Media Terror-Frenzy: Greek counter-terrorism police arrested Antonis Stamboulos on 1 October on charges of belonging to the Revolutionary Organisation – Revolutionary Struggle (Epanastatikos Agonas: EA). The police said that Stamboulos’s arrest was likely to prevent terrorist attacks, probably planned for 1-4 October, on several targets mentioned in a notebook allegedly in Stamboulos’s possession. The targets are alleged to include Vangelis Marinakis (a shipowner and the chairman of the Olympiakos football team), Theodoros Fessas (the president of the Federation of Hellenic Industries) and his Athens-based IT firm InfoQuest, the premises of the ruling New Democracy (Néa Dimokratía: ND) party, as well as Capital (a Greece-registered ship management company), and German engineering company Siemens.
Following his arrest on the 1st of October 2014, Antonis Stamboulos is currently being held under pretrial detention facing terrorism charges.
On October 6th, with another open letter, the comrade announced hunger and thirst strike denouncing the fact that he is now being held in the prisoner transfer centre of Athens. Furthermore, he protests the ongoing media construct fueled by antiterrorism cops against him.
The terror-frenzy scenarios leaked to the Press have no end, to make it easier for the antiterrorism unit to exterminate him. The captive comrade has been portrayed, among other things, as a leading member of the Revolutionary Struggle urban guerrilla group, as co-perpetrator of a bank robbery in Kleitoria (Achaea, Greece), as alleged successor of slain comrade Lambros Foundas, while the mouthpieces of Power have spread that the wanted anarchist Pola Roupa along with her child was supposedly seen on the steps to his apartment in Kallifrona street in Kypseli (which was deemed a “safehouse”). Meanwhile, wannabe informants and other ridiculous snitches have been all too willing to testify against him (e.g. a neighbor to his parents’ house claimed he had heard explosions from the basement of their home).
The fact that the cops took him to the prisoner transfer centre – despite the prosecutor’s request for his transfer to Koridallos prison – reveals that they are attempting to send him to another, remote prison in order to exterminate not so much him as his relatives, who will be forced to travel for hours to visit him in prison, but also in order to make the work of his defense lawyer tougher than it already is.
Antonis Stamboulos stated that he will not let the scumbags of antiterrorist police and their political bosses crush his close ones. That’s why, even before they announce where they’re planning to send him, he warned that he does not accept to be taken anywhere else other than Koridallos, close to his family and lawyer.
He thus started his hunger and thirst strike on October 6th.
1 & 2 : Slogans spray-painted on October 4th by anarchists in solidarity in Denizliou Street in the district of Vyronas, exactly where the comrade was kidnapped by cops: “Solidarity with comrade A.Stamboulos” – “The fight goes on; Antonis, hold strong”.
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Statement by anarchist Antonis Stamboulos, detained in Athens police headquarters
On October 1st, 2014, I was arrested, hooded and taken to an interrogation room of the antiterrorist unit. From 5pm until 1am, a bunch of hooded cops – and while I was handcuffed behind the back – took my DNA sample, fingerprints and (tried to take) my photographs by force, amid ironies, chokeholds, sprains and beatings, and threatened to electroshock me, thinking this would make me collaborate. At 1am, I saw unhooded cops for the first time, who told me that I am accused of terrorism. Until 5.30 in the morning, I remained in a 1×3 holding cell, always handcuffed behind my back. The next day they attempted to photograph me once again.
For my part, I abstained from food and water from the first moment, and demanded to speak with a lawyer. After 24 hours of detention, they eventually allowed me to notify a lawyer, and I managed to meet with her just for a few minutes before being brought to the prosecutor.
I share the above with fellow combatants as a small experience of struggle.
Whether or not the attitude of the State towards us is mild or harsh – this always depends on circumstances – it can never break us, so long as we are conscious of the responsibility that derives from our position as anarchists, in moments of adversity.
Hard times in the struggle are those that temper us with strong consciousness. In these circumstances, each of us upholds the ideals of the society we are fighting to build. A lot of blood has been shed in the struggle for emancipation from the classist society, and therefore only fools would expect us to bend in the face of any bullying of cops. I held a negative stance against the efforts of statist lackeys to extract my personal data for two reasons. First for the sake of my own values, as I believe every anarchist revolutionary should not give even an inch of ground to the classist enemy. And second because I was aware of the gravity of the case in which I am being implicated, so I wanted to protect my comradely and friendly environment from the crows holding me captive. While the Clouseaus were unable to find out my name, I was not at all willing to give it to them. At the time of this writing, two days after the arrest, the police have “finally” identified me.
It is clear that the officers of the antiterrorist squad and particularly their political superiors hoped to make a scoop out of my arrest, hence the leaks to the Press regarding the notebook containing “precisely-timed routes”, targets, bicycles and sausages.* They tailor their made-up story to fit their scenario; a scenario that, in the end, must always make them come out as winners.
The police and prosecutors have no business knowing what I did, who I am and why I was where I was caught; it’s really not their concern but mine. Therefore, I don’t need to offer an apologia to guardians of the bourgeois legality, but only to the revolutionary movement, the comrades and the people who choose not to live like a raya (slave).
I consider this first communication with the outside world to be necessary, since I am under no illusions that I won’t be sent to pretrial incarceration.
For now, I’m being held captive in the hands of servants of the Capital, but my heart still belongs to the camp of revolution.
The struggle continues.
Long live the revolution.
Long live Anarchy.
Antonis Stamboulos
from the PQ on 173, Alexandras Avenue
early on October 4th, 2014
* Translators’ note: While the comrade – who was arrested in the district of Vyronas, Athens – was still unidentified, the chief of police publicly claimed that one of the most striking “findings” were handwritten notes deemed code words for explosives.