On December 13th, almost one month after my release, I have been notified of an appeal by the deputy prosecutor of the court of Appeal of Euboea against the decision to suspend me, asking me to return to prison. In their appeal, they are asking for the “disappearance” of the verdict of the district court of Thebes that released me from prison. This is a political move, dictated by the evident political discontent that my liberation has aroused in some power centres.
Based on the logic of this appeal, the arguments and the “evidence” it cites, it goes without saying that no prosecutor would have dealt with it if it had concerned any other prisoner. For example, in his appeal the deputy prosecutor of the court of Appeal of Euboea “criticises” the “methodology” followed by the council of the district court of Thebes, namely the fact that I was not personally summoned to the council when it was considering my request for a conditional acquittal, while thousands of women have been released from Eleonas prison before me using exactly the same methodology and no prosecutor has ever dealt with any of them.
Because according to the – apparently correct – approach to the matter by the Thebes district court councils, the prosecutor who proposes the temporary release of a prisoner is the one who is also in prison, knows the prisoners and, in collaboration with the service that has more “friction” with women has an opinion of particular weight that cannot be objectively reversed by a few minutes’ presence of the detainee via skype in the council, which is composed of people who will see her for the first time. The presence of a detainee in the Council for her temporary release takes place only if the public prosecutor’s proposal is negative and this in order to check again whether the extension of her proposed detention is justified.
It is impossible for me to believe that the prosecutors of Eubeias are now learning for the first time the methodology that has been followed for decades for the prisoners of Eleonas prison by countless judicial councils in Thebes (and Athens, since the same method is applied in Korydallos prison). Only in my case an appeal was filed, obviously because… I am me and because there is a background and a political reason.
Another point of the appeal is the prosecutor’s plea for acquittals for disciplinary reports related to the protests in Korydallos prison in 2017. Apart from the fact that these are acquittals – and that even convictions for disciplinary offences, as required by the criminal code, are not enough to prevent the temporary licence of a prisoner – the prosecutor does not seem to be concerned that these reports and acquittals concerned dozens of detainees who had participated in the mobilizations. But none of these women had any problems during the conditional release process on these issues. The very fact that they are cited as arguments for my reincarceration in prison is indicative of the type of ground on which the argument is based and the degree of arbitrariness that they are trying to exercise on me.
What undoubtedly permeates this particular appeal is that what it wants (or, to be more precise what they want) from me are statements of political legitimacy and declarations of repentance. This can be inferred, among other things, from the reference to the reasons for the first two decisions of the prison management which rejected my first requests for annual leave, the arguments of which were of a political nature, since the first decision concerned political positions that I had occasionally expressed in public and in court (basically, it was my defensive “line”) and the second was my book “State versus State”. The total of seven regular leaves that I had taken is considered an unsatisfactory reason to grant me conditional dismissal, while the political justification for the rejection of my first two applications for regular leave, subsequently annulled, is considered more important. Nor is it significant that the only prison prosecutor cited by the appellate prosecutor in his appeal is the one who finally granted me five regular permits and two 48-hour emergency permits for serious family reasons, one of which was without police escort, while it was you who made the positive proposal to the district court of Thebes for my temporary release from prison. In short, the prosecutor “accuses” of not having considered… themself, an old opinion expressed a year and a half ago. I will not elaborate further on the grounds for appeal in this article, but these elements are indicative of my assertion that this is a politically motivated and intentional move, since an appeal against a decision of a committee for the temporary release of a prisoner is not based on… doubts, which, apart from everything, are also unproven, but on strong and concrete evidence. Moreover, the institution of conditional release has never been and is not a “pardon”, but a provision that is compulsorily granted, there not being sufficient “doubt” for the unconditional extension of detention. Otherwise the existence of this institution makes no sense and in my case – if the appeals council eventually imposes a new incarceration in prison – the right to temporary dismissal is circumvented and practically abolished (first for me, then for others).
The magistral court of Lamia has reached such a condition of substantial abolition of the right to be on licence for a certain period of time, and the magistral court of Lamia insists on refusing for the umpteenth time to release my comrade Nikos Maziotis from the prison of Domokos, even though he has served much longer than the time prescribed in prison.
My release was decided by the college of magistrates in Thebes, who considered that I could not be exempted from the right to be released on probation, since no prisoner was granted an exemption for any reason. The proposal by the Thebes district court prosecutor to accept my release is permeated by the idea that I am not exempt from the right to temporary licence for political reasons. Against this point of view and in favour of my being sent back to prison for reasons of creed, position, convictions and political values is the appeal by the European public prosecutor, who is asking for me to be placed in an exceptional state for political reasons.
I believe that the dominant element of this move and this method is that the fact that I was released from prison is perceived as a “political defeat” for some system environments and that the indefinite extension of my detention is a “correction”. Because if the council of appeal of Euboea agrees to put me back in prison by adopting the logic of recourse, that is, without evidence and facts but only with political speculation, then it means that they want to keep me in prison indefinitely. This cannot happen for any other reason than the political nature of the case for which I was imprisoned for 8.5 years (thirteen years “mixed”), the action of Revolutionary Struggle, but above all for my political attitude towards persecution and trials. This historical journey of mine is judged “effectively addressed”. This is a purely political revenge move.
P.S. : Some journalists, in the days of my release, tried to create a political climate of discontent for my release – and it seems that they succeeded – focusing on an old life sentence imposed on me by a first instance court for Revolutionary Struggle’s attack on the building of the Bank of Greece and of the FMI in 2014, without any knowledge of the subject matter, the charge and its nature, the law and the political motivations of this court that wanted, for purely political reasons, to impose this condemnation in response to the dynamic resistance against the “memoranda” (this action was directed against the then troika). The power that some people have in their hands, combined with semi-illiteracy or even complete ignorance, is becoming dangerous. I would like to inform you that the law by which both I and my comrade Nikos Maziotis have been sentenced for that action of revolutionary Struggle was a law, the 270 PC, imposed by presidential decree by the Papadopoulos government in 1969 to cope with the dynamic actions (bomb attacks) that were taking place at that time against the junta of the colonels. We raised in various times in the courts and asked for non application (there are many audio and text documents of our courts that we have elaborated on the issue and that anyone can easily find), since, in addition to the heavy political history of this law, the deeply reactionary background that links the era of that time with the years of the “memoranda” and the resistance against them, it was a law whose risk of becoming a springboard for arbitrary actions in the courts had been highlighted by recognized legal analysts (e.g. Manoledakis Ioannis, General Theory of Criminal Law p. 271, 276, 338; D. Spyrakou, Abstract Endangerment. Chron.1993) who have lashed out against the laws of “abstract danger” such as this. With such a law it is possible to condemn someone (even with the maximum penalty) not for the result of the act, but for what the act can potentially cause, which is called intentional punishment and is judged by the degree of malice that the judge will attribute to the defendant to cause an effect. In our case, both courts resorted to a multitude of arbitrariness, since even in its current version the law required many mental acrobatics to support that sentence. And the key element in their argument was our political positions in the trials. Eventually, this law was amended by the P.C. 2019 along with other laws on “abstract risk” to finally become specific and cease to be a tool for arbitrary actions in courts. If some people have a real interest in these issues and do not want to be reduced to reactionary parrots of dark power circles, let them stop referring to things they do not know and read. Otherwise, those who insist on criticizing my liberation using this argument will have to accept that they are overestimating the resurrection of a junta law with a rich history of political and prudential arbitrariness.
Pola Roupa
22.12.2023
Translated to English by Act for freedom now!