ANARCHIST BLACK CROSS

Patrizia Cadeddu

The morning of 25th April 1997, the day of the municipal elections and the anniversary of liberation from fascism in Italy, a bomb exploded in front of the Milan city hall. A message claiming responsibility signed Revolutionary Action, calling for abstention and a cassette of anarchist songs was left in the letterbox of the Popular Radio station. Using a closed circuit camera film, the police concluded that they were 97.88% sure from studying the manner of walking, the hands and the shape of the lips of the silhouette that Patrizia Maria Cadeddu was the figure delivering the letter. Even the journalists, used to muck-spreading and lying, wrote that this sort of evidence was inadmissible! All other evidence- handwriting and fingerprints- had negative results. Patrizia, who is 47, has a long history of activity in the Italian anarchist movement. In particular, she has carried out many activities at the Laboratorio Anarchico (Anarchist Laboratory), a self-organised building which hosted cultural events. This brought her to the attention of the authorities, with their new plans for Europe. Since her arrest, the building has been destroyed by redevelopment. This was convenient for the State, who had removed Patrizia from opposing their attacks on alternative thought on the building of monetarist Europe.

On 22 June 1997 Patrizia was sentenced to 5 years in closed prison 2 million lira fine -and 229 million lira damages for one broken window! Since then she has had new charges brought against her of associating with an armed gang, the same armed group that has been conjured up by the fantasies of Judge Marini (see separate article on Italian anarchist movement).

Patrizia is suffering from anorexia and now only weighs 5 stone 7 lb. She has developed a tumour in her left breast. After a year in prison, she can get a move to an open prison. She refuses to do this, claiming her innocence: either the dropping of all charges against her, or prison (which would mean death for her).

If you want to write to her, sending messages of solidarity and encouragement address, all correspondence to:

Patrizia Maria Grazia Cadeddu
Piazza Filangieri, 2
20123 Milan,
Italy.

If you want additional information, write to:

Lia Cadeddu
Poste Restante,
Via Sasseti,
20100 Milan
tel: 0039/49

Telegram from Patrizia

Thanks to all who have had the courage to send a telegram. I claim more than 20 years of militancy in the anarchist movement. I supported all the struggles from the end of the 70s up to now; struggles I supported coherently. I claim love for all, for all the comrades in and out of jail. All the Milanese left want me shut up in a cell, sure of the fact that no one can go against the miserable game that they play today. To shut me up in prison was the only way to eliminate the Anarchist Laboratory, the only space that was really oppositional. Don't worry, when I get out, we will start everything up again. I love you all as always. I am tranquil and serene. Those who accuse me want to wipe out my record of anarchy, a record of never accepting compromise with the system.

Green Anarchist- Victory

Following on from the release of 3 Green Anarchist defendants pending a Court of Appeal hearing as reported in last issue of Organise! the convictions were quashed. So far the operation to attack Green Anarchist and Animal Liberation Front press officer Robin Webb had cost £4million. Despite the convictions against the 3 editors being dropped, the trial of another GA editor Paul Rogers and Robin Webb went ahead, with the first hearing on November 2nd at Portsmouth. The same judge- major-general David Selwood- presided over this trial! On top of this, the 3 GA editors cleared of charges were to be called as co-conspirators by the prosecution. Finally, on 25th November all charges were quashed. The defendants claim that the final total costs were £10 million. This is a serious defeat for the police and secret services in this country (at the last trial MI5 involvement was admitted by the police).

Letters of complaint about the trial can be sent to Hampshire County Council, Colebrook Street, Winchester, Hampshire SO23 9IJ

Latest information can be obtained from London Gandalf Support Campaign, Panther House, 38 Mount Pleasant, London WC1X . Email is lgp@envirolink.org

Mark Barnsley

Mark Barnsley is a working class Sheffield man at present in jail for 12 years (see Organise!47 for fuller details of his case).Pickets in Sheffield and London are planned for 21st December. For more details contact Justice for Mark Barnsley, Leeds Support group, c/o The Cardigan Centre, 145-9 Cardigan Rad, Leeds LS6 1LJ. Email snide@globalnet.co.uk or contact Mark Barnsley direct: Mark Barnsley WA 2897, HMP Full Sutton, York YO4 11PS

Arizona

From the State of Arizona in the USA comes news of some extremely disturbing political rhetoric. In recent state representative elections, four mainstream candidates, Republican and Democrat, have made statements openly calling for death penalty executions to be carried out in full public view. Three of the people standing for Arizona state office expressed no qualms about advocating such spectacles of naked barbarism and indeed are touting open revenge murder as a basic plank of their campaigns. The fourth, a woman, condones semi-public judicial killings to be witnessed by scores of invited audiences. This is a sickening development, illustrating the stark bloodlust besieging the American law and order mentality of the moment, and all too reminiscent of European brutality dating back to the last century.

Here in the UK one of the first instruments of repression an activist is likely to experience when nicked is to be immobilised with handcuffs. Handcuffs have been increasingly associated with deaths in police custody. The practice of handcuffing suspects behind their backs and then leaving them on their stomachs is identified with a form of suffocation known as "positional asphyxia", which is a euphemism for murder in custody. Handcuffs have been standard issue police equipment since the end of the 19th century. They were developed from the manacles used in the slave trade. Officially they should only be used by cops where it is considered necessary to restrain a suspect after arrest, either to prevent escape or to protect a person from self-harm, but in reality their use has become a matter of routine. Cops also employ handcuffing in court to make people look more menacing in front of magistrates. It's not uncommon for children to have been handcuffed to radiators in police station corridors rather than being placed in approved juvenile detention rooms, because of a shortage of resources. In 1992 Michael Howard, Tory Home Secretary, sanctioned the use of "Quik Kufs", a disposable nylon cuff imported from the USA At the time of its introduction the Home Office claimed that it was easier to put on than the conventional metal cuff and that chances of injury to prisoners was reduced. Prisoners tell another story, complaining that the sharp plastic edges cause deep cuts to hands and wrists. Because they are lightweight in comparison to metal cuffs, cops can carry several pairs of "Quik Kufs", facilitating several arrests at a time. Protesters, for example, at demos and on actions, have reported their indiscriminate use to round people up.

the trade in handcuffs and restraint equipment is big business, but the companies involved do not work out of a dedication to "build a safer world". Hiatt and Co. of Birmingham have been making handcuffs for over a hundred years, supplying many UK police forces. They also used to make leg-irons, gang-chains (still in use in the USA) and other instruments of torture until the trade was officially outlawed in 1984 by public outcry. But Hiatt's associate companies abroad continue to sell these same goods today, even producing a glossy catalogue of their gruesome inventions. The reality is they still trade lucratively, despite the 1984 ban, in this and other forms of torture equipment. As recently as 1995 a Channel 4 TV documentary team was able to buy electric shock contraptions, batons and other torture items from household British companies like British Aerospace, ICL and others, all with the connivance of government-owned Royal Ordnance factories loaning the companies premises to trade from. Many of the firms supplying UK police forces still have links with the torture business and this has led to increasing protests against the annual Covert Operation and Procurement Exhibition (COPEX) held at Sandown Race course where delegations from countries such as Indonesia, China, Turkey and other notorious regimes are encouraged to sample new wares. New Labour (still the same old joke as far as the working class are concerned) even sent its ministers to jolly the event along this year. Ol' Karl was dead wrong about a lot of things and on this one way out; not only have we "nothing to lose but our chains", but leg-irons, wrist manacles, body-belts, shiny plastic handcuffs...

Acknowledgements for much of the above to The Law, an excellent quarterly legal paper which brings news of the law, miscarriages of justice, discrimination, and much more from the sharp end. £5 for four issues from PO BOX 3878, London SW12 9ZE. If you want to know what's going on, and being hushed up, in the legal world., then a fiver is well spent on a sub.