The session began with the following statement read by comrade Christos Tsakalos:
A few days ago, some exceptional news transformed the slow death of prison into a sign of life.
In Italy, our brothers and sisters from the Olga Cell of the Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front rewarded Roberto Adinolfi—head of nuclear energy company Ansaldo Nucleare—with three bullets in his legs. An enemy fell to the ground and a marvelous beacon of war dawned.
At this very moment, black-clad messengers of destruction are continuing to carry the flame of anarchy in the most faraway places.
They are our brothers and sisters from the Bolivian Informal Anarchist Federation, who tirelessly attack the frozen immobility of social death. This time, they placed an explosive device at a business that imports Renault cars from France.
We have some ugly news for this world’s law-abiding citizens.
For all of you who hide behind your very sober neckties, who work in your sterile offices, who live shut away in your stylish apartments, who wear your expressionless masks, who lie down in the mediocrity of your desires and sleep through borrowed dreams.
Your world is a guillotine that murders life.
Your ideals are concealed within your well-fed bellies and your empty hearts.
This society massacres our freedom, while your soldiers lock us up in your prisons, far away from our brothers and sisters.
But we can still hear their voices.
They are the conspirators of the Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front and the anarchists of praxis of the Black International, who emerge from the unknown and set thousands of fires to society’s peaceful dream.
They are our brothers and sisters. When they laugh they have stars in their eyes, and when they cry their tears become thorns, bullets, dynamite, and stones.
They are all of us who have chosen to inhabit the extremes. They are all of us who have no country and whose home is the sky and the stars.
They are all of us who destroy with a laugh and set fires with a song.
And power will die, the state will die, society will die.
Because only outside the limits of every compliance, every obligation, every rule, and every society can autonomous individualities exist who are nourished by the fire and chaos of an unyielding spirit.
Long live our brothers and sisters in the Olga Cell.
Long live our brothers and sisters in the Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front.
—Imprisoned members cell of the Fire Cells Conspiracy
Tsakalos continued to speak. He said the attempts by the presiding judge and the prosecutor to suppress the political nature of the trial were in vain. By trying to speed up the proceedings, they were indirectly admitting that the sentences had already been predetermined. Tsakalos also spoke about the political higher-ups who are in fact deciding on everything that goes on at the trial. In addition, he made reference to a certain Eleni Kondopoulou, who was subpoenaed as a witness but never appeared. Tsakalos said she doesn’t exist. Antiterrorist Unit pigs initially stated that they had identified her as one of the people who used to visit Haris Hatzimichelakis’ apartment in Halandri, so the judicial authorities issued an arrest warrant but then declared her innocent, evidently in order to cover up the mistake they made. The woman most likely doesn’t exist, and she existed only in judicial orders.
The defense attorneys then reminded the presiding judge about the petitions they had submitted during prior sessions. Among other things, they requested to once again subpoena all the Antiterrorist Unit police as witnesses (since enormous discrepancies emerged in their testimonies), as well officer Tziotis (who hasn’t yet made an appearance) from the same department, politician Louka Katseli, and former vice minister Stavros Kalafatis.
Defense attorney Frangiskos Ragousis reminded the judges that, despite accepting his request to subpoena Antiterrorist officer I. Frangiskos, the witness never made an appearance. Prosecutor I. Liakopoulos suggested that all such requests be rejected because they supposedly “don’t meet even the most minimal standards.” Liakopoulos considered the request to subpoena Katseli to be especially “exaggerated,” saying that “since her husband came here, there is no need for her to come as well.”
The examination phase for prosecution witnesses thus came to an end. Witnesses for the defense would now ordinarily have to testify, but the defendants rejected this “democratic right” since, according to Tsakalos, “only we ourselves can defend our actions.” The only one to testify as a defense witness was comrade Theofilos Mavropoulos, who made the following statement:
Growing up in a society of submission, resignation, hypocrisy, and stagnation, I felt the urgency to live my life as a human being and not as a number. To be a protagonist of my life and not a spectator. To satisfy ALL my desires here and now and avoid the muck of a passive waiting. I therefore sought out a new path, far removed from the endless pursuit of power.
I quickly realized that the only way one could live without power was to stand against it. Against institutions, against society, against relationships and perceptions that foster the human perversion of desiring the existence of hierarchy.
The enemy—power—undoubtedly has a spiritual as well as a material basis. In other words, it has subjects at its disposal who are determined to defend it with material violence, but it also has followers who spread the authoritarian obsession throughout the diffuse social fabric.
Thus, during centuries of human history, power developed through destructive wars and flourishing civilizations, arriving at its current globalized state while keeping thousands of years of experience in its curriculum in order to protect itself and extend its reach. Naturally, its greatest achievement of all is the fact of its consolidation within the prevailing social conscience.
What I, for my part, had to oppose against all that was the application and spread of my anarchic code of values.
However, the obvious inequality in the ratio of forces leads to the unavoidable choice of a strategic war against the regime—specifically, anarchist revolutionary war. The collectivization of antiauthoritarian action whose principle is the polymorphism of the means of struggle has thus become my existential priority.
I participated in different anarchist interventions in social space-time. From demonstrations, rallies, distributing political texts, postering, and powerfully combative marches to conspiratorial urban guerrilla actions.
By dedicating the most recent period of my life to armed anarchist struggle, I came to appreciate the tactic of urban guerrilla war. Surprise attacks on the structures of authoritarian society paralyze its defense mechanisms, since it is almost incapable of meeting a blow that is unpredictable insofar as the space and time at which it will be struck. The effects of a series of successful guerrilla attacks directed against strategic targets located behind the front lines of power, apart from causing material sabotage, naturally have a negative impact on the enemy’s morale as well. Urban guerrilla war, as a methodology and as a way of life, uses discourse and practice to intensify the rupture with the existent and create limitless prospects for bringing about anarchy.
With this viewpoint as my basis, I came into contact with my comrades, creating the strongest of brotherly relationships.
Some of them are in front of you today, seated in the dock, while society has entrusted you with judging them for their anarchist political action.
But unfortunately for you, your court martial is incapable of repressing anarchist action’s impetuousness for freedom. Because anarchy is always seeking and finding new ways to escape from prison.
The defendants proudly and unapologetically took responsibility for their participation in the Fire Cells Conspiracy revolutionary anarchist organization, honoring and cementing their choices. Instead of their remorse, which you had perhaps hoped to elicit, what you are receiving is their total rejection and their general rupture with the world of power to which you are doing faithful service, as well as a sardonic smile—the same one we had when we were all sitting together at a table and polishing our weapons. We were undermining your society, maneuvering against it, sliding bullets into the clip with the same insolence with which we now flip through the pages of these charges. A page, a bullet, a page, a bullet.
We are not afraid and we will not retreat, because as long as we keep trying we are alive and free.
LONG LIVE THE FIRE CELLS CONSPIRACY REVOLUTIONARY ANARCHIST ORGANIZATION/INTERNATIONAL REVOLUTONARY FRONT.
PERMANENT INSURRECTION FOR ANARCHY.
The judges then moved on to the next part of the proceedings, which consists of the reading of texts and statements by witnesses who were unable to appear at the trial.
The trial was adjourned to Friday, May 25.