New arrests against anarchists in Barcelona and Manresa
Wanneer: 28/10/2015 - 20:45
New arrests against anarchists in Barcelona and Manresa
Summary:
28 October 2015, 7 anarchist comrades arrested in Barcelona, 2 in Manresa. 8 houses and social centers in the neighborhoods of Sant Andreu, Clot, Gràcia, and Sants raided, including the Ateneu Llibertàri de Sants and La Revoltosa in Clot. They will be taken to Madrid where it will be decided in the next days if they are to be released or imprisoned pending trial. The operation takes place the day after Monica and Francisco were brought before the Audiencia Nacional in Madrid, to decide whether they would be given an additional two years of preventive detention under the anti-terrorist law (the two comrades, who were also imprisoned and absolved in Chile in the so-called "Bombs Case" were arrested in Barcelona in November 2013).
Translated from Catalan
http://www.bllibertari.org/un-company-i-amic-detingut-a-manresa.html
28 October 2015
This morning, starting at 5am, there were raids in two houses in Manresa and two people were arrested on the orders of the Audiencia Nacional, acting against anarchist struggles. Units of the mobile brigade of the Mossos d'Esquadra also carried out raids and arrests in various houses and social centers in Barcelona. As per usual, units from the Information Brigade seized materials, including electronic equipment, money, and propaganda. This operation is a continuation of the repressive strike known as the Pandora case, which was carried out in December of 2014 with the arrest of 11 comrades who are currently awaiting trial, and is related to Operation Piñata and Operation Columna, realized by the Policia Nacional.
This new repressive blow coincides with the hearing in the Audiencia Nacional to revisit the decision of preventive detention for the two imprisoned comrades, Monica and Francisco. We understand these arrests as a police and mediatic effort to facilitate the prolongation of the imprisonment of the two comrades, who have already been locked up for two years in preventive. This very day the high court confirmed the prolongation of their preventive detention. The principal objective of the State is to crush the anarchist struggles that it has singled out as the number one internal enemy. We understand that the figure of an internal enemy is necessary for a democratic State to justify "exceptional" methods of repression that supposedly should not exist in a society of "rights and liberties."
Once again, we must signal the collaboration of the Audiencia Nacional [high court in Madrid] with the repressive forces of the Generalitat [the autonomous government of Catalunya], the Mossos d'Esquadra. Equally, the role of the media continues to give credibility to police sources and focus the case on the figure of the GAC, a public organization that in the police and media imagination has become a terrorist association.
In order to confront the repression and overcome the fear the State wishes to sow, we call for the following protests:
Manresa Pl. Sant Domènec a les 20h
Barcelona Pl. de Diamant del barri de Gràcia a les 20h
Photos of solidarity banners\
http://barcelona.indymedia.org/newswire/display/499948/index.php
Solidarity website
efectopandora.wordpress.com
Solidarity demos now in Barcelona and Madrid for imprisoned comrades.
https://twitter.com/syndicalisms/status/659469729292251136
Spain: Pandora 2: New comrades arrested and serial raids in Barcelona / Manresa
Wednesday, October 28, 2015 at around 6am, the mossos d’esquadra (Catalan Autonomous Police) on orders of the Audiencia Nacional in Madrid [anti-terrorist prosecutor] conducted ten raids against anarchist places (Ateneo Libertario de Sants and the Revoltosa Social Centre) and anarchists’ homes in Barcelona and Manresa. Nine comrades were arrested, seven male and two female. This operation is part of the Pandora operation against GAC (Grupos Anarquistas Coordinados), accused of being the local branch of the FAI / FRI.
In December 2014 seven comrades were arrested and then released on bail a month later with the same charges, and some details of the attacks attributed to the GAC, in Barcelona and Manresa, in addition to searches at the libertarian Athénées of Sant Andreu and Poble Sec and the squat Kasa de la Muntanya.
In March 2015 in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Grenada, during Operation Piñata, 17 places were raided, then in a second investigation into the GAC (6 social centres – including La Quimera, the 13-14, and La Magdalena and the Enredadera in the neighbourhoods of Lavapies, Vallecas and Tetuán in Madrid, La Redonda de Granada, and 11 private homes), resulting in the arrest of 14 people. Five were imprisoned and released three months later. In total, with the last operation, nearly 60 people have been arrested and accused of belonging to the GAC (and more than twenty indicted).
Once again the comrades are caught between the terrorism of the Catalan state and the terrorism of the Spanish national state who are competing with each other (there are two investigations at both these levels against GAC), even causing dissension of politicians in the Catalan nationalists: CUP immediately declared that the Catalan Mossos should not have obeyed a request from the Spanish Audiencia Nacional and the Spanish Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz responded today on Telemadrid that he would not hesitate to use Article 155 of the Constitution which allows the government to “give instructions” to force the autonomous authorities to “work for the general interest”. Likewise, the spokesman of the Catalan cops’ union (Sindicato de Policias de Cataluña SPC)) intervened to declare that there was “nothing new” in this operation against the comrades, as it was going on for a long time now.
Yesterday October 28 a demonstration was held at 20h in plaza del Diamant, where 1,300 people went through the districts of Sants and Gràcia behind a banner signed by a collective in Twitter style, already criticized elsewhere (#JoTambeSocanarquista). Although a number of bins were burned, and several windows of banks broken (plus journacops pushed), one could question the tranquil presence of 6 deputies of the Parliament of Catalonia and two councillors from Barcelona (all CUP party, left separatist allied with the new regional government since the elections of 27 September). Other demonstrations were held on the evening of the raids in Manresa, Igualada, Berga, Zaragoza and Madrid.
The press, which speaks of “actions of terrorism of the anarchist insurrectionalist kind” attributed to GAC, were also able to open a fruitful dialogue with the spokespersons of the Sants Athénée who gave a press conference along with neighbourhood collectives , lawyers and Embat (libertaro-leftist organization that promotes “people’s power”), pointing out that the cops had “found neither weapons nor explosives in the raids, but books, brochures and banners” in their athénée *. Poverty of preventive dissociation (what do they know about what might have been found elsewhere?)!
Finally, on October 27, the eve of this new repressive blow, the Audiencia Nacional decided to extend the imprisonment of Mónica and Francisco, arrested in November 2013, up to two additional years’ remand. They are also accused of terrorism and belonging to GAC, the state suspects them of having led the attack against Zaragoza Cathedral in October 2013.
Tomorrow Friday, October 30, the nine new arrested in Barcelona and Manresa will pass before the investigating judge Juan Pablo Gonzálezin Madrid (Audiencia Nacional) to possibly be charged with “belonging to a criminal organization with terrorist aims”.
Freedom for all!
For fun, we will also quote another pearl of the representative of the libertarian athénée of Sants nicknamed Llibert: “For years the police have been trying to link anarchism and violence, but this is not the reality: we are areas of construction and defence of housing rights, labour rights and against sexist violence” (El movimiento libertario denuncia una “operación política” tras las detenciones del caso Pandora, El Diario, 29/10/2015 – 12:43h)
[Synthesis according Indymedia Barcelona and the Spanish press]
Source: http://actforfree.nostate.net/?p=21538#more-21538