Greece: The anarchist Giannis Michailidis has escaped from Tyrintha prison [en]

The anarchist prisoner Giannis Michailidis [sometimes the name is reported as Yannis and the surname as Mihailidis] escaped a few days ago from the so-called rural prison of Tyrintha (Tiryns), in Peloponnese. He was arrested on 1 February 2013 following the double robbery that took place in Velventos (Kozani region, in Greece), along with the anarchists Nikos Romanos, Dimitris Politis and Andreas-Dimitris Bourzoukos (for the same facts on 30 April 2013 were also arrested the fugitives anarchists Argyris Dalios, Fivos Harisis, Giannis Naxakis and Grigoris Sarafoudis — not all of them were convicted of robberies). The comrade, before the escape, was serving a sentence of 16 years and 4 months, imposed with the sentence that followed the trial regarding the facts of Velventos. Furthermore, in 2015 he was sentenced to 15 years for charges linked to an attack on the police on May 18, 2011, in Pefki, during a police check (two policemen were wounded and the anarchist Theofilos Mavropoulos was arrested, wounded as well). Giannis is also known as “the archer of Syntagma” since, in February 2011, in the clashes during a general strike, he was arrested for hitting the riot police that protected the Greek parliament in Syntagma Square (Athens) with a bow and arrow.

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Sardinia [Italy]: Updates on imprisoned anarchist comrade Davide Delogu (20/10/2017) [en]

The trial against Davide accused for attempting escape from the prison of Buoncamino (Cagliari — Sardinia) in 2010 is still on.

The next hearing will be held in October 26th, at 9 am in the Court of the Italian State present in Cagliari. Davide will appear at the hearing.

Davide informs us that he received 3 disciplinary reports in the weeks before.

He is subjected to the article 14bis [provision that allows the suspension of certain prison regulations] since the first week of May 2017, and it should end in the first week of November. At the moment, we don’t know if the 14bis will be extended.

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Italy- Anarchist prisoner Davide Delogu’s communique concerning his escape attempt (01/05/2017) [en]

FIRST OF MAY ATTACK FOR SELF-LIBERATION FROM THE PRISON OF BRUCOLI – AUGUSTA

The goal: To escape
The result: Escape unsuccessful (which isn’t a failure!)
The reason: The very strong bastard wind!
The project: To redeem myself, widening my subversive gaze of revenge and launch a campaign of acts of self-liberation.

Hunted in each tiny movement, with all the maniacal consequences of control that this implies in everyday life in prison where I spend 21 hours a day in a cell, I waited for the last search on 30th May before acting, and I also made a fool of the jailers during their beating of the bars that day. I spend the hours in the exercise yard between theoretical and practical elaboration, which led me to devise a perfect escape plan, given that limits in the mechanism of control and its sophisticated complexity can be detected, faults that can be traced in all jails, revealing their hidden weaknesses.
In spite of the subjugation they would like to impose on the infallibility they build from totalitarianism and the perfectioning of the prison system, the fact is that there are always spaces for action. A space in the prison that I occupied and liberated from the moment the action began.

That day there was a strong wind and the choice of 1st May had been dictated by a real tactical calculation, due to the significant shortage of staff following which the guard in charge of monitoring the cameras in the yard was also in charge of opening and closing the entrance to the yard.
Then we made it coincide with this day of struggle, and let’s reinvigorate the daily habit of anarchist direct actions, which unfortunately are at a very low ebb… so eluding the guard’s visual control in the yard, I climb on to the roof like a monkey ready for anything, and run like lightening the length of the building until I arrive at a point from where I jump down 4 metres, then I go towards the window of the cell where I was held to
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Italy: About the struggle of comrade Davide Delogu, Sardinian anarchist prisoner of the Italian State [en]

A few days ago we published on the website of Croce Nera Anarchica news about the attempted prison escape carried out by Sardinian anarchist comrade Davide Delogu, which ended with the machine-guns of the guards pointed to his face. We learned about this news from the phone call that Davide is making weekly with his family.
Davide informs us that he is in total isolation from May 1st and, that the article 14bis will be re-applied against him (six months of constant isolation with censorship imposed on his entire correspondence).
This escape attempt — Davide explains in a personal letter to me, with a document attached — is a Direct Action, part of the campaign for self-liberation, which he decided to launch with the act of May 1st.
Unconditional support to all anarchist comrades who, without regards, fight with dignity.
Support to the hunger strike of imprisoned anarchist comrade Alfredo Cospito.
Support to the anarchist revolutionary choices of Sardinian anarchist comrade Davide Delogu.
Complicity and affinity with anarchist comrades, editors of the anarchist journal Vetriolo, who expressed their solidarity to Alfredo Cospito a few days ago.
Sempri pro s’anarchia! Sempri Ainnantis! [in Sardinian: Always for anarchy! Always Forward]

Omar Nioi, Sardinian anarchist, editor of C.N.A. [Anarchist Black Cross]
May 12th, 2017


COMMUNIQUE OF IMPRISONED ANARCHIST COMRADE DAVIDE DELOGU:

Prison and Brucoli [district of Augusta, Sardinia], April 25th 2017
Loose Cannon (... Maybe...)
We are anarchists in prison, some for years, some less, and we daily fight the war against domination, face-to-face with the enemy, inside their cages. We share the refusal and the disdain, clashing with the prison authority and its bareaucratic [play on words with bars and bureaucratic] discipline every day.
Therefore, we are cannons that are not loose (for now...), whose explosions, as the recent and the past acts teach, create disruption, material damage and the shattering of prison logic (that, as anarchist, has already been destroyed!). Sending certainly a vital stimulus of action inside a complex desolate swamp, to live your own anarchy, right here, right now, immediately!
Continuing to live like a cannon that is not loose (... maybe...) , I open with the acts a campaign (for those who want to accept it, otherwise I will do it alone, like I always did) of self-liberation, that will
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Elephant Ed. : Juan José Garfia — Adiós Prisión. The story of the most spectacular escapes [en]

Download: PDF

Original title: ADIÓS PRISIÓN. El relato de las fugas mas espectaculares, First Spanish edition: Txalaparta ed., Tafalla, October 1995
Italian Edition: ADIÓS PRISIÓN. Il racconto delle fughe più spettacolari Biblioteca Dell’Evasione, August 2008
Translated by Barbara Stefanelli and Jean Weir in collaboration with Antonia and other accomplices

Introduction to the English edition
As soon as I finished reading Adiós Prisión in the Italian edition published in August 2008 I felt the urge to translate it. It is one of those books that you do not want to finish. You cannot get it out of your head, you want to delve deeper and deeper into it.
This book talks about freedom, the urgent need for freedom and the impossibility of living without it. This book says that freedom must be taken back at all costs and that is exactly what the protagonists of Adiós Prisión, Spanish prisoners under the infamous FIES regime, did: they took back their freedom using all means necessary, challenging the impossible, ready to kill for it if necessary. There is no room for political correctness or abstract morals concerning human life here: if the screws keep you locked up and your life, even in its most banal and insignificant aspects, is at the mercy of their caprice, violence and stupidity, your only choice is to eliminate them if they put themselves between you and your freedom.
The protagonists of this book are not passive subjects of the prison system, on the contrary they are well aware of the fact that prison is the absolute negation of human dignity. As FIES prisoners they are experiencing directly how human beings will never adapt to life in prison, and their most impelling need is to escape in order to put an end to a situation that is unendurable.
The FIES, Ficheros de Internos de Especial Seguimento (record of prisoners under special observation) was inaugurated by the Spanish prison system in 1991 in order to further punish and control prisoners who had been carrying out revolts in the Spanish jails over the previous decades. Two amnesties were granted following the dictator Franco’s death, one in 1976 and one in 1977, but they were systematically denied to a large number of prisoners, the ‘social’ prisoners, whereas many of those declared or considered ‘political’ were released. It was then that revolts started breaking out continuously, not only for the amnesty to be extended to all prisoners but also against the unbearable conditions inside the jails (torture, beatings, overcrowding, rotten food, no medical attention for prisoners affected by medical conditions, and so on). Prison infrastructures were smashed and destroyed as a result of the frequent riots that occurred in most Spanish prisons in the years following Franco’s death. The FIES was created with the precise aim of keeping a record of the most rebellious prisoners of those years. However, it was not just an archive for gathering information about hot-headed prisoners: along with its inauguration special wings were being built inside prisons all over Spain to hold those considered particularly dangerous by the prison system. In the special wings the cells were tiny, the walls were completely bare, the toilet was a hole in the floor, the bed was made of iron, and it was impossible to see out through the barred window. Prisoners spent days, months, years locked up in these dungeons and were allowed to keep nothing with them as their personal possessions were seized on entry to the wing. The screws were always ready to provoke, search and beat prisoners, knowing that they could count on total impunity and the
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