2023-12-22 10:18:00
On December 13th, almost a month after my release from prison, I was served with an appeal by the deputy prosecutor of Evia against the decision on my conditional release, in which he requests that I go back to prison. With his appeal, he requests the “disappearance” of the council of the Thebes misdemeanor council that released me. This is and is a political move since it is dictated by the looming political discontent caused by my release from prison in certain centers of power.
Based on the rationale of the said appeal, the arguments and the “evidence” it cites, it is a given that no prosecutor would deal with them if they concerned any other prisoner. For example, the vice-prosecutor of appeals of Evia “calls out” with his appeal the “methodology” followed by the council of delinquent Thebes, that is, the fact that I was not summoned to appear in person before the council when it was considering my application for conditional dismissal, while thousands women were released from Eleonas prisons before me with the exact same methodology and no prosecutor ever dealt with any of them. Because according to the – obviously correct – approach to the issue by the misdemeanor councils of Thebes, the prosecutor who proposes the conditional dismissal of a prisoner is the one who is also in prison, knows the prisoners and in cooperation with the service who is also the one who has the most “friction” with women, has a particularly weighty opinion that cannot be objectively overturned by a few minutes of the prisoner’s presence on the council, which is made up of people who will see her for the first time. The presence of a detainee in the council for her parole only takes place if her/his prosecutor’s proposal is negative, and this in order to essentially check again whether the proposed extension of her detention is justified.
It is impossible for me to believe that the prosecutors of Evia are now learning for the first time about the methodology that has been followed for decades for the prisoners in Eleonas prisons by countless judicial councils in Thebes (and Athens, since the same method is applied in Korydallos prisons ). Only in my case was there an appeal apparently because … it’s me and because there is a political background and motivation.
Another point of the appeal is the invocation by the prosecutor of acquittals for disciplinary reports related to demonstrations in the Korydallos prisons in 2017. Apart from the fact that these acquittals are acquittals – and while even convictions for disciplinary matters, as provided by Penal Code, are not enough to prevent the conditional release of a prisoner -, does not seem to have been concerned by the fact that the specific reports and the acquittal decisions concerned dozens of prisoners who participated in the protests. But not one of these women faced any problem during the parole process for these issues. The very fact that they are cited as arguments for my re-imprisonment is indicative of the kind of ground on which the argument rests and the degree of arbitrariness that is attempted to be exercised over me.
What undoubtedly pervades this particular appeal is that what he wants (or to be more precise, what they want) from me are declarations of political correctness and declarations of repentance. This is inferred, among other things, from the reference he makes to the reasoning behind the first two negative decisions of the prison board in my initial applications for regular leave, the arguments for which decisions were political, since the first decision referred to political positions I had from time to time expressed publicly and in courts (in essence, that is, it was my defensive “line”), and the second of them concerned in my book “State vs. Commune”. The total of seven regular leaves I had taken is considered an insufficient reason to grant me a conditional dismissal, while the political justification of the negative decisions on my first two applications for regular leave, which were subsequently overturned, is considered more important. Nor is it a matter of importance that the one prison prosecutor referred to in his appeal by the appeals prosecutor is the one who ultimately granted me five regular and two 48-hour emergency leaves for serious family reasons, one of which was without a police escort, while she was the one who made the positive proposal to the council of misdemeanors of Thebes for my conditional release from prison. In two words, she is “calling out” the prosecutor because she did not take into account … herself, an old opinion of hers that she expressed a year and a half ago.
I am not going to expand further on the rationale for the appeal in this text, but this evidence is indicative of my contention that this is a move with political motives and intentions, since an appeal against a board decision to parole a prisoner is not based on …doubts, which, apart from everything else, are also baseless, but based on strong and tangible evidence. After all, the institution of conditional release was never and is not a “grace”, but a measure that must be granted with any “doubt” that it is not sufficient for the unconditional extension of the detention. Otherwise, the existence of this specific institution makes no sense, and in my case – if the appeals board ultimately imposes my re-incarceration in prison – the right to parole is circumvented and practically abolished (initially for me, then for others).
The misdemeanor council of Lamia has reached such a condition of effectively abolishing the right to conditional release that it insists on denying for the umpteenth time the release of my partner Nikos Maziotis from Domokos prisons and while he has served much more time in prison than expected .
The board of misdemeanors of Thebes, which decided on my release, was the one who considered that I cannot be exempted from the right to parole, since no prisoner has been granted exemption status for any reason. The proposal of the public prosecutor of Thebes to accept my release from prison is pierced by the point of view of my not being exempted from the right to conditional release for political reasons. Against this view and in favor of my re-incarceration in prison for reasons of political beliefs, positions, convictions and values, the appeal of the appeals prosecutor of Evia is directed, requesting that I be placed in a state of exception for political reasons.
My belief is that the dominant element in this movement and strategy is that it is perceived as a “political defeat” for certain systemic circles that I was released from prison and “correction” is the indefinite extension of my detention. Because if the board of appeals of Evia agrees to put me in prison again by adopting the reasoning of the appeal, that is, without evidence and real facts but only with political speculations, then this will mean that they want to keep me in prison indefinitely. All this can happen for no other reason than the political nature of the case for which I was imprisoned for 8.5 years (thirteen years “mixed”), the action of the Revolutionary Struggle, but mainly because of my political attitude against prosecutions and trials. This historical course of mine is considered to be “effectively dealt with”. This is a move of pure political revenge.
PS: Some journalists in the days of my release tried to create a political climate of discontent about my release – and it seems they succeeded – by focusing on an old life sentence imposed on me by a court of first instance for the Revolutionary Struggle attack on building of the Bank of Greece (the branch of the ECB) and the IMF in 2014, without having any knowledge of the object, the category and its nature, the law and the political springs of the specific court that wanted for purely political reasons to impose it the penalty as a response to the dynamic resistance against the “memorandums” (this action was directed against the then troika). The power that some hold in their hands combined with half-knowledge or complete ignorance, becomes dangerous.
So I inform you in haste that the law by which both I and my partner Nikos Maziotis were condemned at the time for that action of the Revolutionary Struggle, was a law, 270 BC, which had been imposed by presidential decree by the Papadopoulos government in 1969 to counter the dynamic actions (bombing attacks), which were taking place at that time against the junta of colonels. We had brought this up many times in the courts and asked for its non-application (there are a number of audios and texts from our courts that we have placed on the issue and anyone can very easily find them), given that, apart from the heavy political past of this law, the deeply reactionary background that connects the then era with the years of the “memorandums” and the resistance to them, was a law whose risk of becoming a springboard for arbitrariness in the courts had been highlighted by recognized legal analysts (e.g. Manoledakis Ioannis, Criminal Law General Theory pp. 271, 276, 338, D. Spyrakou, Abstract risk: a dangerous construction for Criminal law, Pen. Chron. 1993 ) who were against the laws of “abstract risk” such as this particular one. With such a law it is possible to punish someone (even with the ultimate punishment) not for the result of the act, but for what the act is likely to cause, which is called mental punishment and is judged on the basis of the degree of malice which the respective judge will impute to the accused to cause an effect.
In our case a lot of arbitrariness was used by the two courts, given that even as the law stood it required a lot of mental acrobatics to argue for this sentence. The most basic element in their argumentation was our political positions in the trials. Finally, this law was amended by P.K. of 2019 along with other “abstract risk” laws to finally become concrete and cease to be a tool of arbitrariness in the courts.
If anyone has a real interest in these issues and doesn’t want to reduce themselves to reactionary parrots of dark power circles, let them stop referring to things they don’t know and read. Otherwise, those who insist on criticizing my release using this argument will have to admit that they are overstating the resurrection of a junta law with a rich past of political and intellectual abuse.
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