Statement by comrade Antonis Staboulos that was read out at the beginning of the 2nd trial of the Revolutionary Struggle.
As an anarchist hostage, based on my ethical values and the just I represent, I am obliged to not legitimize this trial and the system it serves. I deny the charges attributed to me, not only because they are a product of a penal system which I do not accept, but also because they have nothing to do with reality, something obvious even if we only compare the desperate attempt of the mechanisms to charge me on one hand, and the complete lack of any proof in order to establish these charges on the other.
On October 1st 2014, when they arrested me, the then political leadership did everything they could to present this incident as a grand job. They pulled all the strings they could to prove what the indictment includes and that much more was said through the journalists. Fortunately I was in the hands of the torturers in GADA (Athens police headquarters) and I did not have a tv to suffer the sewage of the mass media. The entire terrorist service strived to prove the great success the faltering government wanted in order to sell this job to the meager minority of the population that voted for it, so they can win a bit more governmental time. The attempts were in vain, as proven with the future of the government as well the foundations of the indictment. After my arrest the police did not leave a stone unturned in any space me or my relatives had passed through, they even searched a neighbour’s house. They removed dozens of objects, books, computers, mobile phones, keys, they looked for DNA, prints, lifted the telephone records etc etc. what was the proof that came out of all searching and interrogations? A key I had on me when I was arrested and an empty house, irrelevant to the case. And with this the prosecutor proposes my conviction for acts which are not connected except for in the rich imagination and the reason the DAEEB (Directorate of Special Crimes of Violence – the official name of the antiterrorist force) exists. The conceptual leaps they reached in order for me to be here for a year now detained with charges of integration into an organization, attack, use of explosives, theft etc, highlight the rage of the oppression mechanisms, their need to close cases having successes that translate into medals, and the ease law 187A gives to create guilty people.
Independently of my position concerning the indictment, and because this trial is a political trial, I would like to say that no civil court can judge revolutionary acts. The only thing it can do is impose sentences always based on the specific class interests it serves. These kinds of trials are moments of social war where the laws of the powerful attempt to impose on the just of those bellow. Just like your laws assert the monopoly of violence in the streets, thus in these rooms as well, your laws claim their uniqueness as an undisputed truth. As representatives of the judicial system you apply a methodical continuous and by profession violence on individuals and social groups that voluntarily or involuntarily function as an obstacle or competitively towards the legal validity – in the absolute terrorist violence of the criminal organization called the state, with the unlimited arsenals, the bombs intended for mass murdering, the professional medaled murderers and the police-judicial complex that aims at the preservation of daily capitalist life and the reproduction of the terms of its perpetuation, i.e. crime.
The reciprocation of your role imposes above all the production of guilty people. The principle “innocent until proven guilty” is now reversed: the accused is considered guilty from the start, and is called to prove their innocence. More and more people are locked up in prisons, as proof of the effectiveness of the operation of the penal system, with the greatest criminals free to define, control and use the murderous capitalist system as law or above the law. This is the frame in which you perform your job, serving the smoothness of a monstrosity.
The special character of this court, just like the special laws with which it tries, on one hand claim the necessity of control by above, because it turns against forms of illegality threatening towards the regime (not necessarily revolutionary but powerful when it comes to disputing the state monopoly of violence). On the other, the marginalization of anarchist speech is attempted, this is why these trials take place in closed spaces, without a jury, in order to conceal the fact that these persecutions are clearly political.
Closing I would like to say that in my case the indictment is based on a double arbitrariness. The first is the assumption that I am a member of the R.S., something that does not arise from anywhere, and the second is the charge on the acts attributed to the organization, again with no proof of course. The second part is now the epitome of arbitrariness not only when I comes to me but also if it concerned a member of the organization. The court has absolutely no jurisdiction to judge me as a political entity. Simultaneously, as a person I am struggling to be here in this room since even the aesthetic of bureaucracy causes me disgust, let alone the whole procedure. Therefore, my desire is to intervene as little as possible. When the time comes for my testimony I will make a full statement about everything.
Antonis Staboulos
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Translated by Act for freedom now!/boubourAs
Source
https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1550231/