About the 4th of December “anti-terrorist” operation

On December 4th, 2010, a wide “anti-terrorist” operation took place with comrades being detained and police raids on houses, resulting in the pre-trial imprisonment of Giorgos Karagiannidis, Alexandros Mitrousias, Kostas Sakkas, Stella Antoniou, Dimitris Mihail and Christos Politis. The cops had already targeted and accused the 2 first aforementioned people for the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire case following the arrests that took place in Halandri in the Autumn of 2009, while now they tried to capitalize on the operation using various speculations and scenarios and presented it through the media as an operation by which they dismantled, more all less, all known armed groups. Although their scenarios were not confirmed, they went on to provocatively apply the anti-terrorist law and for the first time they set up a case about participation in a “terrorist group” without naming the group and about “terrorist” action without considering it necessary for any illegal action to have been committed. In the cases of Stella Antoniou and Dimitris Mihail, a well-known tactic used often by the authorities nowadays was yet again put to use, and their prosecutions were based on their personal relationships with some of the other accused. In the case of Christos Politis the authorities went a step further, as there was no pre-existing acquaintance or any prior contact with the other people. In his case, it seems it was enough for the authorities to target him as being generally suspect, an image they themselves had promoted and reproduced for more than a year now through “terror-reports” and articles concerning his person.

Letter from Christos Politis – Some very first thoughts on my detention