On the 13th of April, with a brief press release spread by the Mossos d’Esquadra, the policial operation was announced in which the comrade currently imprisoned in Cologne (Germany) was arrested in Barcelona, on accusation of having expropriated a bank in the city of Aachen.
According to this press release, the operation responded to compliance with an international request sent out by the prosecution office of Aachen that two days before the operation had issued an arrest warrant for the militant anarchist in Barcelona. What the press release did not explain and which until now had not been known to the public is that the arrest and the house raids carried out by the cops in the neighbourhoods Gracia and Carmel in Barcelona were not the simple execution of an international request, but the culmination of a long and narrow collaboration between the policial and judicial forces of the German and Spanish states, with active participation of the autonomous Catalan police. The involvement of the Mossos d’Esquadra in the case was initiated long before April and, as has become obvious, went far beyond a passive and merely executory role.
An ordinary morning in Aachen
On the morning of the 14th November 2014 a group of armed people enters an office of the Pax Bank in the Westphalian city of Aachen, in the east of the country. After having emptied the heavy safe and tying up the employees of the bank, they leave the building without having caused any personal injuries or damage. During the two days that follow, the police responsible for the investigation, the Landeskriminalamt Nordrhein-Westfalen (LKA NRW), will connect this expropriation with two other attacks that occurred in the previous two years in the city (1) and will begin an authentic – and fruitless – mediatic campaign of denunciation, publicly spreading the details of the robberies and offering rewards of thousands of euros to anyone who could provide information about possible suspects. The LKA goes so far in this strategy that it decides to use a famous and deplorable TV program in its campaign, which is broadcasted on one of the country’s main channels: Aktenzeichen XY… Ungelöst (Case File XY… Unsolved). This is a reality show with a vigilante character, in which cases that the police were unable to solve are presented in a sick manner, showing CCTV footage, clothes found on the “crime” scenes, composite sketches, and dramatic reconstructions of the deeds in order to impress and incite the masses of spectators to help the forces of the State and snitch.
The wig, the glove and the can
Four months after the action, in March 2015, the investigation will adopt a new direction with the appearance of the Catalan police on the scene. They will sent information to Germany, in response to the international request the LKA had sent out containing profiles of DNA samples (2) that supposedly were found on the scene, to see if there are any matches in the databases of other States. According to the Mossos, the profile of a sample taken from a wig found in the proximity of the Pax Bank in Aachen in November matches with an entry in their DNA database, a trace taken from a glove that was found in the street after a political direct action that took place in the neighbourhood of Sants in Barcelona in June 2009. From this moment a shared investigation begins in which the police forces of both States share information and start an intensive investigation within what the German press has called “the extreme left squatter movement of Barcelona” and which, according to the thesis exposed to the media by the prosecutor and police of Aachen, has been the main stage of the investigation.
In the course of this investigation, and always according to the version of the cops, toward the end of June agents of the information division of the Mossos secretly confiscate an empty can of beer left on the street by the accused comrade. From this can they would have taken DNA samples in order to realise a direct comparison with the traces of genetic material found close to the Pax Bank after the expropriation. Four months later, toward the end of October, information from the biological laboratories of the Mossos would have confirmed the match between both samples. Nevertheless, almost six more months will pass before on the 12th of April of this year an European arrest warrant and extradition order with her name will be sent from Aachen, resulting in the arrest in her house in the neighbourhood of Carmel the following day.
Repression and social control: the DNA of the States
The policial process that resulted in this arrest therefore confirms that which many of us already suspected, namely that the Mossos d’Esquadra since years have been massively and systematically confiscating our DNA during actions, mobilisations, house raids and protests in order to build a database with genetic data that increases the control over antagonistic movements. That which initially was introduced as an exceptional means, arguing the necessity of protecting oneself against repeat sexual offenders and similar cases, is being used and normalised as a repressive technology in service of the persecution of political militants.
In the Spanish State this policial modus operandi has been experimented with by the autonomous Basque police (Ertzaintza) in the repression of the patriotic left and the struggles of Euskal Herria. Just like the newspaper Gara already pointed out in 2007, the Ertzaintza started to build a database with genetic data by confiscating cigarette butts and glasses during street celebrations, toothbrushes during house raids, or plastic nozzles used in fake controls with breathalysers. The problems of reliability and validity that experts have attributed to using DNA methods as evidence did not prevent the autonomous Basque police to initiate judicial processes based on genetic profiles as the only proof, processes that with the priceless help of the exception courts of the Spanish Audiencia Nacional often have resulted in huge prison sentences for the accused.
On a European level, the use of genetic technologies in the policial and judicial scope has only increased since at the end of the ’80s Interpol imported the strategy of creating databases aimed at the identification of persons through DNA profiles from the United States. Despite the differences in the socio-political and judicial context in every place, the general shared tendency on an international level is the exponential growth of personal information registered in these databases and the progressive elimination of legal restrictions that limit the introduction of and persecution with new samples. The policial use of genetic technologies has drastically increased in the entire European Union, and the criteria for allowing its use are weaker every time. Therefore we find ourselves facing an enormous qualitative leap, this time not in the repressive methods directed at dissident minorities, but in the capacity of the States of social control of the entire population. In front of this challenge, as enemies of the status quo we will need to decide between letting ourselves be intimidated by the control mechanisms of Power, or creating adequate political strategies and practices to confront it, knowing that the hypothesis of a totally controlled society is only that; the unrealisable dark fantasy of a logic of domination that will always encounter resistance.
Notes
(1) Let’s not forget that recently a comrade was arrested again in Amsterdam, who is accused of having participated in one of these expropriations, more specifically the one that took place in July 2013. [TN: She has been released with conditions and is currently awaiting her extradition case in the Netherlands]
(2) Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a chemical component of cell nucleus that contains the genetic information which is transmitted in a hereditary manner in living organisms. This acid is found in all animal cells – human and non-human –, plants and other organisms, except in red blood cells. DNA is used in various methods (biogenetic, nanotechnology, bioinformatics, etc.), but what this text is concerned with is the so-called “forensic”, used in policial, judicial and penal contexts. In these cases DNA is used that is extracted from hair, saliva or blood, resulting in what is called a genetic fingerprint or “DNA profile”. The various sequences of this fingerprint of profile is what establishes a difference between people, as if it were a “human bar code”.
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