For the 5th time, the Lamia Criminal Court has recently rejected my request for conditional release despite the 3rd consecutive positive prosecution. During the last 2.5 years since I have reached the law of suspension by law, Lamia’s judicial councils, including the Lamia Council I had once appealed, have rejected a total of 6 times my request for conditional release. It is now very likely that I will be one of the few prisoners nationwide – if not the only one – with a temporary prison sentence with the maximum sentence of 20 years under the 2019 Presidential Code that will get the entire sentence without parole. And I will probably be the only one of dozens of political (anarchist and other) prisoners who have spent the last 20 years in prison with a sentence of temporary imprisonment, who is exempt from parole. Of course, the reasons for rejection are still political-opinional: that I refuse to recognize as criminal the acts for which I have been convicted, namely the action of the Revolutionary Struggle, as mentioned in the recent rejection decree, but also the precedent of September 2023.
The issue of repentance for the political opponents of the political-economic regime has now been historically established as a necessary criterion and condition for the granting of conditional release, thus continuing the historical tradition of the Greek state in other eras, from the years of the Metaxas dictatorship, the years of the civil war and the post-civil war period to the junta of the colonels.
Of course, the Council of Misdemeanors of Lamia has proven that it has double standards in these cases, as proved by the case of the recent – albeit temporary – release of the “führer” of the neo-Nazi organization Golden Dawn. In a country and a place where many do not have a short historical memory as the state authorities want and hope, the Lamia Misdemeanour Council was irreparably exposed socially and this is not negated by the fact that the release order was overturned by an appellate prosecutor after government-political intervention.
Once again, the historical tradition of the Greek state is confirmed and the political sympathies of several state bodies are not hidden. Just as the collaborators after 1945, the Security Battalions, the Chites, the ancestors of Golden Dawn, were treated favorably by the post-occupation state, few of them were tried and even fewer remained in prison, so today we see their descendants receiving the same favorable treatment from the current state and their “justice”. Of the 28 convicted of the neo-Nazi organization after the murder of Pavlos Fyssas, 21 are already free, while the rest do not have significant time left in detention. After all, they are “their own children”. It was nothing but a parastatal apparatus, i.e. an offshoot of the state apparatus itself, which had been operating for years, since the 1990s, with the tolerance of the police, and did the “dirty” work of the state. That is, anti-immigrant pogroms and racist attacks, beatings, stabbings, assistance of riot police in clashes with anarchists posing as “indignant” citizens, attacks on hangouts, occupations of the anarchist/anti-authoritarian space. Traditionally, the Greek state has always treated the parastatals with the glove, such as these fascists, nostalgics for the colonels’ junta who in 1978 carried out indiscriminate bombings at the Rex and Elli cinemas because they screened films that were not politically correct according to them, with content that was not “nationalist”. It is no coincidence that among them was the later “führer” of Golden Dawn. The same was done to the parastatal assassins – members of ONED-ND – of Professor Nikos Tebonera in January 1991 who had been ordered to break in a “dynamic” way the mathematical occupations of that period.
The double standards of state “justice” and specifically of the Lamia Misdemeanour Council are also proven in the case of another of “their own children”, not a parastatal but a former representative of the law, the police killer of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos, from whom the Lamia Misdemeanour Council never asked for statements of repentance or disdain for his act when it released him in 2019. And the same applies to the Lamia Court of Appeal, when he had been appealed in 2022 and had returned to prison for a short time. And now that he has returned to prison after a second appeal by the Supreme Court, the issue is not whether he has repented or has naturally expressed disdain for the murder he committed, but about the mitigating circumstance of the “lawful” life granted to him with which he broke the life sentence and was released on parole. The killer of Alexandros Grigoropoulos was the only one of the dozens of police killers since the transition to democracy, who served some years in prison and this because of the uprising of December 2008 and the social condemnation of his crime. Facts which the court that tried him could not ignore. When in other cases the courts acquitted the police killers, e.g. Melista, murderer of 15-year-old Michalis Kaltezas, or threw them on the soft side, they served no sentence or served very little.
However, on the occasion of the fact that the eliciting of the declaration of repentance and disdain has now been established as a necessary condition for the granting of parole and conditional release for political opponents of the political-economic regime, I would like to refer to the political error made by some leftists, such as lawyers of the civil action in the trial of Golden Dawn, who, after the provisional release of its leader, also spoke about the issue of his non-repentance, aligning themselves with the prosecutor who, for the same reason, had proposed the rejection of the request for his conditional release, but also with the prosecutor of the Court of Appeal, who made the appeal. In order not to be misunderstood, let me make it clear that it is quite another matter that someone must continue to serve his sentence and the question of repentance as a necessary condition of release is completely different. The appeal of non-repentance by lawyers in this case, whether they realize it or not, throws water on the mill of the state in refusing for the same reasons, the conditional release to us militants who are condemned for acts of urban guerrilla warfare, armed popular violence and resistance that over time are part of the practices of the popular and revolutionary movement. Indeed, the fact that some of them know the history of persecution of the left in other times and have invoked it in trials of revolutionary-guerrilla organizations as a defense makes their political error even greater. Invoking repentance as a necessary condition of release cannot be applied selectively. Either it applies to everyone or it does not apply at all. However, its general application confirms the practice of the state today that has the theory-fraud of the two “extremes” by equating the theory and propaganda of neo-Nazis with urban guerrilla fighters, anarchists, extreme leftists, antifascists, but in practice it caresses neo-Nazis who are “its own children” and exhausts its severity on the political opponents of the political-economic regime.
Also, the issue of repentance has been raised at the hearing of the Chalkida Court of Appeals last January by comrade Paula Roupa when the decision of her conditional release by the deputy prosecutor of appeals of Chalkida was overturned – apparently by order from above.
The ruling of the Lamia Misdemeanour Council, on the grounds of rejecting my conditional release, also cites as a reason my contempt for “justice”. But a justice that caresses fascists and neo-Nazis, convicted rapists who walk free and happen to have connections with New Democracy, that caresses racist murderers who walk free (Zak Kostopoulos case), that rewards murderous police officers of the Dias group (Sambanis, Frangoulis cases), who also walk free, that behaves with the glove to the rapists of the case of the 12-year-old girl of Kolonos – where the prosecutor Maria Eleni Nikolou had proposed the acquittal of the main defendant and it is the same one that had stripped us of the custody of our son and ordered his confinement in the Children’s Mental Hospital – a “justice” that covers up massive state crimes such as that of Tempi or the shipwreck of Pylos, is an accomplice in the greatest mass crime of modern Greek history such as the memorandums. Such “justice” can only cause disdain and disrepute.
Apart from the rejection of the conditional release, the decree of the Lamia Misdemeanour Council states that criminal charges are pending against me following a report by the chief commander of the external guard of Domokos prison for allegedly disobeying legal orders of the staff and threatening violence against members of the prison staff. In fact, one of the first things the president of the Lamia Misdemeanour Council did at the skype hearing on May 15 to examine my request for conditional release was to show me the report against me of the commander of the external guard, proving her biased attitude towards the already preconceived decision to reject my conditional release. After all, he was president of both previous boards that rejected my conditional release.
The incident referred to concerned the incident I had made public on 14 May when I refused to be subjected to an undignified body search by members of the outer prison guard. That is, to take off my clothes in order to be transferred to the hospital of Lamia for orthopedic examination. The insubordination corresponded to my refusal to undergo such an undignified body search, while the threat of violence concerned that I asked for the details of the police officers of the external guard after my refusal to transfer me to the hospital of Lamia for the scheduled examination. However, despite the fact that I was unanimously acquitted by the prison disciplinary board of both baseless and false charges and I was even transferred to the hospital of Lamia a few days later under the conditions I wanted, that is, without undergoing the undignified body search I required, the Misdemeanour Council reports that criminal charges are pending against me, but there is – at least for the time being – no such criminal proceedings against me. In many cases, in addition to the disciplinary penalty in prison for violations of the “penitentiary” code, prisoners are also prosecuted for the same violations and a trial takes place. If such a procedure were to be taken against me, it would be nothing more than a scheme to cut off the regular leave I have been taking for the last 2.5 years while such proceedings are pending until the trial takes place. Because one of the criteria for granting permits in prison is that no criminal proceedings are pending either for a felony or for a misdemeanor involving acts of violence or threat of violence, for which if the prisoner is convicted, his sentence is served without merging with the rest of the sentence, i.e. upon expiry. This is probably what the president of the Lamia Council of Misdemeanors would have wished for when she mentioned it in the rejection decree.
Having already served 11.5 years net and together with 3.5 years of beneficial work calculation almost 15 years, I have 2.5 years left in prison with the calculation of wages. I will then have served at least 14 years clean in prison and together with 6 years of work I will have completed all 20 years of sentence until the last day.
A sentence that under the current penal code for former prisoners like me – before its last revision – will approach serving a life sentence, where the law stipulates the possibility of parole at 16 years, a sentence equivalent to a conviction for murder, a charge for which I have not been convicted. I have already served a disproportionate amount of time in relation to the charges and sentence for which I have been convicted. The state and its “justice” in my case considers it a greater crime that I do not revise my views on the acts for which I have been convicted than the acts themselves. However, to be released in 2.5 years with an expiration of sentence without having been “imprisoned”, without repenting, without discrediting the acts for which I was convicted, but still having the view that the actions of the Revolutionary Struggle were just, that they were carried out for the social good and for the benefit of the social-popular majority – acts that over time have been part of the practices of the popular and revolutionary movement – It will prove their total failure, the total failure of state “justice” and the total failure of prison as a repressive institution to force me to change my positions and my morale about what I have been condemned. They are already losers and failures.
Nikos Maziotis, convicted for the action of the Revolutionary Struggle
Fourth wing Domokos prison