COLLUSION BETWEEN THE CHURCH, THE STATE AND THE MAFIA

EXPEDIENTS TO KEEP THE ‘CRIMINALS’ WHO STRUGGLE AGAINST IMMIGRATION DETENTION CAMPS AND THE WORLD THAT PRODUCES THEM BEHIND BARS

One year ago, on May 12 2005, five anarchists are arrested and 13 more are under investigation in Lecce, southern Italy, in the course of the operation ‘Nottetempo’. The accusation for all of them is ‘subversive association aimed at subverting the democratic order’ (article 270bis of the Italian penal code), which is always used to repress any attempt to react against the ruthless system based on exploitation. The specific charges they are accused of, that is to say the methods of this non-existent subversive project, are some damage to a number of cash machines of Banca Intesa (where the catholic foundation Regina Pacis, which ran the immigration detention camp in San Foca, had their account) some writing on walls, a few ‘threatening’ telephone calls, the side door of the Duomo in Lecce damaged by fire, and the severing of two Esso petrol pipes (which have been the targets of acts of sabotage all over Italy owing to Esso’s responsibility in the genocide in Iraq).

Anyone who considers himself/herself antiracist couldn’t fail to agree with the above-mentioned actions, we don’t care if our comrades carried them out or not.

This operation, which is part of wider repression sparked off by Home secretary Pisanu against anarchists at a national level, finds itself in a particular local context where the powerful, involved in a turbid mixture of political, clerical and mafioso power, are longing to silence the individuals who, armed with tenacious determination, have disturbed their sleep.

The anarchists on trial had for years been passionately engaged in an unreserved struggle against the immigration detention camp (CPT) in San Foca run by the Church and managed by a priest, father Cesare Lodeserto, the archbishop’s right hand man. Solidarity towards persecuted, locked up and deported migrants, and radical opposition to all CPTs, which they denounced for what they are (modern concentration camps for immigrants without stay permits), and to the violence perpetrated in the one in Lecce in particular, have disturbed the managers and collaborators of the latter to such a point that it was soon clear that the local mafia would threaten the anarchists.

Obviously, the jailer priest was in a great hurry to see that his misdeeds didn’t come to light and he was scared. But the mafia didn’t intervene directly; the priest waited and his patience was awarded. Shortly before the arrests, the CPT had to close down owing to continuous uprisings and protests that broke out inside, and to public indignation (only temporary) aroused by the news of the violence inflicted by the priest-boss-manager who was accused and arrested (only for a few days of course) following a number of charges such as private violence, kidnapping, embezzlement, and extortion. Revenge soon followed: one month later the anarchists were arrested and a media campaign, with its following of political jackals, was launched against them. The double attack of the State – against father Cesare on the one hand and the anarchists on the other – has given some an impression of a ‘democratic attitude’ in the intervention of the judiciary; as if it was a matter of enemies of equal dignity fighting on opposite sides (see historical revisionism).

Father Cesare Lodeserto is now running a number of centers in Moldovia, an area of crucial importance in Europe for weapons, drugs and organ trafficking and where his foundation is the only foreign organization that the local government allows. He can still be seen walking in the streets of Lecce escorted by police and a swarm of priests. He is cheered by all the institutional parties.

One year has also passed for the arrested anarchists, who are being held in jail or under house arrest waiting for the end of the trial (preventive arrest). Two of them are continuously moved to and from Voghera and Sulmona prisons respectively to the one in Lecce in order to attend the hearings of the trial, three others are under house arrest (a female comrade who had been released on bail in August is to be put under house arrest again as the Cassation accepted an appeal presented by the public prosecutor).

The trial, which not by chance started precisely when the time limit for preventive arrest was coming to an end, has been going on since January 19 2006.

The hearings follow one another with the debating of bureaucratic questions, formalities and postponements: cynical and cunning expedients to keep the comrades in prison. It is sufficient to attend any one of these hearings to realize that it is a farce performed with the complicity of the various powers involved.

Against the State, the Church and the Mafia.

Enemies of all racism