Interviews
Interview with Amadeu Casellas Ramón
The Catalonian anarchist prisoner Amadeu Casellas Ramón has been on hunger strike for 60 days to demand a solution to his critical situation of imprisonment, already lasting for more than 22 years. He has paid for 22 years for struggling against the state, for bank expropriations carried out in the 70s and 80s to help finance the workers' struggles of that time.
Due to the authorities' continuous refusal to give him a release date and the horrible conditions prisoners in the Quatre Camins prison are subjected to, Amadeu made the decision to go on hunger strike as a way to confront the prison authorities.
After being lied to by the director of the prison during his last hunger strike in April, Amadeu has decided that this hunger strike will be to the ultimate consequences: if the prison authorities don't grant him an open regime (this is equivalent to day work release, where the prisoner signs out and goes to work during the day, returning to the prison in the evening), or a lessening of his sentence, he will continue the hunger strike...(More)
Interview with 'M', anarchist from Osaka, Japan
In September 2006, 'M', an anarchist comrade from Osaka, Japan, was arrested for fraud. It is a minor crime but there was a predictable aspect to the detainment. It was a way to attack him for his anarchist activity in the squatter (Nojukusha) movement. He was held for 3 weeks and interrogated about his political activities in 'Kamagasaki Patrol' and about the 'black helmet group(s)', an anarchist grouping that the Osaka city police are obsessed with. The police thought that they had struck at one of the main organizers of squatters struggle in the city and were glad to be able to victimize him. He was arrested with 4 other people after an incident in a squatted park when they objected to an official city visit to regulate the squatters....(More)
John Bowden talks to 'SchNews'
The radical anti-capitalist 'Schnews' media group based in Brighton did this interview with John a while back, and we repost here as it is important that people read it, to get a glimpse into the mind of someone who has been radicalised inside prison, read on...
John Bowden was arrested in 1980 for murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1992, after years of brutality and repression, he managed to escape and was on the run from the police for a year and a half. He was recaptured in March 1994 and has since been in Perth Prison in Scotland. Here he talks about various aspects of being inside, including the reasons as to why he committed murder and his subsequent politicisation...(More)
Interview with 'Rebel Jill', Anarchist from Osaka, Japan
Spring, 2006 - After weeks of police attention and media build-up, a squatted camp in Utsubo Park, Osaka, was evicted by a mass of city officials and police. The park is being re-developed for the World Rose Convention, which is a touring spectacle of money and specialist horticulture. That people were living there was no consequence to the authorites, they were merely displaced. The city parks of Japan hold many people, who, excluded from the industrial, technocratic city create neat villages of blue tarpaulin, and try to live their lives as beautifully as they can.
Comrades in Japan talked for a small time with 'Rebel Jill', a local anarchist, who has been involved in the struggle for many years. They talked about the eviction, about resistance to Capitalism, and about fascism and the Yakuza (Traditionally organized criminal gangs, often involved in right-wing politics). ....(More)
Jean-Marc Rouillan Interview
Imprisoned 'Action Directe' militant speaks with Valerie C
V.C.: What are your views on the current terrorist attacks? Do you consider yourself as having committed terrorist attacks and what difference do you see between what you did and what is currently happening?
Jean Marc Rouillan - There is a fundamental difference: we never committed any massacre-attack. Our targets were always chosen beforehand. We always attacked people in charge, powerful people in their field. We never touched any civilian. Despite all our bomb attacks, and there were many, there never was any dead or wounded civilians....(More)
Laudelino Iglesias Interview
Laudelino has spent 25 years in prison since October 1980 to August 2004. Out of those 25 years, he has spent 13 in isolation (maybe segregation). He inagurated the archive for internal prisioners in special observation, FIES, in 1991.
SalHaketa – Today we would like to ask you about the organised movement of resistance that several prisioners have taken part in recent years, denouncing the conditions of imprisioment and evaluating the evolution of this movement and its present state.
Laudelino – Hello, in order to understand the movement of resistance within the prisons we need to go back to when Franco died in 1975. The social conditions implied that people were going from a fascist franquista regime to a monarquic franquista regime and well then it was the political struggle of people outside. When Franco died, there were negogtiations with those prisoners who denominated themselves political, there was also lots of riots on the outside, they managed to get the majority of them released, but not all of them......(More)
Joëlle Aubron Interview
“Prison is not a dead time”
Joëlle Aubron, former member of Action Directe, has been released in June for medical reasons:
On 14th June Joëlle Aubron, 45 years old, has been released after 17 years of imprisonment from Bapaume prison (Pas-de-Calais). A cancer with metastasis in her brain has been the reason for the suspension of her punishment. The former member of Action Directe (AD) was sentenced for life for two murders in the years 1985 and 1986 of General René Audran, general inspector of the army, and Georges Besse, head of Renault. For Libération she recalls her years in prison and AD......(More)
Mark Barnsley Interview
You´ve been to prison two times. Both seem strange at first sight. How come a 19 year old anarchist is caught with plastic explosives? How did you get 8 years of prison for defending yourself, your friend and child against a mob of drunken highly aggressive students?
I was involved with the struggle from my earliest years. The 1960's and 1970's were very different times, the working class were far more powerful than they are today, the struggle was at a more intense level with people more willing to fight for a better world, and certainly in Britain there was talk of a right-wing backlash and even of a military coup. The politics of active armed struggle are now only advocated by a minority within the European Left and Anarchist movement, but in the 1970's things were different. If you got involved in the movement then you would come into contact with these ideas very quickly. I was involved in some very militant anti-fascist activity, and in many respects taking up the gun was a logical progression from that. Of course, with the hindsight of more than 25 years it's not hard to see our failings, but some comrades are, even now, still paying the price for the courage they showed then. I was never a vanguardist, I have always believed in the mass action of the organised working class, but there was a time when I was involved in the armed struggle......(More)