The Deportation Machine Case: Trial date set for four comrades

From Brussels Indymedia

After seven and a half years of pre-trial hearings and thousands of pages of disclosure, after fifteen people had their homes searched, were arrested, followed, eavesdropped on, filmed, interrogated, incarcerated, placed on house arrest, and kept under various bail conditions for seven years, the state and the justice system will finally take only four people to trial on June 23 2017 in Paris. The most serious charges served only to justify the intensity of the repression, since they were dropped, leaving only the more limited charges (graffiti, light property destruction, refusing to give DNA and personal information, etc). Let’s take this occasion to all show our solidarity against borders and against all forms of imprisonment, while refusing the categories of “guilty” and “innocent” imposed by the powerful and while rejecting the Justice system.

In June 2008, hunger strikes, clashes with the cops, and episodes of more or less intense struggle had already been breaking out in the Vincennes Immigrant Detention Centre (IDC) for some time when Salem Souli died of a heart attack. On June 22 2008, the next day, a general revolt broke out in the IDC, which was burned to the ground, and the undocumented people were evacuated. Ten were accused in a trial that was decided in advance, where they were given between eight months and three years in prison, before appeals. In solidarity with the accused, a very large number of offensive actions occurred throughout France (and elsewhere), which included numerous sabotages of ATMs of banks that hand over undocumented people to the pigs. Two waves of searches were carried out on February 15 and June 8 2010 against ten or so comrades, including Dan, Olivier, and Camille who were locked up in January 2011 for between a week and three months, and then later François for a week.

The importance of this case, commonly referred to as that of “the Deportation Machine”, carried out in part by the Anti-Terrorism section of the Criminal Brigade, lies mostly in the scale of the judicial and police resources put to work on the basis of evidence brought together in order to confirm the state’s invention of the “francilien anarcho-autonomous movement” (the famous MAAF) [1]. It also allowed them to keep several comrades under the threat of their ongoing pre-trial hearings and subject them to increased surveillance by the intelligence services. But its most important for trying to put an end to the autonomous forms of struggle that were developing between the struggles inside and outside the IDCs, especially in Vincennes, at that time the largest prison for foreigners in Europe. Like in the other cases of the past ten years in France (the one called “Bad Intentions”, the one called “Chambery”, the one called “Tarnac”) [2], it also allowed the state to classify our struggles, attacks, and desires within the useful term “terrorism” in order to constitute for a time an internal enemy isolated from other forms of social conflict and, once thus categorized, at the mercy of the mechanisms of control, surveillance, and repression that go with it.

We call now to have at the very least a presence in solidarity at the trial, which will take place June 23 2017 at 1:30pm in room 12 of the Paris Superior Court [3] (at Metro Cité – plan to arrive early), and we call on everyone to express their solidarity in their own way, collectively or individually.

Let’s not be judged in silence

Freedom for all, with or without papers

Fire to the detentions centres!

A public meeting will be announced before long and a file summarizing the affair will be published soon. All initiatives are welcome, notably collecting money for the trial.

Contact: pafledab@distruzione.org

ps – Over all these years, many people impacted directly or indirectly by this case – whether or not they have been tried, interrogated, released without charge, or called on to testify, whether they participated in these struggles or were simply in solidarity – have had time to scatter, geographically, politically, etc. Whatever the reasons for this distance, it’s now urgent that we get back in touch and the address pafledab@distruzione.org has been created for this purpose. All those who want to help mobilize around the trial can also get in touch. It’s not an attempt to centralize solidarity, rather to find a practical way of getting the mobilization rolling, within the urgency of the enemy’s timeline.

Endnotes

1] The acronym stands for “Mouvance Anarcho-Autonome Francilien”, with francilien being the adjective commonly used for the Paris region. Although more recently some people have started using this term to describe themselves, it has its origins as a police invention, serving to link together various attacks in order to increase the charges they can bring.

2] “Mauvaises Intentions” (Bad Intentions) refers to several people arrested in 2008 for using incendiary devices against various targets; “Chambery” refers to the police actions against those close to a comrade who was killed in an explosion in 2009; “Tarnac” refers to people arrested in 2008 and charged with sabotaging train lines

3] Tribunal de Grande Instance – and really, it can take upwards of half an hour to get in the door, so arrive with extra time