ateneo Llibertar in Sabadell, near Barcelona, Spain.

Statement of Solidarity:

From ‘Black Flag’ (FIJL – Madrid):

Today, the information our group has received through Catalan comrades is that the High Court has issued several arrest warrants, five in all, but when we write this statement , they can confirm only one. The media, meanwhile, have been devoted to half-truths. Because the name of our group (and the link to our old blog) has been widely reported in the media and social networks (and using our seal and other graphic allusions to our group) we want to clarify that the Madrid ‘Bandera Negra’ (Black Flag) Group are part of the Iberian Federation of Libertarian Youth, though for obvious geographical reasons we have nothing to do with the group in Sabadell that were kidnapped by police on Wednesday 15. This is surely obvious to anyone who pauses to compare the information – at least to see that the territorial scope of our group is limited to Madrid.

That said, we give our complete solidarity with the arrested person (we insist that we know that so far there is only one) as well as any others who are involved with Llibertari Ateneo de Sabadell and who have been kidnapped by the Mossos d’Esquadra by order of the Court. As far as we know, this whole mess is due to a fragile Facebook page and consequent charges of praising terrorism. This has served as an excuse for the state mercenaries to enter the Libertarian Ateneo de Sabadell and steal various materials as well as sow fear and doubt in the Catalan anarchist movement and the rest of the state territory. This the State shows its hard face again and treats us to a show of force to remind us that it retains its full power and repression, ready to fall on anyone who questions the logic of this system and dares fight back.

The media has followed a recognisable pattern in recent years in trying to criminalise anarchism with arrests and the slandering of anarchist militants. A constant barrage of press and television reports has described us as terrorists so as to provide targets and so legitimise repression in the eyes of the public. Press, police and judges act in unison to isolate, criminalise and persecute the anarchist ideal.

Again, the National Court exposes its fascist, totalitarian origin, pursuing dissidents against the authoritarian regime in which we live. For over a year, harassment and arrests by the Spanish State have been carried out against the anarchist movement and this harassment has increased exponentially. With regard to the many arrests that have happened in Barcelona since the strike of 29-M, all arrests and fines have been against anarchists. Therefore, we continue to denounce repressive actions of the state and its tools in its attempts to exercise ever greater social control, such as via schooling (which is also an indoctrinating element), via the magistrates, via the police and via the media. We will continue to denounce their repressive role and continue to fight for the freedom of all prisoners and against any authority.

For us repression is the logical reason behind these threats. But we refuse to accept the role of helpless victim and pretend to be perfect citizens who have never broken a plate. We are anarchists and we put our emphasis on propaganda and cultural diffusion, but we also believe in the need to fight against all that oppresses us, outside parliament and other institutions of the system. Solidarity and direct action are both theoretical and practical approaches with which we function day to day. We will not bow down. We will respond.

Black Flag Group – Iberian Federation of Libertarian Youth

http://juventudeslibertariasmadrid.wordpress.com/

http://cntsabadell.wordpress.com/2013/05/16/comunicado-del-grupo-bandera-negra-fijl-madrid-ante-la-represion-en-sabadell/

More sources:

http://thefreeonline.wordpress.com/

http://www.rtve.es/noticias/20130515/mossos-registran-ateneu-llibertari-sabadell-tras-orden-audiencia-nacional/663640.shtml

http://www.lavanguardia.com/local/sabadell/20130515/54373547669/ateneu-llibertari-sabadell-niega-vinculacion-bandera-negra.html

http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2013/05/15/barcelona/1368615222.html

http://www.vilaweb.cat/noticia/4115369/20130515/detinguts-lateneu-llibertari-sabadell-acusats-pertanyer-bandera-negra.html

http://www.larazon.es/detalle_normal/noticias/2281105/espana/cinco-anarquistas-detenidos-en-sabadell-por-en#.UZQ36qzLcq1

In the evening of 14th of April, comrade V.N. was seriously wounded. He was attacked by a group of 5 Nazis in the region of the metro station Dorogožitsi. Young “patriots” used knives and cut arteries of activist in three places, and also knocked out several teeth. Besides these, V.N. got a brain concussion.

V.N. has recovered well from the attack, his jaw was operated and next phase is recovering the teeth. Thank you for everyone, who was concerned and showed us solidarity! Your letters provided more support for the comrades, and donations were helpful with financing the costs of the operation.   Solidarity is our weapon!

Right-wing Tory Justice Minister Chris Grayling’s declaration in late April that prisoners would now be made to “earn” basic privileges by “working harder” probably wasn’t just the usual “popularist” promise to stick the boot into one of the most powerless and demoralised social groups. During times of economic austerity and potential social unrest scapegoating marginalised and outcast groups like prisoners, is always useful as a means of deflecting and re-focusing public anger away from the true culprits of the country’s economic ruination, in this case Grayling’s pals in the city of London. Behind the rhetoric and the guise of “getting tough” on prisoners is the actual purpose of the prison
industrial complex: to turn prisons into privatised forced-labour factories.

Prisoners are, it seems, to become like third-world workers, a source of  extremely cheap and compliant labour for multi-national corporations, a practice which of course draws its inspiration from the U.S. Where one of the largest prisoner populations in the world have increasingly replaced outside unionised labour as a source of profit. Under the U.N. Charter of Human  Rights forced labour is of course unlawful, but prisoners don’t seem to count, and during times of economic crisis and a burgeoning prison population there is a cold rational in the capitalist intention to focus its rapacity on those behind bars.

It also harks back to the original purpose of the Victorian-inspired model of what was then a modern prison system: to instil conformity and the work ethic in the rebellious poor. After decades of the control and containment model
prisons are to be returned to their original function as places where the errant poor are taught their true place as producers of profit for the rich.

Of course the tabloids who cheer Grayling’s “get tough” treatment of prisoners and whip-up mob support for him omit to mention or question why prisoners are being forced to do work that its unemployed readers could be invited to do
on a legally-enforced minimum wage? And whilst large corporations and companies constantly “rationalise” their operations by shedding labour and creating unemployment, some of these same companies are using prison cheap labour to top-up profits, all with the willing assistance of Grayling and his rich and powerful colleagues in the Tory government.

Not only is prison slave-labour an absolute negation of the basic human rights of prisoners, which Grayling has now prevented any legal challenge to from  within jails by stopping legal aid for prisoner litigation cases, but also the removal of a means of employment for many of those outside prison who are influenced by the lies and witch-hunting of the tabloids and an increasingly right-wing political establishment.

Grayling should also ponder this: forcing a slave-labour regime as a condition for basic privileges on prisoners serving increasingly longer sentences might just be a catalyst for some extremely expensive prison repairs further down the line.

John Bowden
6729
HMP Shotts
May 2012

Statement by Jerry:

My name is Gerald Koch and I have been subpoenaed to a federal grand jury based in the Southern District of New York regarding the 2008 Times Square Military Recruitment Center bombing. This is my second subpoena concerning this matter; I was also subpoenaed in June of 2009. I refused to testify at that time based on the assertion of my First, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment rights, as I will be doing again for the duration of this grand jury. During the first grand jury, the government informed my lawyers that it was believed that I was at a bar in 2008 or 2009 where a patron indicated knowledge of who had committed the bombing. When I was first subpoenaed to the grand jury in 2009 I had no recollection of any such incident— a fact that I expressed publically. Now, almost 4 years later, I still do not recall the alleged situation.

Given that I publically made clear that I had no knowledge of this alleged event in 2009, the fact that I am being subpoenaed once again suggests that the FBI does not actually believe that I possess any information about the 2008 bombing, but rather that they are engaged in a ‘fishing expedition’ to gain information concerning my personal beliefs and political associations.

Over the past few decades, the FBI has demonstrated a consistent pattern of harassment and illegal surveillance of anarchists and other radicals not only here in New York, but also across the country. Throughout this time, federal grand juries (incredibly secretive proceedings that do not permit one’s lawyers to be present) have played a significant role; a federal grand jury is authorized to ask questions about anything and anyone, and often the declared intention is simply a mask to disguise the actual goal of acquiring information for use in other politically motivated cases. It is my belief that these two federal grand juries—despite the pretense of investigation into the 2008 bombing—are actually being used to gain information about my friends, loved ones, and activists for whom I have done legal support. By declining to testify, I refuse to be coerced into participating in a political witch-hunt that eerily recalls those of the McCarthy era Red Scare.

I again assert that I have no knowledge of who is responsible for the 2008 Times Square Military Recruitment Center bombing, and I will once again refuse to testify to the federal grand jury in ethical resistance to participation in a fruitless exercise of fear-mongering and government intimidation. My decision to stay silent in defense of individual agency will most likely result in incarceration for a period up to 18 months. I accept this recompense, understanding that in doing so I will reinforce a tradition of defending individual rights in the face of state repression.

Related: Brooklyn Anarchist Refusing to Play Along With the System

Hello Friends and Comrades,

Here is the political prisoner birthday poster for May. As always, please post this poster publicly and/or use it to start a card writing night of your own.

Mother’s Day began not just as a day to honor mothers, but as a day for mothers to express solidarity with one another and against the wars that left widows and orphans impoverished. This Mother’s Day, in honor of this tradition, we are calling for a global day of solidarity with incarcerated mothers and against a penal system that disproportionately cages people based on race, class, and gender non-conformity. Please circulate this call far and wide and help organize a noise demo outside a prison or jail near you that holds women captive. Here is a flyer that was made for one mother’s day demo that you can pass out at yours.

June 11th is the international day of solidarity with Eric McDavid, Marie Mason, and all longterm anarchist prisoners. You still have plenty of time to organize something in your town. You can find more info on organizing an event and what has happened in previous years here.

The campaign to get former Black Panther Russell Maroon Shoatz out of solitary is still going on. He has been held in torturous conditions of solitary confinement in Pennsylvania prisons for the past thirty years. From April 8 to May 10, 2013, the Campaign to Free Russell Maroon Shoatz is calling for an intense call-in and write-in campaign to bring pressure on the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PA DOC), to release Maroon from solitary confinement and into the general prison population. You can find out all about it and download action packets on his support page.

Jason Sutherlin of Tinley Park 5 wrote a really sweet and powerful letter to all of his supporters thanking them for all the support and birthday cards he’s been getting.

We are thrilled to announce thatour friends in Croatan Earth First! will be hosting next summer’s Earth First! rendezvous in North Carolina. The Round River Rendezvous is the annual gathering of the Earth First! Movement. Each Summer, this week-long camp-out attracts several hundred Earth First!ers from around the world. Help promote the event, nationally and internationally by downloading and printing these quarter sheets: rondy flyer quarter

Lastly, here is a link to the latest Political Prisoner/Prisoner Of War every-other week update by the  NYC-Anarchist Black Cross. There are lots of good updates on many political prisoners.

Until Every Cage Is Empty,

The Chapel Hill Prison Books Collective

Venue: White Heart and Red Lion

Here’s the line up:

FIRE PIT COLLECTIVE ft Jay Innerterrestrial
PRIMEVAL SOUP
CALICO JACK
BELLADONNA

DJS
Ironside (Dissident)
Dan Breakwhore (neverlution)
Abomination (Tossers)
Frith Element (Rambunctious sounnds)
Ambisinister (Brouhahah/Tossers)
Spacedocker (Jigsore)
Pev (Kebele sounds)
Kingofthebins
Clunge kartle (GSC)
Dan Guydance

£5 ON DOOR

On sunday, the 28th of April 2013, a well-known Russian anti-fascist, Alexey Gaskarov, was arrested in Moscow. He is a member of the Coordination Council of Russian opposition. The investigation committee of the Russian Federation has accused him of having pacticipated in riots and violence against representative of authorities on the 6th of May 2012, when OMON (Russian riot police) attacked a peaceful demonstration.

The 6th of May was one day prior to Putin’s inauguration, and a mass demonstration had been called by the opposition. The winter and spring of 2011-2012 saw the biggest wave of political demonstrations in Russia in almost 20 years, as tens of thousands of people went out on the streets to protest election fraud. The 6th of May was also the first time authorities moved to crush these protests. According to the opposition more than 600 people were arrested, and as of now 28 people have been charged, who have been remanded, been put under house arrest or have been forced to emigrate.

On that day, Alexey Gaskarov was beaten up by OMON with batons and boots. He filed a complaint against the officers who beat him up, but nobody was charged. Now, a year after, and just a few days before the anniversary of the 6th of May demonstration, as Alexey was about to be at the head of the column of the left-wing and anti-fascist bloc, he has had a set of absurd charges brought against him and has been arrested.

Alexey Gaskarov was born on the 18th of June 1985, and has been politically active since his school years.

Gaskarov gained fame in the summer and autumn of 2010, when during the protest campaign against the destruction of the Khimki forest, he was  arrested along with Maxim Solopov and was accused of orchestrating an attack by 300-400 young anti-fascists, who supported the environmental struggle, against the administration of the city of Khimki.  In autumn 2010, Alexey Gaskarov and Maxim Solopov were released from prison, thanks to a massive international campaign for the “Khimki Hostages”. In the summer of 2011, Gaskarov was cleared of all charges.

Since the beginning of the mass demonstrations against the falsification of the elections in Russia in December of 2011, Alexey Gaskarov has been an active participant. He was one of the speakers in the biggest of the demonstrations, on the 24th of December 2011 in Sakharov street in Moscow, and was in charge of the security for that meeting, who fought back against the Neo-Nazi provocations.

He is being held in the police jail of Petrovka 38, awaiting his appointment in court at 11am on the 29th of April 2013 at the Basmanniy courthouse in Moscow. Pending court decision, Gaskarov will be remanded or released.

Additional information:

• gaskarov.info@gmail.com
• https://twitter.com/gaskarov_info
• Lawyer of Gaskarov, Svetlana Sidorkina: +7 (926) 557-90-16

Anarchist activist seriously wounded in a Nazi attack in Kiev of Ukraine

In the evening of 14th of April, social activist V.N. was seriously wounded in Kiev. He was assaulted by 5 Nazis in the area of metro
station Dorozhichi. Young patriots used knives and cutted three times
arteries in the legs of the activist. V.N. also lost teeth and suffered a brain concussion.

If it was not purpose of attackers to murder, at least they attempted to permanently main activist who takes active part to anti-government,
anti-capitalist and animal right actions. V-N. lost much blood, but due to an operation made in time, his life is no more in a danger.

Currently money is needed for covering his medical costs.

Paypal of ABC-Moscow for donations: abc-msk@riseup.net

Please write by e-mail how much you have donated, as same account is
used for multiple campaigns.

Besides paypal, it is possible to use bank transfer or Western Union.
For details, please write to abc-msk@riseup.net

His life is not in danger, but he was wounded pretty bad, groin artery
and femoral vein. 5 attackers hit him with log of wood and stabbed when
he was already swoon so he had no chance to fight back. In fact, his life
was saved by a doctor who suddenly turned up nearby, because they waited
about 30 minutes for ambulance, it’s to much to survive with such
injuries.
Today doctors learned, that his jawbone is also broken and a surgery is
needed.
But, thanks all of you, he knows about solidarity from people and it helps
him to stay in good mood:)

It is relatively rare that prisoners, originally sentenced for non-political offences, become so politicized whilst in jail, that their release is opposed by prison authorities for exactly that reason.

In the case of life sentence prisoners who have served their “tariff” part of their sentence (or the length of time the judiciary stipulates they should remain in jail), the legal criteria determining their release, or not, are clear and straightforward: Has the prisoner served the sufficient period of time to satisfy the interests of punishment and retribution? Does the prisoner remain a risk to the community? Can the prisoner be safely and effectively supervised in the community post-release?

Of course the prison authorities would never openly admit that apart from the above criteria, there is another “risk-factor” that would prevent a life sentence prisoner’s release: Their identification with a progressive o radical political cause. Opposing a life sentence prisoner’s release, purely on the basis of their having exposed and organized against human rights abuses in the prison system, would of course make a complete mockery of the claim that, apart from its punishment function, prison also exists as a place of reform and rehabilitation, a place where supposedly brutal and anti-social criminals are made better people by a system administered by humane and just-minded individuals. The entire legitimacy of the prison system is based on the premise that, essentially it exists to protect the public from individuals who represent a threat, so denying that some life sentence prisoners are kept locked-up solely because they embrace an ideology that actually believes in a society and world free from violence, exploitation, and inequality, is imperative if the myths and fallacy used to justify the existence of prisons is to remain intact.

The prison system actually employs a whole legion of compliant ‘Criminal Justice’ system “professionals”, like social workers, probation officers, and psychologists to provide, if necessary, the politically neutral lexicon of “risk-factors” and “Personality Disorder” to legitimize the continued imprisonment of life sentence prisoners, who in reality are viewed as politically motivated and likely to become politically involved on the outside if released. The narrative of my own life and experience from brutalized and violent young criminal to politically conscious prisoner activist, and how the prison system continues to respond t that, is illustrative of how that system actually considers politicized life sentence prisoners far, far more worthy of continued detention than those who might genuinely pose a risk to the community.

In 1982, I was sentenced, alongside two other men, to life in prison for the killing of a fourth man during a drunken party on a South London council estate. At the time, I was 25 years old, and a state-raised product of the care and “youth justice” system. The prison system that I entered in the early 1980s was a barbaric de-humanising place, where in terms of treatment of prisoners, the rule of law stopped dead at the prison gate. My almost immediate response to prison repression was one of total defiance and resistance, that was met with physical and psychological brutality in the form of regular beatings, (in 1991 a civil court in Birmingham found that prison guards in the notorious Winson Green jail had subjected me to a sustained and gratuitous beating-up within minutes of my arrival at the jail), and many years held in almost clinical solitary confinement. Far from breaking my defiance, such inhuman treatment only deepened my determination to fight that system, and to use the only method truly effective in that regard – solidarity with other prisoners. As the years passed, I began to politically contextualize the struggle I was involved in against the prison system, and understand it as a part of a much wider struggle that transcended prison walls and essentially characterizes all societies and places where the powerful brutalised and de-humanised the powerless.

The length of time that my original trial judge recommended I should remain in jail has now long passed, and yet I remain in a maximum security prison, and what can best be described as a campaign by the prison system to keep me here intensifies with the approach of my second parole hearing in over 30 years.

It is essentially my contact with prisoner support groups on the outside, or “subversive” and even “terrorist” groups, as the prison authorities have defined and described them, that is now claimed in some prison reports, as the main “Risk-Factor” preventing my release. Of course, if necessary, for the purpose of officially legitimizing my continued imprisonment, for the convenience of the Parole Board, the usual array of morally compromised and corrupt social workers and prison-hired psychologists will attest to the fact that my enduring “anti-authoritarianism” is just a symptom of my psychopathy and continuing risk to the public. But if there are any doubts that I remain in prison, first and foremost, because of my efforts to expose the prison system for what it truly is, then a document sent to the Parole Board by the Scottish Prison Service on 2^nd December last year, lays them firmly to rest.

The document, an “intelligence report” compiled by the Security Department at Shotts Prison in Lanrkshire, was comprised of two parts, one that I was allowed to read, and another part described as “Non-Disclosure”, which means secret information that I would not be allowed to access to. It is rare for “Non-Disclosure” intelligence reports to be submitted to the Parole Board, and it represents a total negation of any pretense of open and natural justice, very much like the secrecy employed to imprison “terrorist suspects” without legal due process. Obliged as it is to officially inform prisoners if “Non-Disclosure” evidence is to be used against them at parole hearings, I received a letter from an “Intelligence Manager” at Shotts Prison in late December of last year, informing me that a portion of “intelligence” on me was so detrimental to “public interest” if it was revealed that it had to be kept secret. I was, however, informed that the “intelligence” related to articles written by me that were critical of the prison system and then placed on political websites. One seriously wonders how the posting of articles and information on the Internet exposes abuses of power by the prison system, would so endanger “public interest”, unless of course we replace “public interest” with the more precise “state interest”. The purpose behind the “Non-Disclosure” evidence in my case is obvious – To convey to the Parole Board the clear message that my current “risk” is not so much about a danger to the public, but much more about my willingness to publicly expose the brutal nature of the prison system, with the assistance of “subversive groups” on the outside. The part of the “Intelligence Report” that I was allowed access to, confirms this.

Virtually every single one of the “entries” in the part of the report I was allowed access to focuses on what it describes as my “internet activity” and links to “subversive groups” on the outside:

“Bowden continues to leak information through a social networking site.”

“Website features articles relating to Bowden asking people to protest and fight for freedom.”

“Bowden continues to be involved in Internet activity and there are plans to have a day of action in support of Bowden.”

“Intelligence provides that Bowden sends correspondence out of prison that is then posted on the Internet.”

There is also a reference to what was described as my attempt to set up a debating society in the prison’s Education Department to “platform his current political views, which are focused on poverty.”

This is evidence that the prison system claims justifies my continued detention after more than three decades in prison. Not a single entry in the “intelligence report” suggests I pose a genuine risk to the community or am likely to re-offend in a criminal way, and yet the Parole Board, a wholly white middle-class body, will inevitably rubber-stamp my continued imprisonment in compliance with the prison system’s wishes.

The two men who were originally imprisoned with me in 1982 were released almost twenty years ago, and I, as a direct result of my struggle to empower and organize prisoners in defence of their basic human rights, remain buried in a maximum-security jail, probably until I die.

I will of course continue to write and distribute articles exposing and criticizing the brutality of prison as a weapon of social control and ruling class violence, and also highlighting my own victimisation as a consequence of that.

ML7 7LE

]]> http://bristolabc.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/prison-systems-intention-to-use-secret-intelligence-against-john-bowden-at-next-parole-hearing-january-2013/feed/ 0 bristolabc bowden1