According to the Spanish bourgeois press that is what happened: ON December 18th four robbers entered the centre of the Banco Santander in Cordoba capturing about one million marks. Unforeseen a money transport arrived, and a security man entered the bank. The four unarmed him taking him hostage as a warrant for staying unharmed. Meanwhile the alarm was activated, and the group had to split. Later one of the bank robbers was arrested in a hotel nearby; the others met, when leaving the bank, a woman officer that recognised and stopped them. The robbers advised her to go away what she did. The three plus the hostage stopped a car, made the driver (a former secretary of the town's Socialist Party) leave it and tried to flee but the noose of their pursuer were more and more narrow. A police car saw the fugitives and hardly rammed their car. They answered by some ammunition which hit and killed two cops. More police cars ambushed the fugitives with hundreds of shoots intended to kill (the four only survived thanks to the bullet-proof jackets they wore. Two of the robbers and the hostage remained lying hardly injured, the third however managed to escape despite his injuries. Later he was sold by the driver of the car he asked for a hitch-hike, and was arrested on the same evening 40 kilometres away from Cordoba.
In that very moment the dirty work of the bourgeois press started twisting all facts. In a moral lynch justice like inquisition the four were painted by the press as "scrupulous criminals" acting in a "cynic clearness" and killing two innocent police women that came by by chance. They kept a secret that the bullet that paraplegicing the security man were of a police gun. As they could not hide that any longer they declared that the police didn't know abput the hostage aboard the fugitive car. On the contrary the security company stated that they said to the police from the very beginning that one of its employees is inside the car. Later the former security cop, now wheelchaired, was decorated by the government.
The plan is easy to see through: to produce a consensus for the state, in this case by the solidarity with the security forces that should be seen as the victims of soulless and brutal monsters like the prisoners from Cordoba.
On November 28th, about three weeks before, José Sánchez Camargo dies in circumstances that have been named "obscure" even by the bourgeois press. Following a bank robbery in Cordoba he dies head-shot, two accomplices were arrested. The first version of the press states that Camargo died in a shooting. Later even the civil governor declares his dead to be a suicide. Finally the case is shelved as "shot by chance on a head during a fray."
The comrades arrested in Cordoba were labelled members of a "band specialised in kidnapping with the peculiarity of sending cut ears of the hostages to their families." The press prefers to silence the fact that they are anarchists well-known in Italy turning them into ex-terrorists now devoted to organised criminality. To prevent any misunderstanding we hereby do not want to judge taking hostages as such in anarchist structures. We only try to analyse how those facts are used by the investigating committee to make our comrades incredible by showing them as gory monsters, and, as we will show later, Giovanni Barcia is the only of them charged with kidnapping.
To connect anarchists and kidnappings and other illegal activities is a mania of judges from Italy. Since 1991 they charged Giovanni and other comrades with taking part in the Silocchi kidnapping.
This theory originally constructed by Improta was adapted to public prosector Marini's try to jail "disturbing" anarchists in a number as large as possible. In the operation "Pontelungo" (long bridge) the inquisitors invent a band called O.R.A.I.
(...)
The defaming campaign against those comrades was that violent for several reasons. One reason might be that two police women died. The hypocrisy of the patriarchal apparatus is unlimited: on one hand the apparent "democratic character" of the powerful, glorifying the presence of women in its repressive structures a sign of equality, on the other side the lovely mask of paternity replaying the old idea of the "weak sex" being that frail and sensitive. A self pity quite opportune.
We do not doubt about the two killed police women being good friends to their friends: this might be, as well as it might be that one of the two was a good mother of her childs outside her profession. For a longer time the two of them worked as cops, wearing uniforms, weapons and obeying a lot of orders they were servile to. In the mornig of December 18th they acted as hunters, in the name of their wage and in the name of Law. They were simply soldiers paid by the capital against individuals on the run to defend their lives and their freedom, nothing different.
We know that the reason making this incident that outcry is that it didn't work the usual way. Usually the "criminals" go to the wall, and nearly nobody cares for that. Even a part of the comrades used to cold political calculation pass judgements never heard before. May be the bullet in Giorgios neck threatening to paralyse him, the wounds of Giovanni and Claudio, die torture happened to Michele do not count much on their scale.
The four are charged with further bank robberies in Salamanca, Albacete and Zamora. According to the police three of them are responsible for the attack on the Italian consulate in Malaga on December 4th. Marini applied for Giovanni's and Michele's deportation to Italy or an interrogation in Spain by himself.
They were tortured brutally, especially Michele, the only of them that was not injured when arrested. He naked was beaten systematically and tortured by means of suffocating techniques, i.e. his head was put into a plastic bag. In the high security prison of Jaen the prisoners are currently on strike to protest against the inhuman circumstances with cell raids, seizure of letters, persecution by keepers day by day.
This text is devoted to our imprisoned comrades. For the destruction of each prison, for anarchy.
Accomplices by heart
Slightly shortened from a paper from Spain of January 1997. Ask us for the full (Spanish) text.