Letter from C. Stratigopoulos on the new frame-up against him by the authorities

On July 7, 2011 a new detention order was delivered to me here at Larissa prison, where I am a prisoner after being convicted for a bank robbery, accusing me of committing yet another bank robbery in Cephalonia in July 2009.

I would like to remind here that the attempt from the prosecuting authorities to attribute this exact bank robbery either to my person, or to Alfredo Bonanno goes back to the distant month of February 2010, when we were both in pre-trial detention for the robbery of the Piraeus Bank in Trikala.

It was more then clear for both Bonanno and me that the intention of that frame up, carried out by the prosecuting authorities at the time, was to create the appropriate negative climate in face of Bonanno’s upcoming parole hearing on the grounds of serious health issues.

Actually, this particular frame up was channeled to all kinds of media in February 2010, reaching the point to name Bonanno as the physical perpetrator of that robbery, with me as his accomplice.

Despite the shameless lies published against us, the objective set out by the prosecuting authorities, namely the obstruction of Bonanno’s release from prison due to serious health problems, was in the end accomplished.

Since then (February 2010), everything in regards to this incident was completely forgotten as if nothing had ever happened and then suddenly (after a year and a half) I am handed, as I already mentioned, a detention order with charges of committing this robbery.

After reading the case file, which finally reached my hands after quite an adventure, it quickly became apparent that it is clearly a frame up by the local prosecuting authorities, with the help quite possibly of other authorities, in order to get rid of an unsolved case of a bank robbery in Cephalonia, dumping it on me personally –since any attempt on their side to involve Bonanno in this case would be more then ludicrous.

In effect they have put me in pre-trial detention again practically stopping me from taking prison leave as I am entitled to according to the penal code, since I have served more then 1/5 of my sentence, without any serious evidence against me whatsoever, having actually falsified alleged evidence against me for which of course they needed one and a half whole years. This explains certainly the fact that they suddenly remembered me again.

In a final analysis, it is more the obvious that this new attempt to involve either Bonanno or me in the particular case is based solely on the prosecuting authorities’ reasoning that since we committed a bank robbery in Trikala, then we must have committed others, even if there isn’t evidence against us.

It is therefore understood that this frame up against me aims this time to negatively influence in face of my appeal court for the Trikala bank robbery case in February [2012], with their ultimate goal being my stay in prison for the maximum possible time.

I therefore consider it necessary to publicly denounce this frame up from the prosecuting authorities against Bonanno and me, as in reality what is proved by the short history of the development of this case I described, is that the true and only reason of the our continued prosecution is the fact that we are both anarchists and revolutionaries.

Christos Stratigopoulos

Larisa Prison

September 2011