After more than 2 years’ confinement, the time has come for me to take a stand. In fact, the need to publish this text arose from the first moment of my arrest, however, personal reasons from the nature of the initial charges that weighed on me to confinement itself, have been an obstacle.
My arrest took place on 18/01/23 after a police raid on my home, as well as the homes of 6 other people with whom I had exclusively friendly/social relations. In an attempt to build and inflate the conspiracy against us, unrelated things were thrown together, with the aim of charging us with forming a criminal organization, a charge that – although ultimately dropped along with many others – was necessary for the authorities to secure our pretrial detention, but also to create impressions of an alleged great success of the ELAS ( greek police).
During the search that took place at my home on the day of my arrest, the following were found and confiscated: 2 wigs, books, brochures of the anarchist/anti-authoritarian space and other personal items such as clothes, shampoo, etc. Obviously the above were not sufficient to detain me and then a series of methods began, starting with the dictated identifications that the Patras Security Service secured in order to carry out its job.
On the same day, the identification process began without me even being charged. We entered a room, me, one of my co-defendants and two plainclothes police officers, all of us with completely different characteristics (height, age, body type, etc.), while I was the only one with blue eyes. This differentiation was ultimately targeted, so as to provide a hint to the eyewitnesses that the cops chose to call, because in one of the robberies I am accused of, a description had been given of a perpetrator who, although he had many characteristics that I do not have, had – always according to the testimony – blue eyes.
In the 7 robberies (at bank branches, ELTA (central post offices), supermarkets) which I was accused of – and ultimately convicted – there were more than 20 eyewitnesses. It is noteworthy that, when the subpoena was issued, the only witnesses the council called were the police officers. Despite the request I submitted to cross examine all the witnesses during the hearing, the court decided to call only the 3 – most convenient – who had “identified” the perpetrators. However, before the eyewitness testimony process began, it was noticed by relatives outside the courtroom that the main prosecution witness had gathered the eyewitnesses together and was showing them photos on his cell phone. Defence lawyers were immediately called to confirm with their own eyes that the cop made suggestions to the witnesses regarding whom they should identify.
When the witness examination process began, the first witness – in his capacity as a cop -, despite the fact that in his initial testimony he only gave a simple description of the clothes and stature of the perpetrators, in court he enriched it by stating that he supposedly took off the mask and saw my face, that I have intense eyes and that at the time of the act, I was also a familiar face to him, elements that he had not mentioned in his previous testimony. The second witness admitted during her testimony that during the process of identifying me at the department, she was not sure and that her words had been falsified. The third witness (a colleague of the previous one) in her initial testimony mentions the colour of my eyes and later at the department she “recognizes” me by this characteristic alone. In court, however, she also embellishes it, saying that my mask supposedly fell off, while she also spoke of other details of my characteristics, which she had not mentioned in her testimony, but which she suddenly “remembered” in court after 1.5 years, following the suggestions of the main prosecution witness. At this point, it is worth emphasizing that the first witness and the two that followed testified about two different robberies in which the mask fell off the perpetrator completely by chance, while when the last witness was shown a photo of me by the defence, she spontaneously testified that she did not recognize the person in the photo.
Even in the videos from the robberies that were sent to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), there is no analysis-identification from the service itself that confirms that the same perpetrators are involved in all 7 of these robberies, let alone that my co-defendant and I are the same. The only “analysis-identification” that exists is that of the police officer investigating the case, who, as he told the court, “has seen the videos 300 times.” Of course, the alibis that I provided to the court were not taken into account, such as a document from a public hospital that confirms that at the time of the robbery at the supermarket I had a broken leg, the testimony from a doctor and a friend who advised me on my treatment, but also the testimony of my partner that confirms my non-involvement in this particular robbery, as well as another one.
The court did not pay any attention to all of the above, since the outcome of the trial was predetermined before it even began. Judges and prosecutors acted as regular agents of the prosecution authorities. It is obvious that the stakes were – despite the obvious manipulations – to obtain major convictions, to validate the entire story from the police report, about hard-core anarchists who committed robberies and attacks on police officers, but also, as usual, to criminalize friendly and companionable relationships. The accusation of criminal organization was a clear targeting of my friendly relationships, without the slightest indication of any collaboration with the others in illegal acts. The outcome of this predetermined process was my conviction with a sentence of 21 years and 3 months.
The press of the system played its role in communication in our case, as in other recent cases. With a condemnatory tone against the accused, it influences public opinion, with the aim of reinforcing the repressive narrative of law and order, but also to excite its audience. With “leaks” from the police, adopting its narrative, it baptized social and friendly relations as a criminal organization, while simultaneously reproducing its conservative rhetoric of “the apple will fall from the apple tree”, making family associations between my prosecution and conviction and my father’s past, always reinforcing the indictment with orders from above. Moreover, the name given to me as “the son of Stelios of 17N” was not at all accidental. This is a characterization that I know well that has followed me since my childhood, from my daily surveillance by the authorities – a condition that I was aware of from a very young age -, the harassment and targeting by the Patras police with direct references to my father, to the logic of family responsibility with which the indictment was drawn up and the judges agreed. Characteristic of this logic was also the question that the president asked me “if I consider that my father was unjustly convicted”. The state acts vengefully in my own case, as it has historically, either informally or even legally in the darkest periods of criminalization of political beliefs.
Thus, in my case, the media, both local and not, paved the way for my pretrial detention and then my conviction with all this cesspool of mud and propaganda that they knew about our persecution. The prosecuting authorities, through the media, promoted their narrative to the delight of their political superiors. Besides, the first page of the transmission does not mention anything about the acts we were accused of at the time, but states that we are anarchists, always on the front lines, hard-core, responsible for attacks on police officers and that we were present at the occupation of the Annex. Criminally unfounded information that, however, has its particular importance in terms of our persecution.
The criminalization of political beliefs was also expressed many times in court, either indirectly by considering as an aggravating factor the existence of books related to the anarchist/anti-authoritarian space in my home, or directly through statements by the prosecutor that arbitrarily attempted to connect our case with other active cases of individuals affiliated with the anarchist space.
At a time when the life of the social base as a whole is increasingly being degraded with the increase in the cost of living, the degradation of public health services, the degradation of the railways that led to the tragic state-capitalist crime in Tempe and the attack on labour struggles, the state chooses to upgrade its legal and penal arsenal by tightening the criminal and penitentiary code, intensifying violence and exclusion against immigrants, strengthening its military power and increasing the organs of repression. Its aim, of course, is to attack the social base without resistance, breaking the morale of those who struggle, criminalizing their friendly/social relationships, and therefore intimidating their friends and relatives by making an example of them – outside the walls – so as to impose their silencing.
I am currently in my third year of detention and I am in Malandrinos Detention Centre, after my transfer-kidnapping from Korydallos prison during the prisoners’ protests against the new prison bill, protests that the state suppressed by dividing all active prisoners in order to impose silence. In the upcoming appeals court, I will be called upon again to prove before the civil justice system that I am being held in pretrial detention and sentenced to many years of detention, without any evidence, with the only “proof” being my political identity and my last name.
SOLIDARITY WITH THE IMPRISONED AND PERSECUTED FIGHTERS
SOLIDARITY WITH THE PEOPLE OF PALESTINE
Karatsolis Giannis
Malandrino Prisons, 08/09/2025
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Translated by Act for freedom now!
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