30 years since the state and “cinematic” assassination of the anarchist revolutionary Christoforos Marinos
On the morning of July 23, 1996, a group of EKAM stormed Christoforos’ cabin. The police and the PASOK government immediately announced that the anarchist Marinos had committed suicide.
That evening we crossed paths in the square with a veteran former comrade of his. He was considered the toughest of the core that had held the titles of the Anarchist Union. He told me, “better this way, otherwise he would end up in a mental hospital.” The state got rid of a constant political threat and thus relieved many of the precariousness of their compromises.
At that time I was a young anarchist, hyperactive, but still inexperienced with “serious” action, I had closely coexisted on the street with all the divisions of the former Union and had cut mud, suspicious of all the commanders but with a mutual cordial friendship with Christoforos. The then recent history of organized anarchism was the legacy with which I started and from which I had already separated when I associated with Christoforos. The various fragments of the anarchist organization proved incapable of differentiating themselves from the submissive role of anti-authoritarian alternance and activism.
Some time later, a comrade asked me to keep the file of the lawsuit that a group of lawyers had prepared for the murder of Christoforos. It was about 80 pages that documented that it was a police murder that was covered up by the government, the judiciary and “the movement”. The legal investigation exposed the state, PASOK in particular and the right-wing actors, some of whom had taken on the responsibility of laundering the state murder, either as representatives or with a political stamp, and who later became the pawns of the government left of capital. It also exposed the counter-revolutionary anti-authoritarians who had settled for the suicide version. The team of lawyers was crushed. The lawsuit was buried before it was filed. It was too late for me to get my hands on it and keep it. It is out there somewhere.
Christoforos lives in the weapons of anarchy, which will never be silenced until the destruction of the state.
Memory is a weapon loaded with the responsibility of the future.
Our promise is, we will build the international anarchist revolutionary organization that our time requires. Christoforos, we will go all the way, with you.
July 23, 2026
Dimitris Chatzivasileiadis
Domokos Prison