Italy: Leaders, activists of Anti-imperialist Camp, Turkish revolutionaries arrested

03/04/2004

Supporters of the liberation struggles against American imperialism targeted

This morning three militants of the Anti-imperialist Camp have been arrested by order of the prosecutor´s office of Perugia: Moreno Pasquinelli (international spokesman of the Anti-imperialist Camp), Maria Grazia Ardizzone (member of the Political Committee of the Anti-imperialist Camp) and Alessia Monteverdi.

Simultaneously at least one Turkish comrade has been arrested in the same operation. Other unconfirmed arrests are reported from Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Greece and Turkey.

It seems that the accusation against the activists of the Anti-imperialist Camp is to have helped Turkish revolutionary militants who had been forced into exile by the regime in Ankara where the military still pull the strings.

The media campaign of criminalisation led first of all by Magdi Allam in the pages of "Corriere della Sera" seems to bear its first fruits.

Only yesterday afternoon we symbolically occupied the Roman office of Corriere della Sera to protest the campaign of defamation and persecution against the Anti-imperialist Camp.

Today´s arrests are obviously a reprisal against all those who support the resistance and liberation struggle of the Iraqi people against the barbaric and illegitimate occupation led by the US and its allies, among them Italy.

On March 20 more than one million Italians affirmed the right of the Iraqi people to resist and many of the demonstrators expressed their open and clear support to the Iraqi resistance.

This is frightening the Italian government and the political class of all proveniences who are unified in their all out support for Washington´s doctrine of the American Empire. There are terrified that the masses refuse their mystifying equation " resistance = terrorism". It is the same equation postulated by the Nazi occupants known under "Achtung Banditen". This formula is being used to cover any crime of the Empire of Stars and Stripes and its servile allies in their struggle against the anti-imperialist resistance throughout the world.

The operation carried out by the Italian police against the Anti-imperialist Camp and the Turkish militants inscribes itself in the very same logic of global repression in the service of American dominium.

The police action of today is clearly a political one designed to repress the surging movement against the occupation by smashing its vanguard. One evidence is that the arrest warrants bears the data of February 23!

The events of today are sign of a qualitative increase of the level of repression in our country. Applying the notorious "anti-terrorist legislation" of article 270bis the detained are denied access to an advocate for five days depriving them of any right to legal defence.

They want to smash the Anti-imperialist Camp in order to smash all the anti-imperialists and all those who oppose the pre-emptive and permanent war of Bush.

We call upon all those who struggle against the US world order, upon all those who took to the streets on March 20 to demand the end of the occupation of Iraq, upon all those democrats who defend the right to free political expression against the logic of repression unleashed by the totalitarianism of the dominant "corporate thought" to take immediate action and to make their voices heard.

Free Alessia, Maria Grazia and Moreno!
Free the Turkish revolutionaries!