Update on the status of Juan’s trial
On Saturday, June 11, a hearing was held at the Treviso court against Juan for the trial in which he is charged with ‘attack with a terrorist purpose’ and ‘massacre’ for the attack on the headquarters of the Lega di Villorba in August 2018. The request of prosecutors Roberto Terzo and Alessia Tavarnesi was for 28 years for 280 bis c.p. (attack for terrorist purposes), while an acquittal was requested for the charge of ‘massacre’ (art. 285 c.p.).
Outside the courtroom there was a demonstration of a hundred comrades in solidarity with Juan. After hearing the demands, the demonstration moved, managing for about half an hour to block the Put, the inner ring road of the city.
The next hearing will be held on June 18, during which the defense will intervene, while the last hearing and the verdict in first instance are scheduled for July 2.
During the hearing, which was held by videoconference, Juan read a statement which we quote below:
STATEMENT OF JUAN SORROCHE FERNANDEZ AT THE COURT OF TREVISO
In this umpteenth hearing by videoconference and after numerous requests, denied, to appear and be present in person and not in absence at all the hearings of the trial in which I am accused of the heavy and infamous charge of massacre, I have to deal with the issue of videoconference, which enters, or to be more precise, entered into the infamous logic of the differentiation of the detention circuits, where the individual prisoner and accused is demonized and dehumanized given the so-called «considerable social dangerousness». I say re-entered because the videoconference, the trial in absentia, has been extended to all prisoners in Italian prisons, who have been and are left de facto without real defense and with the marginalization that this entails for all defendants who suffer this imposition, by the liberticidal dynamics of the umpteenth emergency, this time by the Covid19 emergency that then became law. It is now clear and unmasked – and I am not just talking about the contradiction of the specific problem of this law or that one – how the specific problem of videoconferencing has reduced the defense to a farce, effectively nullifying the defendant at trial.
This court will probably say that these issues have nothing to do with today’s trial.
I, on the other hand, believe they do, in fact I consider it a fundamental issue. I am referring to the contradiction that states have by their very systemic nature, the underlying problem is one of disintegration and degeneration that masquerades as emergentism and seeks to break and direct established and ordinary legality at will, transforming it into legality. We see it in the very dynamics of perpetual emergence, and the specific videoconferencing plan is one of the many examples of how systemic and libertarian authoritarianism spreads far and wide. It is the exception, today’s emergency shaping tomorrow’s law, reducing it each time. Videoconference trials, in their absence, have been created by the continuous emergencies within the so-called social dangerousness, which has now become the norm, such as the trial by videoconference without real defense for all prisoners in Italian jails. And they do not cease to harm the conditions of the whole trial, making it difficult to manage the real defense of the defendants in contradiction with what their own democratic and bourgeois law supports.
This technological process actually makes the trial biased and clearly reveals the submission to the authority of the capitalist state in all aspects of our lives: it deprives us of the possibility to challenge, as a new religion to worship, the various innovations: DNA, videoconferencing, etc.
In this climate created on the incessant emergencies with the marginalization and annulment of the accused and the real defense, which is reduced to the minimum, especially for that class that is not bourgeois, for the class of the excluded; this is how the videoconference arrives with the emergence of social dangerousness. Guilt is already evident in the form of this form of «showing up and attending». I repeat, that videoconferencing laws are a tentacle that has extended from emergency to emergency to now include all prisoners. A murderous state dynamic that misrepresents and then erases this emergency political and social context as if it were normal. This is the systemic banality of state evil, and thus the continued marginalization of thousands of prisoners and detainees and the nullification of the accused occurred. It is there for all to see what happened during the Covid19 emergency with the so-called NO VAX. The State, to maintain its continued emergency, needs scapegoats. Also, in trials like this it is convenient for it to insert a disproportionate and incorrect amount of inadmissible documentation that serves the prosecution to steer the trial towards the guilt of the defendants. It is an old story that has been repeated for centuries.
It is about the general conditions of society with the emergency of Covid19, with a murderous and massive management by the State, and how now, coincidentally, the State extends the state of war emergency, again with the same massive and indiscriminate management. Because the State never denies its own methods, if anything it perfects them: it is the bombs manufactured and sold all over the world to any regime by Leonardo-Finmeccanica (even to States now at war and in excellent business with the Italian State) that create countless massacres for its own benefit. Making clear to all, if it was still necessary, the true nature of the State you represent. So I don’t see with what legitimacy you can accuse me. Let’s return for a moment to the example of the videoconferencing law to see how it developed and how emergency laws and their subsequent forcing and misrepresentation end up becoming rules and laws. The law on videoconferencing comes from the emergency for the so-called «mafia» and «terrorist» dangerousness since 1998 for those and those subjected to 41bis; videoconferencing was introduced by law no. 11 of January 1998, inspired by Luciano Violante (Prodi government), the prisoners subjected to 41bis were forced to suffer this liberticidal law and could not participate in the trials, except from a distance; the margins of democratic and bourgeois defense were reduced to a farce.
In 2013-2014 the umpteenth emergency: this time under the pretext of alleged massive escapes from prisons, the videoconference was extended to all prisoners subjected to the High Security regime; the problem of defense was extended to 10,000 prisoners and detainees. The emergency that was invented on the spot was that escapes, which in reality were insignificant and could be counted on the fingers of one hand, had to be prevented. The motivations were political, the real result of the falsifications and misrepresentations created by the anti-mafia and anti-terrorist pools. It must be remembered that these pools were in turn created by the state of emergency and coincidentally then normalized for decades, feeding automatically. The motivations are economic, also a product of the clogging of the cumbersome and corrupt state bureaucratic machinery, as evidenced by the CSM corruption problems, which are systemic problems, not two bad apples.
Then, 2 years ago, in 2020, with the emergency of Covid19, with the massacring management inside the prisons, with 15 dead prisoners, with beatings and tortures to hundreds of prisoners, behold, the videoconference was finally extended to all prisoners and to all prisoners limited by the farce of the defense with Art. 11 paragraph 3 of Decree-Law no. 137 of 28/10 of 2020 turned into L.no. 176/2020. Here it is extended to all prisoners and all female prisoners, as some High Security prisoners had denounced in the trials of 2013-14 when the videoconference was imposed on them and as I myself point out here today in confirmation of this.
All this is one more confirmation of the contradictions and suspensions of the fundamental rights of their bourgeois democracy. A state by nature corporatist, which defends only and exclusively its own class, and this is evidenced by these emergency alibis, applied as if it were for our own good and safety.
The shamelessness with which the State defends its class is evident, as shown by the example of the murder of Youns El Boussattaoui in Voghera at the hands of the state legist Massimo Adriatici. A murder of an immigrant, of a homeless person, of an outcast, with explosive bullets in the middle of a square, with the unanimous complicit silence of the state authority and the press, with the condescension of the judiciary, passing off this murder as self-defense. This episode gives a good idea of how the State defends its followers and opens our eyes to the racism and systemic corruption of the State and capitalist society. Passing this off to us poor suckers as a minor issue, an arms dealing problem, instead of what it is: a racist murder at the hands of a politician with the complicity of state authority, and not an individual case per se. I repeat, these are systemic problems in the state, not two bad apples. And today the Lega, the government party, is here as a civil party to lecture me. This execution, like the Frapporti case in Rovereto, Mastrogiovanni in Naples, Aldrovandi and Cucchi, and many other cases that have never come to light, target the class of the oppressed, and it is normal that this should be so, given the system in which we have to live. A system that has continuously targeted the oppressed as a whole for centuries. It is clear that the slogan «the law is equal for all» only applies to the bourgeois class you represent.
That is why this process and any state do not represent me, given the constant slaughter of the class of the oppressed of which I am a member, and the constant falsifications and manipulations for which the state is responsible. That is why today I claim my identity as an anarchist, which has very deep political and social motivations from a century and a half of struggle against the butcher state. A rebellious anarchism, of praxis and struggle, an individual anarchism that goes beyond your hypocritical falsehoods. My consciousness of what the sacrificial state is cannot be manipulated, because for many years my individuality has not been reflected in that of any authority, least of all that of the State. For years I have repudiated, I have rejected the State, since I have been conscious of my anarchism I do not trust what is above me. The only relationship I have with the State is with its force that imprisons me here, I have no faith in any of its ghosts represented by the law and the hypocritical phrase that the law is equal for all, I am not a fool.
Today I absolutely reject this farce of a State, I reject this court and any verdict, be it guilty or innocent. Today I declare that for me this trial is over and that you will never see my image again.
FUENTE: IL ROVESCIO
TRADUCCIÓN: ANARQUÍA