Trial continues for support to international terrorism
On April 1, 2004, three leaders of the Anti-imperialist Camp together with two Turkish militants of the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front (DHKC) were arrested for alleged membership in a terrorist organisation.
The arrest has been accompanied by a powerful media campaign to discredit and criminalize all those supporting the Iraqi resistance which just had sprung up foiling the Euro-American attempts to establish full global control. As the Anti-imperialist Camp was the main promoter of the Iraqi resistance in Italy, it became also the main target.
After one month the authorities had to release Maria Grazia, Alessia and Moreno as the amalgam constructed was untenable and an international and national solidarity campaign exerted considerable pressure.
The two Turkish comrades remained in custody and their trials have already started. They are victims of the so-called antiterrorist legislation and jurisdiction which is being implemented all over Europe. National and social liberation movements have been put on the notorious Black List of the EU copied from the U.S. which includes also the DHKP-C. Not only to fight against the oligarchic military regime established by a bloody coup has become illegal, but also to politically propagate the struggle for freedom of the Kurdish people and the oppressed Turkish masses let alone the tortured political prisoners.
The campaign of the establishment was to subsume the Iraqi resistance under the same paradigm. But they definitely failed thanks to the strength of the popular resistance as well as to the Italian public opinion which never endorsed the Western aggression against Iraq.
Beside the apparent absurdity of the indictment (membership in the DHKP-C) the West’s defeat on the Iraqi front is the main reason why the judicial authorities had to retreat. Today significant parts of the Italian society believe the Iraqi resistance to be legitimate while the anti-imperialist position of the support to the resistance in hegemonic in the non-governmental left. On December 1, 2006, in the first preliminary hearing nearly three years (!) after the arrests the examining magistrate stopped the proceedings for the charge of membership in an international terrorist organisations (…§270bis) but the indictment for support to a terrorist organisation (…§270ter) remains.
In a statement released one day before the hearing the thee stressed: “We will admit the only crime which we have committed: the friendship with a comrade which is being persecuted by the bloodthirsty and anti-democratic regime of Turkey.”
Actually the Anti-imperialist Camp always has been politically supporting the struggle of the revolutionary forces as well as the Kurdish ones against NATO’s military regime in Turkey and will continue doing so. With tooth and nail we will defend the elementary democratic right to free expression which includes the right to voice support for all anti-imperialist movements.
Anti-imperialist Camp
December 2, 2006
