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2009-01-23

Day of action - Freedom for Natalja! Freedom for all prisoners!

we are strong! - no one can tell us we‘re wrong

On Saturday, February 9th 2008 Natalja was arrested during the yearly demonstration against the NATO-Security-Conference in Munich (Germany). They accused her of resisting violently against police measures. A warrant was issued against her and since then she is in Munich behind bars.
Natalja already was arrested during the G8-summit at summer 2007 in Germany and was sentenced to ten months of imprisonment. Furthermore she has a third trial because of being arrested at a demonstration at may 1th at the same year.

Source: http://noprisonnostate.blogsport.de weiter...
2008-03-05

Collapsing the European security architecture

Bild: Genua

For greater security-critical behaviour in Europe
A proposal for the resistance movement: Against NATO, G8 and swedish EU Presidency 2009

Each protest enables us to draw conclusions of how to do things better next time. In the same way, we can draw conclusions from the mobilisation against the G8 summit 2007 in Heiligendamm on how to achieve successful and broad resistance. Apart from three large self-organised protest camps and an international infotour in the months leading up to the summit, there were attempts to have international exchanges and establish networks beyond Germany. The decision was made not to respond to the G8 climate debate but to frame the protests in terms of other self-determined topics the movement was focussing on: migration, antimilitarism and global agriculture.
Looking ahead to the 60th NATO anniversary in Strasbourg and Kehl and the G8 2009 in Italy, but also to the swedish EU Presidency 2009, this text takes up these points to propose a campaign against the new “European Security Architecture”. We outline some developments in police cooperation on a European level and call for a kind of antirepression work that goes beyond a simple critique and a scandalising police violence, and that is coordinated on a European level. Such political antirepression work would have to take new forms of social control seriously as an integral reference point for radical movements.

Source: Update July 2008 weiter...
2008-01-11

Who is a Threat to Whom? G8 Summits and Increasing State Repression

Bild: 070606

By Jason Kirkpatrick

The heightening and virtual militarisation of domestic policing efforts against many US activists has clearly been stepped up since 911. Homeland Security is linked up in a “new and improved” information networking and cooperation system with a vast array of both foreign and domestic intelligence gathering agencies within the USA, and increasingly so, on an international level.

Source: email weiter...
2008-01-05

German Court Declares Massive Pre-G8 Police Raids Illegal

Flora

A massive police raid against globalization opponents ahead of the Group of Eight Summit in Heiligendamm was unlawful, Germany's highest court decided. The group suspected of planning attacks was deemed legal.

Car bombs do not constitute terrorist activity and are a matter for the states and not the federal prosecutor's office, Germany's Federal Court of Justice ruled on Friday, Dec. 4, in Karlsruhe.

On May 9, 2007, one month prior to the G8 summit in Germany, 900 police officers searched 40 apartments, offices and left-wing meeting places in six German states, taking numerous documents into custody.

Source: www.dw-world.de weiter...
2007-11-28

Judges bail three German leftists held for fire-bombing

Bild: BKA

Karlsruhe, Germany (dpa) - Three leftist radicals accused of planting incendiary devices under German army trucks were granted bail Wednesday by federal judges who ruled they were not terrorists.
The finding by the German High Court in Karlsruhe sharply reduced the powers of federal security agencies against what has been dubbed "terrorism lite."

The radicals are believed to be leading members of the Militant Groups (MG), which has been setting parked vehicles on fire and throwing petrol bombs at government offices in the Berlin area for the past six years.

weiter...
2007-10-25

Arrest warrant against Andrej H. overturned

Bild: BGH

Coalition for the Immediate End to the § 129a Proceedings

  • Lawyers demand an end to the §129a proceedings

Yesterday the German Federal Court announced its decision in the case of
Berlin-based Andrej H. The Court has decided that at no point there was
any immediate suspicion that would have necessitated his detainment. The
arrest warrant against the activist and researcher was unlawful from the
beginning and has thus been overturned.

“We welcome this decision. Particularly because with this decision the
Federal Court confirms that the conclusions of the Federal Prosecution
were purely speculative and exaggerated,” Christina Clemm, Andrej’s
legal representative said. “The various violations of my client’s basic
rights that have occurred in the last months are therefore unlawful. The
next step is to close the case.”

Source: Pressrelease weiter...
2007-10-22

Coalition Launches International Competition: What Exactly is Terrorism?

Bild: Terror

Berlin, 22nd October 2007

Press Release

Coalition launches international competition
No terror before four — or: what exactly is an after-work terrorist?

The Federal Prosecution is after it. The red-green coalition is trying to
redefine it. The Federal Court has to evaluate it and our friends are to be
charged because of it.

The phantom called “terrorism”
The German criminal legislation paragraph 129a enables the prosecution of
terrorist activity or membership in a terrorist organisation, but even the
highest judges of Germany are not quite sure what terrorism actually is. The
Federal Minister for Justice doesn’t think that 9/11 was terrorism, but
everyone’s scared of it. German criminal legislation, the UN and also the EU
have no clear definition of the term “terrorism”. We’re now asking: What
exactly is terrorism? Who is a terrorist? And what’s a terrorist act?

Source: Pressemitteilung weiter...
2007-10-15

Coalition for the Immediate End to the 129a Proceedings

Press Release

Berlin, 15th October

  • Appeal lodged against the continued custodial remand of Axel H., Oliver R. and
    Florian L.
  • Federal Court to take no decisions before 18th October

The German Federal Court of Justice has yet again postponed its deadline for
deciding on the Federal Prosecution?s appeal against the release of Andrej H.
on bail. “We cannot expect a decision before October 18th”, commented
Cristina Clemm who is legally representing Andrej H.

The Court has announced it will make a categorical decision with respect to the
current case against the “mg” (militant group). In light of this, the
lawyers of three further accused, Axel H., Oliver R. and Florian L., have now
lodged an appeal against the continued custodial remand of their clients.

Source: Pressrelease weiter...
2007-10-09

A letter by one of the prisoners of the current proceedings under section 129a in Germany.

Dear comrades and friends,

As a 129a-prisoner in the mg-case I want to send to you greetings of solidarity and fighting spirit from the rotten prison in Berlin-Moabit, that is so ready to get wrecked.

After 5 minutes in my 7 square meter “luxury accommodation” I fully became aware of our good old, but abstract slogan “Tear down the walls of all prisons and coercive institutions”. The best thing to do!
As you probably have heard, Axel, Flori and me, as well as four others are accused by the the Chief Federal Prosecutor to be members of the militant group (mg).
According to the Chief Federal Prosecutor this group politically claimed responsibility for 25 militant attacks since 2001. Targeted were institutions and vehicles of imperialist war politics, of institutionalized state racism, capitalist exploitation and the preventive security state. Which are “issues relevant to attack” we all know *.

Source: email weiter...
2007-10-03

Solidarity with Andres and Raul

Logo

The last June 2nd a large demonstration took place in the German town of Rostock where the G8 summit was being held. Some 80.000 people from different places and ideologies showed their rejection against they way the most powerful politicians are ruling our world.

During the demonstration there were no serious incidents except for the provocative attitude of the police. The protest ended with some riots between the demonstrators and the police, after which about 500 people were detained. Four of them (according to the newspapers) were taken to court and sentenced after remain in prison for five days. Quick trials very much put into question by independent organizations and even the media because the detainees did not have the chance of a fair trial.

Source: www.nodo50.org weiter...
2007-09-25

red pepper: Terror laws hit German left

Logo

The past few months have seen a wave of repression unleashed in Germany. Houses, offices, social centres and bookshops have been raided by police and several people accused of ‘membership of a terrorist organisation’ – sometimes for as little as having written academic texts about ‘gentrification’. Frank Meyer reports from Hamburg

The mobilisation around the 2007 G8 summit in Heiligendamm, on Germany’s Baltic coast, marked a highpoint for the left and radical-left in Germany. Some have described the event as the return of the counter-globalisation movement as a social force in Europe.

The protests around the 2005 G8 summit at Gleneagles in Scotland saw the institution develop an almost unprecedented level of legitimacy in the world’s eyes. By asking it to ‘make poverty history’, an unlikely coalition of pop stars, politicians and parts of global civil society managed to obscure the fact that the G8 – and the system for which it stands – are in fact the root cause of poverty, not its eliminators.

Source: einstellung.so36.net weiter...
2007-09-10

German GWOT Misfire

The signs from Europe on the antiterrorism front look increasingly ominous, less because of any discernible upswing in terrorist activity than because of European governments' attempts to criminalize opposition. First came word that the German government was investigating seventeen top journalists who had published articles about a parliamentary investigation of German involvement in CIA rendition flights to Europe. The same week saw an even more chilling development: Several urban social scientists in Berlin were secretly investigated and charged--one was imprisoned--on suspicion of terrorism. The grounds cited include the research they have done and people they may have talked to in the process. By NEIL SMITH

Source: einstellung.so36.net weiter...
2007-09-05

"Thanks" from Andrej to supporters

A brief "thank you" from Andrej to all individuals and groups who expressed support during the last weeks.

Source: einstellung.so36.net weiter...
2007-08-31

Committing critically engaged social science in Germany - an act of terrorism?

The past three weeks have been extremely worrying for Germany's intellectuals. Under § 129a of German penal law, a number of people, among them university-based social scientists, have been accused of membership in a terrorist association, several were arrested. The arguments brought forward against the accused are highly problematic and represent a threat to our democracy, to the German constitution as well as to critical research and teaching and are fundamentally opposed to the country's Constitution. By Wiebke Keim

Source: einstellung.so36.net weiter...
2007-08-30

At Least We Don’t Jail Our Prophets

Schablone

Berkeley residents who get tired of being called NIMBYs and worse by the powers-that-be think they have problems. The artists and other denizens of West Berkeley who object to the new taxation scheme which the big property owners are trying to foist on the neighborhood they call home are currently getting the full treatment from those who think they know what’s best for the area: how to clean it up and make it all nicey-nice for the newly lucrative biotech labs and the high-end condos speculators are hoping to build near them. Their turf is also the target of city re-zoning efforts both spot (Berkeley Bowl) and far-reaching (auto dealership specials). They complain, with some justification, that their now-affordable housing and workspaces are being threatened by gentrification, that there’s obvious inequality in the way different contenders for West Berkeley space are being treated. By Becky O’Malley

Source: Berkeley Daily Planet weiter...
2007-08-30

Berlin Struggles to Define 'Terror'

Schäuble

IVORY TOWER ARSON ARREST - Who can be defined as a terrorist? It is a question Germany is wrestling with after a Berlin sociology professor was imprisoned for terrorism after allegedly helping leftists torch cars. By Caroline Schmidt and Dietmar Hipp

Forty-year-old Berlin lawyer Christina Clemm was just 10 during the so-called German Autumn of 1977: Her recollections of the historic showdown between the German state and its enemies, the left-wing underground organization known as the Red Army Faction or "Baader-Meinhof Gang," are vague. But when Clemm visited her client, 36-year-old Andrej H., in Berlin's Moabit prison early last week, the atmosphere there was reminiscent of those dark years of leftist terrorism.

Source: Spiegel Online weiter...
2007-08-30

Sociologist Remains Free. Federal Prosecution postpones decision

Harms

Coalition for the Immediate End to the §129a Proceedings

Press Release
Berlin, 30th August 2007

Sociologist Remains Free. Federal Prosecution postpones decision to revoke temporary release

Yesterday afternoon the Third Criminal Division of the Federal Court of
Justice declared that the decision over the appeal against Andrej H.‘s
temporary release from custody has been postponed until October.
According to the judge there are outstanding legal questions as to
whether the anti-terrorist legislation, the “§129a”, can even be applied
to this case at all. The lawyers acting on behalf of Florian L., Oliver
R. and Axel H. believe that this discussion over the premises of the
charges will also have an effect on their clients’ situation.

weiter...
2007-08-24

Guantanamo in Germany: Inhumane Treatment of Accused

Coalition for the immediate end to the §129a proceedings

Press Release 24 August

The persons charged in the §129a (anti-terrorism) proceedings were severely
beaten during their arrest and are being treated like Guantanamo prisoners.
Special detention conditions at Berlin’s Moabit prison involve solitary
confinement.

On 31/07/2007 Oliver R., Axel H. and Florian L. were arrested after
allegedly attempting to set fire to three German Army vehicles. Only now
it has transpired that they experienced severe assaults during the
arrest. The accused are still being detained in extreme conditions.

weiter...
2007-08-22

Richard Sennett/ Saskia Sassen: Guantánamo in Germany

Bild: BKA

In the name of the war on terror, our colleagues are being persecuted - for the crime of sociology. By Richard Sennett and Saskia Sassen

'Terrorism" has two faces. There are real threats and real terrorists, and then again there is a realm of nameless fears, vague forebodings and irrational responses. The German federal police seem to have succumbed to the latter: on July 31 they raided the flats and workplaces of Dr Andrej Holm and Dr Matthias B, as well as of two other people, all of them engaged in that most suspicious pursuit - committing sociology.

weiter...
2007-08-20

Solidarity Manifestation and new homepage - All out now!

Bild: BKA

FREEDOM FOR AXEL, FLORIAN, OLIVER AND ANDREJ!
Come to the manifestation at the jail Moabit, 6pm at Friday, the 22nd of August!

Three Antimilitarists arrested the 30th/31st of Juli in Brandenburg/Havel and a forth person were taken to custody by the Chief Federal Prosecutor on the 1st of August. Those and three other comrades are accused of being members of a “terrorist alliance” according to section 129a, namely of the “militante gruppe”. Around 30 attacks since 2001 are ascribed to them. Three of the accused are said to be caught igniting incendiary compositions under vehicles of the german army Bundeswehr, the fourth was arrested in the course of the searching of seven private flats in Berlin and Leipzig, and one left bookshop on the 31st of Juli. By now the four arrested are held in custody in Berlin-Moabit.

weiter...