soccorso rosso proletario aderisce alla Mozione operaia contro la guerra

– Contro il Governo Meloni – contro il Parlamento nero che approva il nuovo invio di armi – nuova Mozione operaia da oggi in numerosi posti di lavoro organismi proletari

 Mozione operaia 

NO alla guerra imperialista

NO alla partecipazione italiana alla guerra

NO all’aumento delle spese militari

No al carovita

Noi lavoratori e lavoratrici esprimiamo la netta opposizione al nuovo decreto del governo Meloni e alle mozioni del parlamento che supportano l’invio di armi, equipaggiamenti al teatro di guerra dell’Ucraina. Una decisione che alimenta la guerra, la corsa al riarmo e prosegue nella politica di violazione dell’Art. 11 della Costituzione, con cui l’Italia ripudia la guerra come mezzo di soluzione delle controversie tra Stati.

Noi lavoratori e lavoratrici condanniamo fermamente l’invasione imperialista di stampo neozarista della Russia di Putin dell’Ucraina, così come l’azione guerrafondaia dei governi Usa/Nato/Ue, Italia compresa, volta a portare le truppe occidentali e Basi militari ai confini della Russia, usando l’Ucraina di Zelensky, nel cui governo ed esercito sono presenti i nazisti, come ‘cavallo di Troia’ e pedina di guerra; una situazione che può sfociare in una terza guerra mondiale e nell’uso del nucleare.

Siamo contro questa guerra tra banditi capitalisti per il profitto e per il controllo mondiale delle materie prime, le fonti energetiche, le vie geostrategiche.

Siamo solidali con le masse ucraine sotto le bombe e in fuga e con chi in Russia si oppone all’invasione e alla guerra.

Siamo contro ogni scaricamento dei costi e degli effetti di questa guerra sui lavoratori e le masse popolari già colpite dalla crisi economica.

Siamo contro l’uso delle Basi militari italiane come basi di guerra e presenza di armi nucleari.

Chiamiamo tutti i lavoratori e lavoratrici e tutte le organizzazioni sindacali a sottoscrivere questa mozione e a scendere in campo con assemblee, manifestazioni, fino allo sciopero generale, per mettere fine alla partecipazione italiana alla guerra ed essere al fianco di tutti i proletari e masse popolari che si oppongono alla guerra interimperialista in tutti i paesi del mondo.

richiedila a slaicobasta@gmail.com

Domenica 18 a Bologna, assemblea nazionale sul carcere

Sono passati due anni e mezzo da quando le carceri italiane vennero attraversate da un’ondata di proteste e di rivolte, innescate dalla paura dei contagi di Covid-19 e dalle misure che per decreto appesantivano insopportabilmente le condizioni di prigionia.
Rivolte e proteste per cui è stato pagato un prezzo altissimo, con 13 detenuti morti fra l’8 e il 10 marzo 2020 a Bologna, a Rieti e al Sant’Anna di Modena. Tantissime le testimonianze sui pestaggi, non solo in quei giorni ma anche in differita, come a Santa Maria Capua Vetere che conta un’altra vita spezzata per rappresaglia.
Sono passati due anni e mezzo da quei giorni ma le ragioni delle rivolte sono ancora tutte lì, per 56.000 persone stipate in luoghi fatiscenti, che ogni giorno subiscono la negazione di diritti basilari e la violenza insita nell’istituzione carceraria.
Di carcere si muore non solo nell’eccezionalità di una rivolta, ma anche nella normale quotidianità penitenziaria, per l’assistenza sanitaria negata o – mai come quest’anno – per suicidi, indotti da un contesto capace di distruggere ogni prospettiva.
Di carcere si muore rimanendo formalmente in vita, nelle celle/tombe del 41bis.
Nel frattempo, i tribunali stendono il sudario delle archiviazioni sulla morte dei detenuti, e i governi dispensano più carcere duro e aggravano le norme sull’ostatività.
Contro tutto questo è possibile rompere il silenzio.
Lo dimostrano le numerose denunce che riescono ad attraversare i muri delle galere, lo dimostra la determinazione di Alfredo Cospito a mettere in gioco il suo corpo contro l’abominio del 41bis.
Per non dimenticare la strage del 2020, per sostenere chi ha il coraggio di denunciare, convochiamo un’assemblea nazionale.
Ex Centrale
Via di Corticella 129 Bologna
Programma:
h 10.30 – 13,30 tavoli tematici di lavoro
h 13.30 – 14,30 pranzo benefit
h 14.30 – 17,30 assemblea plenaria
Tavoli tematici della mattina:
– Carcere e salute
– Istituzioni totali e psichiatria
– Ergastolo, ostatività, 41 bis e regimi speciali di detenzione
– Reti di sostegno ai detenuti
Organizzano:
Comitato Verità e Giustizia per i morti del Sant’Anna
Associazione Bianca Guidetti Serra
Associazione Yairaiha
Ex Centrale

Per una giornata di mobilitazione in solidarietà con Alfredo Cospito

Appello del Soccorso Rosso Internazionale per una giornata di mobilitazione in solidarietà con Alfredo Cospito in sciopero della fame ad oltranza contro il 41 bis e l’ergastolo ostativo

APPELLO AD UNA GIORNATA DI MOBILITAZIONE CON ALFREDO COSPITO

Il 20 ottobre, il prigioniero anarchico Alfredo Cospito ha iniziato uno sciopero della fame contro il regime carcerario del 41 bis, lotta che intende portare avanti fino alla fine. I prigionieri anarchici Ivan Alocco [il compagno ha terminato lo sciopero il 1° dicembre, ndt] e Anna Beniamino hanno aderito allo sciopero, così come Juan Sorroche che l’ha interrotto dopo un mese.

Il 41 bis è il regime di isolamento carcerario più duro d’Europa. Creato in principio per impedire ai membri (reali o presunti) della mafia di continuare le loro attività dal carcere, è stato presto esteso ai prigionieri rivoluzionari per impedire loro di interagire con il mondo esterno.

Tre prigionieri delle Brigate Rosse per la costruzione del Partito Comunista Combattente (BR-PCC), Nadia Lioce, Roberto Morandi e Marco Mezzasalma, vi sono sottoposti da 17 anni. Il valore della loro resistenza deve essere misurato comprendendo che sarebbe sufficiente un atto di resa politica per uscire da questo regime.

Solo comprendendo questi regimi di isolamento come mezzi di pressione, come tortura, per estorcere il pentimento, possiamo dare un vero significato al suicidio della militante delle BR-PCC Diana Blefari nel 2009, dopo quattro anni di 41 bis. Diana non poteva più sopportare il 41 bis, ma rifiutava il tradimento.

Anche questa scelta è stata una forma di resistenza e ha un precedente, quello di Luis Rodríguez Martínez, dei Grupos de Resistencia Antifascista Primero de Octubre (GRAPO), che si è suicidato nel 1983 dopo tre anni di isolamento totale in carcere.

Solo comprendendo questi regimi di isolamento come mezzo di pressione, come tortura, per estorcere il pentimento, possiamo capire il carattere politico degli scioperi della fame fino alla morte attuati dai rivoluzionari.

Quando si rifiuta l’ipotesi della resa e della collaborazione, quando si rifiuta di essere sepolti vivi, lo sciopero della fame si presenta come l’unico mezzo di lotta. È in questi scioperi che Holger Meins della Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF) ha sacrificato la sua vita nel 1974, Kepa Crespo Galende del Partido Comunista de España (reconstituido) nel 1981, Sigurd Debus in uno sciopero della fame della RAF nel 1981 e José Manuel Sevillano Martín dei GRAPO nel 1990.

Questo solo per citare l’Europa occidentale, perché in Turchia e in Kurdistan decine di prigionieri hanno dato la vita in lunghi scioperi contro l’installazione di carceri di isolamento sul modello italo-tedesco.

L’applicazione del 41 bis ad Alfredo Cospito arriva dopo ben dieci anni di carcere in alta sicurezza, in seguito alla sua condanna per la gambizzazione dell’amministratore delegato di Ansaldo Nucleare. Il trasferimento al 41 bis è legato alla riqualificazione (dettata dalla Corte di Cassazione) di due ordigni esplosi di notte, senza fare danni a nessuno, davanti a una caserma dei carabinieri, come “strage contro la sicurezza dello Stato” o ancora “strage politica”.

Il cinismo di questa riqualificazione (che lo espone a una condanna all’ergastolo ostativo) è tanto più violento se si considera che proprio nel cuore dello Stato italiano si trovano mandanti e organizzatori delle stragi che hanno insanguinato l’Italia, come quella alla stazione di Bologna, e che nessuno di questi mandanti e organizzatori è stato perseguito.

Questa condanna e l’isolamento in 41 bis fanno parte di una vasta tendenza alla repressione in Europa. L’isolamento dei prigionieri rivoluzionari assume lo stesso carattere delle mutilazioni inflitte dalla polizia ai manifestanti antagonisti in Francia. Non si tratta più solo di reprimere, ma di dissuadere, terrorizzare, imporre rinunce e capitolazioni.

Il ricatto alla resa, alla collaborazione, è diventato la norma. In Italia, 16 militanti delle BR sono detenuti in alta sicurezza da 40 anni perché rifiutano di arrendersi. In Francia, Georges Abdallah affronta questo ricatto da 38 anni. La resistenza di questi/e prigionieri/e è grande, generosa.

Pagano un prezzo estremamente alto per sostenere la possibilità e la necessità della rivoluzione. A qualsiasi tendenza politica appartengano, sono una parte preziosa del movimento di liberazione.

Non si tratta di solidarietà con la loro lotta.

Si tratta di capire che la loro lotta è la nostra lotta.

Da due mesi è in corso un’intensa mobilitazione a sostegno dello sciopero della fame, in Italia ma anche in altri paesi. Sono soprattutto gli anarchici a portare il peso di questa lotta, ma in buona intesa e solidarietà con altre forze che hanno capito qual è la posta in gioco in questa battaglia: far arretrare il potere nella sua politica di terrorismo preventivo.

Mentre partecipa a diverse iniziative a sostegno di Alfredo Cospito, il Soccorso Rosso Internazionale chiama le sue sezioni e i gruppi amici a fare di sabato 17 dicembre una giornata internazionale di sostegno allo sciopero della fame di Alfredo Cospito, Ivan Alocco e Anna Beniamino.

Per un fronte di classe unito contro la repressione!

Chiusura delle sezioni 41 bis per tutti/e!

Soccorso Rosso Internazionale

8 dicembre 2022

Pubblicata da Monthly Revew la lista dei prigionieri politici in Usa – la condividiamo con voi – SRP

 

| Just a few of the political prisoners in the United States from top left to bottom right Mumia Abu Jamal Julian Assange Alex Saab Leonard Peltier Joy Powell Veronza Bowers | MR Online Just a few of the political prisoners in the United States (from top-left to bottom-right): Mumia Abu-Jamal, Julian Assange, Alex Saab, Leonard Peltier, Joy Powell, Veronza Bowers

The United States has many political prisoners. Here’s a list

Originally published: Multipolarista on August 9, 2022 (more by Multipolarista)

The United States constantly accuses its adversaries of holding political prisoners, while insisting it has none of its own. But for its entire history, the U.S. government has used incarceration of its political opponents as a tool to crush dissent and advance the interests of economic elites.

Well-known cases are those entrapped or framed in U.S. national security state sting operations, or imprisoned with extreme sentences for a minor offense because of their political activism, such as Black revolutionary George Jackson.

Each period of struggle by the working class and oppressed peoples against ruling-class control results in some activists locked up for their revolutionary work. “Political prisoner” has often meant those revolutionaries jailed for fighting their national oppression, as is the case with a great number of Black Panthers.

In contrast, a century ago, most political prisoners in the United States were Marxists, labor organizers, and anti-war activists, such as Joe Hill, Eugene Debs, and Big Bill Haywood.

Today, the U.S. national security state considers its most dangerous enemies those who expose its crimes at home and abroad.

There are also many thousands of incarcerated people who never received a fair trial, or were innocent of the crimes they have been jailed for. A high percentage of them are non-white, peoples subject to second-class citizenship in the U.S.. A number are executed, such as Troy Davis, or spend their whole lives in prison.

While the United States represents just over 4% of the world’s population, it holds approximately 20% of its prisoners. Black North Americans are imprisoned five times the rate of whites.

The following list of political prisoners currently detained by the U.S. government categorizes them into seven groups:

  1. national security state employees and reporters locked up for publicizing blatant government criminality
  2. representatives of foreign governments that Washington seeks to overthrow who were imprisoned for “violating” illegal unilateral U.S. sanctions
  3. Black, Native American, and Latino revolutionaries fighting for the rights of their peoples
  4. Arabs and Muslims targeted after 9/11
  5. prisoners detained in the Guantánamo torture center without charges
  6. women locked up for defending themselves against violent attacks
  7. environmental activists

1. Journalists and national security state employees exposing illegal U.S. surveillance operations and war crimes

A number of whistleblowers in the United States have previously been imprisoned or are wanted. These have included:

  • U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning
  • NSA contractor Edward Snowden
  • Air Force intelligence specialist Reality Winner
  • CIA analyst John Kiriakou
  • hacktivist Jeremy Hammond
  • CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling
  • NSA executive Thomas Drake
  • hacktivist Aaron Swartz
  • Air National Guard intelligence analyst Matt DeHart
  • journalist Barrett Brown
  • FBI agent Terry Albury

Among those imprisoned today are the following:

Julian Assange is a renowned journalist and editor of WikiLeaks who was arrested in 2019 in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he had political asylum since 2012. In April 2022, a British judge ordered Assange extradited to the U.S. to face up to 175 years in prison for publishing truthful information about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. has indicted Assange under the Espionage Act, even though he published the same information as did the New York Times and Washington Post.

Researcher Mark Weisbrot explained in 2017,

Julian Assange is a political prisoner.… His crime, and that of WikiLeaks, has been the practice of journalism, and particularly in defense of human rights and civil liberties.… Assange and WikiLeaks’ real offense was to expose the crimes of the most powerful people in the world.

Extraditing Assange, a journalist and Australian citizen, to the United States would have even more negative repercussions for our present remnants of free press and democratic rights. No case better embodies the old IWW banner for “class war prisoners”: “Remember! We’re in here for you, you’re out there for us.” Roger Waters and Noam Chomsky have also spoken about the importance of the Assange case.

Daniel Hale has been imprisoned since 2019. He was sentenced to 45 months for releasing documents showing U.S. military drone strikes in Afghanistan largely killed innocent people. Hale participated in the drone program while in the Air Force and NSA from 2009 to 2013, and later became an outspoken critic and a defender of whistle blowers.

Hale is believed to have been the source material for The Drone Papers. The documentary National Bird documents whistleblowers in the U.S. drone assassination program. For his truth-telling, Hale received the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence and the Blueprint for Free Speech International Whistleblowing Prize. Chris Hedges has written about his case.

Joshua Schulte, a former hacker employed by the CIA, was blamed for releasing two billion pages of secret CIA data, known as Vault 7, to WikiLeaks. Vault 7 programs were CIA techniques used to compromise Wifi networks, hack into Skype, defeat anti-virus software, hack Apple and Android smartphones in overseas spying operations, turn internet-connected televisions into listening devices, and commandeer the guidance systems in cars.

Schulte has been imprisoned since 2018 and faces up to 80 years, in brutal conditions similar to those endured by Assange today.

Ana Belén Montes was a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) analyst who alerted Cuba of U.S. plans of aggression. She was arrested in 2001, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage, and was held in solitary confinement in Fort Worth, Texas for most of her 21 years behind bars.

Montes told the judge,

I consider that the policy of our government towards Cuba is cruel and unjust, deeply unfriendly; I considered myself morally obligated to help the Island defend itself from our efforts to impose our values ​​and our political system on it. We have displayed intolerance and contempt for Cuba for four decades. We have never respected Cuba’s right to define its own destiny, its own ideals of equality and justice. I do not understand how we continue to try to dictate.… how Cuba should select its leaders, who its leaders should not be and what laws are the most appropriate for that nation. Why don’t we let them decide how they want to conduct their internal affairs.

2. Foreigners imprisoned for ‘violating’ illegal U.S. sanctions on their countries

Mun Chol Myong is a North Korean was extradited and imprisoned in the United States on March 20, 2021. Mun was arrested in Malaysia in May 2019 after a Washington, DC judge issued a warrant for his arrest. His supposed “crime” of conspiracy and money laundering in fact consisted of supplying needed goods to the DPRK by circumventing U.S. sanctions on the country.

A top Justice Department official claimed foreigners who have never been in the U.S. can be extradited to it for violating domestic laws. The U.S. has enforced a blockade against North Korea since 1950, the start of the U.S. war on Korea, designed to cripple its economic and social development.

Alex Saab, a Venezuelan diplomat, was jailed on June 12, 2020 in Cabo Verde on orders of the United States. He was then seized by U.S. agents and brought to a Miami prison on October 16, 2021.

Saab was arrested while on a diplomatic mission to procure food and energy supplies to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, which was largely caused by the illegal U.S. blockade of the nation.

As a diplomat, Saab has immunity from detention based on the UN Vienna Convention of 1961. The UN Human Rights Commission and other international human rights defenders have denounced his extradition. The National Lawyers Guild calls for Saab’s immediate release.

Simón Trinidad (Ricardo Palmera) was a long-time leader in mass movements for social change in Colombia, and is a top negotiator for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). In 2003, he was sent to Ecuador to make contact with UN official James Lemoyne, as part of efforts to revive peace talks with the Colombian government, and begin communication on the exchange of prisoners of war.

He was captured in Ecuador in 2004 and then extradited to the U.S. on charges of narco-trafficking and kidnapping, and subjected to four separate trials, due to repeated mistrials. Ultimately, he was sentenced to 60 years at the Florence “Supermax” prison in Colorado.

Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer and deputy chair of the board of Chinese tech giant Huawei, was imprisoned in Canada in 2018 on a U.S. extradition request, after Washington accused her company of misleading British bank HSBC over its business dealings in Iran, thereby violating its illegal unilateral sanctions. Meng was released in September 2021.

3. Fighters for their people’s national oppression against second-class citizenship

Many Black political prisoners in the United States were targets of the police state’s Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) in the 1960s and ’70s, when the FBI sought to destroy the movement for Black freedom.

As journalist Glen Ford explained,

If you attempt to lead Black people on an independent political path, the U.S. state will seek to neutralize you, imprison you, or kill you. If you exercise your right to defend yourself, and your people, from the oppressive arm of the state, they make you into an outlaw, and hunt you down.

The FBI said it goals in COINTELPRO were to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize,” adding that “no opportunity must be missed to exploit through counterintelligence techniques… for maximum effectiveness… and a final goal should be to prevent the long range growth of militant black organizations, especially among youth.”

This police state operation against Black liberation resulted in at least 38 Black Panther Party members being killed, including Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, with hundreds more imprisoned on frame-up charges for their armed self-defense actions, several for more than 45 years.

The website Members of the Black Panther Party Still Imprisoned registered the number incarcerated in 2014, although several have died since then. The films “The FBI’s War on Black America” and “Cointelpro 101” document the police state’s dirty work.

Those currently imprisoned include:

Mumia Abu-Jamal is the most prominent former Black Panther political prisoner. In 1981, COINTELPRO style, he was sentenced to death for the murder of a Philadelphia cop. Judge Albert Sabo, who ruled in his case and in his appeals, was heard by a court reporter to state “I’m going to help them fry the ni**er.” Black jurors were excluded. Witnesses were bribed and threatened to lie on the stand. Documents were hidden in the state prosecutor’s office.

Mumia was an organizer and campaigner against police abuses in the Black community, and was the president of the Association of Black Journalists. During his imprisonment, now commuted to life, he has published several books. More information can be found in the films “Mumia Abu Jamal: A Case For Reasonable Doubt?” and “Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary” or the websites freemumia.com and bringmumiahome.com.

Leonard Peltier was an activist in the American Indian Movement (AIM) whose goal was to organize indigenous communities to stand up for their rights. Sentenced to life as a result of a COINTELPRO operation, he has been imprisoned for 46 years for killing two FBI agents. Peltier participated in the AIM encampments on the Pine Ridge Reservation, where a 1975 shootout instigated by the FBI occurred.

Some 64 Native Americans, most with ties to AIM, were murdered. Their deaths went uninvestigated by the FBI. Evidence exonerating Peltier in the FBI case was withheld by the FBI. In his appeals, the government admitted it had no evidence he killed the two FBI agents, suppressed evidence proving this, and fabricated other “evidence.”

The other AIM members tried for the killings were exonerated in trial by reason of self-defense. One prosecutor admitted,

Your honor, we do not know who killed those agents. Further, we don’t know what participation, if any, Mr. Peltier had in it.

Amnesty International, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, the American Association of Jurists, and 54 Congresspeople, among many others, have called for his freedom. The film  “Incident at Ogala,” produced by Robert Redford, and the best-selling book “In the Spirit of Crazy Horse: The Story of Leonard Peltier and the FBI’s War on the American Indian Movement” made the case widely known. More information can be found at the websites whoisleonardpeltier.info and Peltier’s Prison Writings.

Mutulu Shakur, of the Republic of New Afrika movement, participated in presentations to the UN on discrimination experienced by Black communities, and by 1970 a target of the FBI’s COINTELPRO infiltration. He helped free Assata Shakur from prison in 1979, and she now has a bounty on her head.

In 1988 he was convicted of conspiracy related to a 1981 robbery where a guard and two police officers were killed, and sentenced to 60 years. At no time did the evidence show that Mutulu Shakur killed anyone.

He was also convicted for aiding in the prison escape of Assata Shakur, who has asylum in Cuba.

At two trials the evidence indicated others were responsible for the deaths (one became a government witness in return for a sentencing deal). The remaining defendants were acquitted for the murder allegations. More information can be found at mutulushakur.com and the Jericho Movement.

Jamil Abdullah al-Amin (H. Rap Brown) was chairman of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and a Black Panther leader. FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover himself named H. Rap Brown–along with Stokely Carmichael, Elijah Muhammad, and Maxwell Stanford–as targets of COINTELPRO.

In a October 1971 standoff with police, he was shot and seized, and spent five years in Attica prison. From 1992 to 1997, the FBI closely surveilled Al-Amin, generating pages of 44,000 documents. In 2000, two sheriffs came to Al-Amin’s store with a warrant for failure to appear in court for a case later thrown out. Both were shot and one killed. Al-Amin was sentenced to life without parole, even though Otis Jackson confessed to the shootings. More information is available at whathappened2rap.com.

Veronza Bowers was an organizer in the Black Panther Party in the late 1960s. He has been imprisoned for 49 years for the murder of a U.S. park ranger, on the word of two government informers. There were no eye witnesses and no other independent evidence. See more at veronza.org and prisonersolidarity.com.

Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa (who died in prison in 2016) were leaders of the Black Panthers in Omaha, Nebraska in the 1960s, and targets of COINTELPRO. Both men were given life sentences on charges of killing a policeman. They were convicted on the testimony of a teenager who was beaten by the police and threatened with the electric chair if he did not incriminate Poindexter and Mondo.

Amnesty International has identified them as “prisoners of conscience.” Poindexter has been imprisoned for 52 years. The book “FRAMED: J. Edgar Hoover, Cointelpro and the Omaha Two story” and the documentary “Ed Poindexter & Mondo We Langa” offer more information.

Kamau Sadiki (Freddie Hilton), was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army, and close to Assata Shakur. He has been imprisoned since 2002, for a 1971 murder of a police officer. Back in 1971, two witnesses failed to identify Kamau from a line-up, and there was no physical evidence that implicated Sadiki, so the case was closed.

In 2002 Kamau was re-arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment for the killing–only after he refused to work with the government to induce Assata Shakur to leave Cuba for another country, where they could seize her. See more at freekamau.com.

Joy Powell organized protests against police brutality and corruption, demanding accountability for its victims, which led her to be targeted by the Rochester Police Department. In 2006, Powell was convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to 16 years for burglary and assault. No evidence or eyewitnesses linked her to the crime.

Then in 2007, while imprisoned, Powell was falsely charged with murder, a cold case from 1992, and given another 25-year sentence, to begin upon the completion of her 16-year sentence. See freejoypowell.org, and the article “America is Still Locking People Up for Their Activism, Including Black Women.”

Alvaro Luna Hernandez (Xinachtli) is a Texas activist for Chicano rights and against police brutality. He was continually targeted by the police, who in 1996 attempted to arrest him on a spurious robbery charge that was later dismissed. The police used violence to arrest him, and Hernandez was sentenced to 50 years in prison on trumped up charges of threatening a sheriff while resisting arrest. More information can be found at freealvaro.net and prisonersolidarity.com.

Other political prisoners include Ruchell Cinque MageeFred “Muhammad” BurtonRonald ReedKenny Zulu Whitmore.

More information is available at the Prison Activist Resource CenterJericho Movement, freedomarchives.orgspiritofmandela.org, and prisonersolidarity.com.

4. Arab and Muslim targeted in Police State attacks on their Communities

The Coalition for Civil Freedoms published a report in 2021 titled The Terror Trap: The Impact of the War on Terror on Muslim Communities. It explains:

more than half of all alleged terrorism cases involved the use of paid informants who were usually responsible for concocting the plots in collusion with the FBI. Sensationalistic media coverage of the most high-profile cases almost never made mention of the fact that these terrorist conspiracies were the work of FBI informants.

The FBI has built a network of more than 15,000 registered informants whose primary purpose is to infiltrate Muslim communities to create and facilitate phony terrorist plots so that the bureau can then claim it is winning the War on Terror… the FBI engaged in a witch hunt, convicting hundreds of Muslims on pretext terrorism charges, even though the government knew that the defendants were not in communication with international terrorists, had not injured a single person or piece of property, and had no means to carry out a terrorist attack even if they wanted to.

For the government to tell the truth about the convictions would have undercut their own prosecutions, and exposed hundreds of Muslim convictions for the sham they were. No matter how innocent the government knew the defendants to be, it apparently decided that they had to publicly treat the defendants as the worst of the worst, or lose the fear factor which they had used so effectively to enact harsher laws.

The Newburgh Four, Libertyville Seven, and Romeo Langhorne are examples of this FBI entrapment.

Here are more current political prisoners:

Holy Land 5: Shukri Abu-Baker and Ghassan Elashi of the Holy Land Foundation were each sentenced in 2008 to 65 years in prison. Three others were sentenced to 13-20 years: Mufid Abdulqader, Mohammad El-Mezain (released and deported to Turkey in 2022) and Abdulrahman Odeh (released in 2020). All were imprisoned for giving more than $12 million to charitable groups in Palestine which funded hospitals and schools and fed the poor and orphans.

The U.S. government said these groups were controlled by Hamas, which it lists as a terrorist organization, even though it is the elected government of Gaza. Some of these charitable groups still received U.S. funds through USAID as late as 2006.

Testimony was given in the case by an Israeli government agent whose identity and evidence was kept secret from the defense. This marked the first time in U.S. legal history that testimony has been allowed from an expert witness with no identity, therefore making them immune from perjury. The book “Injustice: The Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five” details the case.

Aafia Siddiqui is a U.S.-educated Pakistani neuroscientist who came to the U.S. in 1990, then returned to Pakistan with her family in 2002. In 2003 she was kidnapped by U.S. and Pakistani agents and held in Bagram Air Base through 2008. She was convicted of attempted murder of her U.S. interrogators in Afghanistan in 2008–though she was the person shot–and sentenced to 86 years in prison in Fort Worth, Texas. The weapon she allegedly fired in the interrogation room did not have her fingerprints, nor was there evidence the gun was fired.

Four British Parliamentarians wrote to President Barack Obama that “there was an utter lack of concrete evidence tying Dr Siddiqui to the weapon she allegedly fired at a U.S. officer,” and that she should be freed immediately. Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark described Aafia’s plight as the “worst case of individual injustice I have ever witnessed.” More information is available at aafia.org and aafiamovement.com.

5.  Arab/Muslim Prisoners Tortured and Locked up without Trial at Guantanamo

Since 2002, a total of 779 Muslim men and boys as young as 10 have been seized and held at Guantánamo, a military base in Cuban territory that is illegally occupied by the United States.

Washington claimed the prisoners are outside U.S. and international law, and thus do not have the rights of POWs. Nearly all of the prisoners were held without charge or trial. Many were tortured to produce a compliant “learned helplessness”–the goal of former U.S. slave-breaking.

Some detainees were even tortured to death. In 2003, 23 prisoners attempted suicide in a mass protest against their abuse.

The torture was directed by two psychologists, James E Mitchell and Bruce Jessen.

By any definition of political prisoner, most political prisoners in Cuba are at the U.S. military-torture center at Guantanamo.

Today there are still 36 prisoners, only 11 of whom have been charged with war crimes, while just two have been convicted–and by “military commissions,” which Amnesty International declared do not meet fair trial standards.

Another 20 have been approved for release but remain locked up. Five detainees are “forever prisoners,” held without charge or trial, but not to be released. The websites closeguantanamo.org and witnessagainsttorture.com and films The Report and The Mauritanian provide more information.

6. Women fighting patriarchal sexist violence

Nearly three in 10 women in the United States have endured male physical violence or stalking by a partner. Nearly one in five women are raped in their lifetime. Almost four women are killed a day by a male partner.

Half of all women murdered are killed by men they know intimately, yet hundreds of women are in prison for killing their abuser in self-defense.

The U.S. legal system treats these as individual cases, not for what it is: the systematic patriarchal violence against women as an oppressed group.

The website Survived and Punished and Defend Survivors provide more information about this problem.

Marissa Alexander, a Black women from Florida, was sentenced to 20 years in 2013 for firing a warning shot inside her home to ward off her brutal husband, against whom she had an order of protection. Her affirmation that Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law applied to her because she was defending herself was rejected. The same year, George Zimmerman was found not guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin based on that same law. National protests finally freed her in 2017.

Fran Thompson was an environmental activist in Nebraska. She has been in jail for 30 years for murder, sentenced to life without parole. She had defended herself, killing a man who was threatening to sexually assault her after he broke into her home. She was also targeted because of her environmental work, and was not allowed to plea self-defense.

Thompson had taken on the prosecutor and local government during her activism, having organized against two big projects, an egg factory and a nuclear waste facility, which would have brought the county big profits.

Maddesyn George has been imprisoned since July 2020. She was given a 6.5-year sentence for defending herself from sexual assault by a white man. She is a member of the Colville Confederated Tribes.

Indigenous women experience murder rates 10 times higher than the national average. The majority of these murders are committed by non-Native people on Native-owned land. See: MMIW USA and Coalition to Stop Violence against Native Women.

7. Environmental “Green Scare” protestors

A number of environmental activists, animal rights supporters, and water protectors have challenged corporate abuses and have been jailed.

During the original so-called Green Scare, in the 1990s to early 2000s, the U.S. government sought to squash animal rights and environmental activism, acting in the interest of corporations that profit from damaging the earth.

A more recent series of jailings have specifically targeted people protesting against pipeline construction.

The following are political prisoners:

Joseph Mahmoud Dibee, a member of Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front was arrested in 2018 for his participation in setting fire to a slaughterhouse. Between 1995 and 2001, a group of Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front supporters caused more than $45 million in damages in a series of arsons. Dibee is imprisoned awaiting sentencing.

Marius Mason (formerly Marie Mason), a member of the Earth Liberation Front, was arrested in 2008 for an attack on a lab building at Michigan State University that was creating genetically modified organisms, with funding from mega-corporation Monsanto, the producer of Agent Orange.

Mason was also sentenced for damage to commercial logging equipment. No one was harmed by these actions. Mason’s 22 year-sentence is the longest yet for any of the Green Scare cases of those committing crimes against property of corporations.

Jessica Reznicek, of the Catholic Workers Movement, took action in 2016 to stop the environmentally destructive Dakota Access Pipeline by dismantling construction equipment and pipeline valves and setting fire to construction machinery. She would have been handed three years, but was sentenced to eight, with the added sentence for terrorism, even though no person was physically harmed.

Reznicek’s actions against private property were “calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government,” meaning a person who takes direct action against an energy company can be treated as an enemy of the state. Reznicek explained,

What we did do was fight a private corporation that has run rampant across our country seizing land and polluting our nation’s water supply.

The United States government has political prisoners

This list belies the myth that the United States has no political prisoners.

Political prisoners have no shared ideology. Standing for justice does not necessarily mean that one defends their political views; it means that one demands their freedom because they have been unjustly incarcerated.

Many hundreds of thousands of people have been unjustly incarcerated in the United States, but in these cases, it is clear that they were detained because of their political beliefs and activism, and that by definition makes them political prisoners.

 

lo stato cattivo – genova Rinviati a giudizio gli anarchici

  accusati di fabbricare ordigni esplosivi ma il giudice esclude la finalità di terrorismo

Erano stati arrestati a marzo, l’indagine era partita da un clochard che aveva per caso scoperto un deposito di esplosivi in un bosco inaccessibile nella zona di forte Tenaglia

Genova. Sono stati rinviati a giudizio ma senza la finalità di terrorismo i due anarchici genovesi che erano stati arrestati a marzo, accusati di detenzione di materiale esplodente ed esplosivo, tentata fabbricazione di ordigni esplosivi improvvisati, nonché detenzione di materiale esplodente al fine di attentare alla pubblica incolumità.

L’indagine era partita dopo che un clochard si era presentato dai carabinieri dicendo di aver visto un uomo che nascondeva qualcosa nel bosco nella zona di Forte Tenaglia e lui sperando fosse droga da rivendere aveva invece trovato un deposito di esplosivi. Tra il materiale sequestrato dai militari c’erano oltre tre kg di ‘polvere nera’, un centinaio di petardi, che oltre alla polvere nera contengono alluminio e perclorato di potassio, 668 miccette, 1 piccolo ordigno esplosivo pronto all’uso, diversi meccanismi per orologi a muro, un timer da cucina, batterie, candele e nastro adesivo ecc.

Per risalire ai ‘proprietari’ del deposito i carabinieri avevano piazzato delle fototrappole, mentre la digos, una volta individuata la coppia, aveva messo microspie a bordo dell’auto. Secondo la tesi della Procura i due arrestati sarebbero vicini alle posizioni della Fai-Fri, la Federazione anarchica informale, considerata responsabile dal 2003 ad oggi di 66 attentati terroristici.

Secondo gli investigatori alcuni dei pezzi ritrovati nel deposito sarebbero in tutto simili, per marca, modello e dimensioni, a quelli utilizzati per i tre congegni temporizzati per il tentativo di incendio del 13 luglio dei due tralicci vicini al Santuario delle Guardia collegati a bottiglie di plastica contenenti liquido infiammabile, ma quell’episodio (l’innesco fra l’altro non funzionò) non è contestato agli arrestati come non lo sono gli altri incendi e sabotaggi a tralicci e ripetitori avvenuti a Genova negli ultimi anni, che tutti rivendicati su siti anarchici restano al momento contro ignoti.

Tra il materiale cartaceo e informatico sequestrato agli imputati al momento dell’arresto gli investigatori della Digos e del Ros avevano trovato tracce di file cancellati che contenevano le mappe delle zone dove si erano verificati alcuni dei sabotaggi ai tralicci, nonché l’accesso ripetuto ai siti anarchici che ricevono e pubblicano le rivendicazioni dei sabotaggi poco prima della pubblicazione delle rivendicazioni stesse. Si tratta di elementi indiziari che il gup tuttavia non ha ritenuto sufficienti per contestare l’aggravante della finalità di terrorismo, cosa che d’altronde non aveva fatto neppure il gip che aveva firmato l’ordinanza di custodia cautelare…

 

lo stato ‘buono’ Prosciolti 19 anarchici per l’occupazione della casa cantoniera di Oulx e la parrocchia di Clavière

 

Il tribunale ha sancito la «tenuità del fatto»: nei locali occupati venivano soccorsi i migranti diretti in Francia

È finito con il proscioglimento di tutti i 19 imputati a Torino il processo per il caso degli edifici occupati in Alta Valle di Susa da gruppi di anarchici e antagonisti, nel 2018, per prestare assistenza e soccorso ai migranti diretti verso la Francia. Per la casa cantoniera di Oulx il tribunale ha sancito la «tenuità del fatto»; per i locali di pertinenza di una parrocchia a Claviere ha stabilito il non luogo a procedere per mancanza di querela.

La procura aveva chiesto 19 condanne riconoscendo però, come attenuante, che si era trattato di una azione per scopi umanitari. «Siamo soddisfatti parzialmente – è il commento di uno dei difensori, l’avvocato Danilo Ghia – perché, alla luce di quanto ha dimostrato il processo, bisognava arrivare a una assoluzione per ‘stato di necessità’, in quanto gli imputati agirono per salvare la vita a delle persone».