Responsibility claim for explosive attack on vehicle of the Koridallos prisons director (Athens)

PHOENIX PROJECT
Freedom for anarchists of praxis incarcerated in Italy

I ‘Return of the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire from the ashes’

Only in those moments when our tension for freedom is rejoined with practice do we truly manage to live anarchy, here and now. Unfortunately the dream we carry in our hearts is too great to avoid the risk of finding ourselves up against the monstrous wall of authority raised in defense of the State and Capital. When we really put our life in play, inevitably we end up confronting the hardness there is in the struggle: death and prison. — Nicola Gai, Italian comrade accused in the Olga Cell-FAI case [May 2013]

The Conspiracy of Cells of Fire-FAI/IRF in collaboration with comrades from the Consciousness Gangs, honouring our old and timeless friendship, blew up the private car of the female director of Koridallos men’s prisons, Maria Stefi, as a display of genuine solidarity with our ten imprisoned brothers and sister, Giorgos P., Olga, Gerasimos, Christos, Michalis, Giorgos, Haris, Theofilos, Panagiotis, Damiano, that have taken responsibility for their participation in the Conspiracy.

After almost two years of silence throughout the Greek territory, the CCF returns. Maintaining a common front with the Consciousness Gangs, the FAI cells (‘Antifascist Front’, ‘Unscathed Cell of Vengeance’, ‘Lone Wolf Cell’, etc.) and the Sect of Revolutionaries, we support and strengthen the international conspiracy of the Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front.

The bomb we placed at the vehicle of the director of Koridallos prisons is the first drops before the storm. Or, as it was written in the last communiqué by the CCF against the Greek minister of Justice…

Certainly the necessity for strategy is now clearer than ever before. A lightning does not ever travel in straight repetitive lines. It bursts out unannounced. Even a seeming ‘silence’ is no retreat but quietness before the thunder… [Clandestine sector, Informal Anarchist Federation/Conspiracy of Cells of Fire (February 2011)]

So, now it’s time to make noise again. Noise against the militarization in prisons and the continuous police raids by the disgraceful scum of the EKAM special suppressive antiterrorist unit. Noise concerning the inquisition at prison councils, where prison service prosecutors and directors are poisoning inmates with fruitless hopes, at the same time that the denied requests for days of leave or conditional release are being stacked on top of each other. Noise for all those unimportant wearing the jailers’ uniform that think they personify Power and thus give orders. Noise about the terrifying silence of the majority of prisoners that have long ago exchanged freedom and dignity with a heroin dose, or day wages, or a more ‘favorable’ prison transfer, or a brand new mobile phone… Noise for the prolonged silence and inaction of a ‘space’ that likes to be called anarchist, but are in essence as petty bourgeois and decadent as the society’s civilization that they’re supposedly fighting.

II Chronicle of a war foretold

Over the recent months, a new regime prevails in Greek prisons. The ministry of Justice as well as the prison administration and the public prosecution promote the model of militarization for the ‘correctional system.’ To date there have been dozens of raids by fully armed EKAM cops into prisoners’ cells, as part of the restructuring of prisons. These hooded chickens with the full-body police harness have oftentimes shown ‘guts’ by hitting people in handcuffs. In the correctional brothel of Grevena, the pigs used also taser devices (electroshock weapons) against prisoners handcuffed behind their back. In Koridallos prisons, the night raid operation of forty to fifty EKAM cops was carried out through the ‘courtesy’ of the director Maria Stefi and the prosecutor Troupi, who did not miss out on provocations and bullying from a safe distance.

We know that it never gets dark there, inside your prisons. Therein memories are scratching, and one forgets how the sky looks without bars and barbed wire. If death had its own colour, it should be painted on your prisons. Because the realm of slow death lies on the inside, and one can feel it every single day. It’s hanging from the walls in corridors, it sounds with every locking of a door, it cries silently in disciplinary cells… There is no reason to continue the ‘critique’ of your ‘correctional’ system.

We have said it in the past, when we placed a bomb of twenty kilos on the outer wall of Koridallos prisons three years ago. Our imprisoned brothers and sister from the CCF say it definitely better than we do, through their writings, participating in the international dialogue of the Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front.

Besides, we do not expect something better from the empire of Power that is flavoured with the ‘courteousness’ of democracy. All of its officials handle perfectly their duties.

The judges sat on their imperial throne are handing prison sentences that challenge even the scientific average of human lifespan: ‘Double life sentence’… ‘Two hundred years in prison’… ‘Eighty years in prison’… To them, the names of the accused are ultimately nothing but small annoying ink stains on their thick indictments that must be erased.

Below them are the prisons directors; the small gods of penitentiary institutions that give their commands behind their distant offices having the confidence of being ‘the housemaster.’ This ‘business’ is run by them anyway.

Next to them are the prisons prosecutors, the ‘hand of god’. Their signature opens the doors of ‘heaven’ or ‘hell.’ ‘Conditional release from prison… rejected.’ ‘Five days of leave from prison… rejected.’ ‘Rejected’… ‘rejected’… ‘rejected’… is the only word they know to say. But these are all enemies. The only thing to ask from your enemy is ultimate war.

The axe of criticism along with the nausea of unanswered questions falls heavy on the inhabitants of the country of prisons. It falls heavy on the prisoners themselves, most of whom accept passively their incarceration in the sweatshops of democracy. Far from resembling a subculture of the revolutionary imaginary icon of imprisoned ‘fighters’ as a heightened projection of the living herein, the reality in prisons sounds frighteningly ugly: passivity… snitching… customization… licking the prison service’s ass… getting high on drugs… racism… cowardly cheekiness… self-pity… falsity…

Yet, this pathetic crowd can be transformed at once and become ‘combatant’ when it comes to a bottle cap of smack, to debts and loans, to the sovereignty of each clan. That is when the prisoners’ inventiveness triumphs. A piece of iron turns into a murderous knife in the most skilful hands, and a sock hiding a heavy object turns into a weapon for the inner-hostilities between inmates, who have learned much better how to eat each others’ flesh than they ever did on the outside.

With the same stunning inventiveness, they hide in the most unlikely places smack and other drugs they want to carry. However, this ingenuity is absent when it comes to seeking revenge against those who locked them up and deprived them of their freedom. How many former and current prison inmates were involved in actual revenge on their jailers? How many prisoners found the home address of a chief warden, or ambushed a prosecutor that threw their request for leave or probation in the trash bin?

For this we call minority prisoners, who still have dignity, to plan tens of acts of vengeance.

III The FAI/IRF international conspiracy

From our part over here, with the bombing against the director of Koridallos prisons, we coordinate our attacks through the FAI/IRF international network. It started when our brothers and sisters in Chile, of the ‘Panagiotis Argirou’ insurrectionary anti-authoritarian cell, targeted the National Association of Penitentiary Functionaries in Santiago on May 12^th.

FAI/IRF is an international conspiracy of anarchists of praxis that sets fire on the defense positions of reformist societist anarchists. It gets rid of the smell of mold that has settled in anarchy seen at amphitheatres, and fills the air with the smell of gunpowder, black anarchy, nighttime, explosions, gunshots, sabotages. This explains why the International Revolutionary Front of FAI and Conspiracy is on top of the anarchist dangers list as cited in recent Europol reports.

Diffusion and informal organizing within the new anarchy into autonomous cells of direct action are what really scare the police of the whole world. Therefore, the State and the enemies of anarchy do not easily forget the anarchist militants who are held captive under their prisons’ authority.

IV For the brothers and sisters missing…

In Germany, comrade Thomas Meyer-Falk —who is held hostage for participation in bank robbery with the aim of supporting subversive projects— has already served his sentence, but remains incarcerated. In his case, an old law of Nazi Germany was applied, under which prisoners may continue to be kept in prison indefinitely, even when they have served their entire prison term, if they are deemed ‘dangerous to society’… Thomas Meyer-Falk, with his uncompromising attitude and refusal to kneel in front of Power, is still considered dangerous for the social machine.

In Bulgaria, our comrade Jock Palfreeman remains hostage in prison, after a scuffle with nearly fifteen fascists who tortured a Roma. A fascist fell dead in the scuffle and another was seriously injured. We, for our part, send a signal of solidarity to Jock and a promise that he is not alone.

At the same time, our brother Gabriel Pombo Da Silva is currently incarcerated in Spain —moved from Germany a few months ago— and our brother Marco Camenisch is imprisoned in Switzerland. Our two brothers are confined for many years in the galleys of democracy because of their subversive and anarchic action. Gabriel —who has fought numerous times against the FIES [special prison regime]— is accused of a scuffle with cops in the German city of Aachen, and Marco is accused of eco-sabotages, escape from prison and armed clash with border guards. While they have become eligible for conditional release from prison, the international state machine tries to keep them hostage, linking them to the ‘operation Ardire’, a case conceived by the Italian State. A police case against the FAI/IRF network, in which apart from Marco and Gabriel our comrades Giuseppe (‘Peppe’), Stefano, Elisa, Sergio, Alessandro are co-accused and remanded in Italy, while some of our CCF comrades imprisoned in Greece are also ‘under investigation.’

The state apparatus and its justice are now experimenting with similar alchemies in Greece. Our brother and CCF member Gerasimos Tsakalos is at the top of the blacklist of interrogators and judges. Currently, he has spent thirty one months on remand —the ceiling is eighteen months— and his pretrial detention was extended to another six months, describing him as ‘particularly dangerous.’ Nevertheless, the charlatans of justice make newer experiments as well. They open yet another case file, the double robbery in Velventos [Kozani], and charge Gerasimos for instigating crimes by delivering a new pretrial detention order to him. He is thus accused as instigator in a bank robbery case that occurred when he was already still in prison. What’s more, we do not forget that last year, when his eighteen months’ remand period was reaching an end, the mop called Mokkas (special appellate judge for the preliminary investigations) put him on the second consecutive remand, while the comrade was in hospital conducting hunger strike.

All this reinforce the certainty that we have, now more than ever before: the liberation of our comrades will only happen through violence, with guns, with an anarchist tromocracy and intensification of the new anarchist urban guerrilla warfare… and then, woe to whoever stands in the way of our comrades’ liberation.

V Everything continues…

The struggle does not end just because some unimportant folks got tired, and now they only show off their anarcho-medals on the catwalk, in the mire of Exarchia [downtown Athens], nor does it stop because some folks shit in their own pants and hunker down in whatever they’ve put on ice, or in their pseudo-assemblies.

For us, there is no middle ground. They who declare openly their anarchist intentions are facing a decisive dilemma, to either act or give up anarchy forever. There can never be anarchy at the rear of coffee shops and gossiping… Either act or shut up…

In closing the proclamation of our reoccurrence along with the Consciousness Gangs, we would like to dedicate our attack with all our strength to our brothers and sisters imprisoned in the Italian State’s cells, and furthermore send out our conspirative signal to Alfredo Cospito and Nicola Gai, both accused of shooting Roberto Adinolfi [chief executive of nuclear firm], an act for which the Olga Cell-FAI/FRI has claimed responsibility.

The words of coherence by the sisters and brothers in war are the only ones that have truly weight. The so-called ‘social anarchism’ makes everything revolve around the instrument ‘assembly’, which has become gym of authoritarianism, terrain of breeding big and smaller leaders, whose sole purpose is self-referentiality. The anarchist politicos do everything they can to stave off the new that advances. The new that advances as well as the making of the informal organization (…) — Alfredo Cospito [March 2013]

Courage and strength to the comrades who anonymously strike at the State and Capital, courage and strength to those who give a name to their own rage, courage and strength to the comrades who give life to the Fai/Fri. We are going to give soul and body to the black international, there is a whole world to destroy. Long live anarchy! — Nicola Gai [May 2013]

Brothers and sisters, the rendezvous is on…
We will be back — sooner than you expect!

Conspiracy of Cells of Fire-FAI/IRF
Consciousness Gangs-FAI/IRF
Sole–Baleno Cell[1]

[1] Sole and Baleno —Maria Soledad Rosas and Eduardo Massari— were two anarchist comrades accused of sabotage and anarchic dynamic actions in the 1990s. Baleno ‘committed suicide’ in his prison cell. Sometime later, Sole ‘committed suicide’ in the special conditions of ‘house’ detention imposed to her. Their memory lives within us, in our bullets, in our dynamite…