If reason is a compass, passions are the winds
Alexander Pope
Today marks one year since our comrade was arrested, when she was kidnapped by the Mossos d’Esquadra on the 13th of April 2016 in an joint operation with the German police. At the moment she is held in preventive arrest in the prison of Cologne, while the court case against her and another comrade (in the prison of Aachen) is in full course. They are accused of having robbed a branch of the Pax-Bank in Aachen in November 2014.
Furthermore, the comrade from Amsterdam that was acquitted last December from having expropriated a branch of the Aachener Bank in 2013 is still awaiting the decision of whether the revision requested by the prosecutor will be accepted or not.
As this court case has unfolded we have been able to clearly see the use of all the mechanisms of control that the repressive apparatuses of the State have at their disposal (intercepted telephone calls, police tails, exchange of DNA databases, recordings of security cameras, biometric information, various university experts assisting the forensic laboratories, collaboration between functionaries of various States, etc.) to secure the “normal functioning” of a society which we loathe. A society based on capitalist domination and oppression, the control of all aspects of our lives, the consumerist alienation and the misery of the majority which benefits a few privileged ones. It is of little interest to us whether the accused are responsible or not for what is attributed to them; those who challenge the logics of private property and exploitation and risk their freedom for a more complete life have all our complicity. We also do not care about their categories of innocent and guilty. In order to maintain the social peace, power first and foremost points at some “usual suspects”, and their punishment serves an example for all the potential subversive factors that in their moments could oppose the System. And with the permanent threat of “having a record, being surveilled, processed and imprisoned”, the State attempts to break the connections of solidarity between rebellious hearts that in the face of the imposition of borders and bars recognize themselves in the same struggle towards freedom.
Neither innocent nor guilty! Rebellious and international solidarity!
Our comrades will not feel alone in the last phase of the trial! May they feel our rebellious heat and love! For the destruction of the banks, prisons and the society that needs them!
Some anarchists, 13 April 2017.