Solidarity with Alfon, jailed after the pan-European general strike of 14-N (Spain)

Solidarity with Alfon, only one arrested remaining in jail after the paneuropean strike on 14-N: new Spanish political prisoner.

Spain – kingdom of satraps, thieves and butchers. The number of political prisoners rises in Europe. After the first pan-European strike on 14-N there is still one person in jail. It is not a coincidence, as Alfonso Fernandez, Alfon, like his mother, are well know as activists. His detention was not fortuitous, 100m from his home door, accompanied by his girlfriend. Hours of police interrogatories every two hours, tortures and death threats made by hooded terrorists. And as always police manipulation and political interest. The government can’t break his decision to fight, neither of his family.

Alfonso Fernández Ortega, Alfonso, a 21-year-old neighbor of Vallecas in Madrid, left his home early on Wednesday November 14. There was one morning but that of 14N, day of the general strike. He was addressing to an informational picket, accompanied by his girlfriend. He planned to meet at a time with his mother and his uncle, that also support the strike actively. But Elena Ortega, the mother, could not locate him: a hundred yards from his house, Alfonso and his girlfriend were arrested. She was released with charges and must appear in court twice a month. Alfon spent in pretrial detention and meets in Soto del Real prison [Madrid] in what can be considered a penalty early to the sentence.

Preventive detention is a precautionary measure applied in cases that produce great social alarm. It’s what the judge argued to send Alfon to prison, although it seems more alarm caused his arrest, and even what seems to be pursuing this case. Many accuse him of fighting police, allegedly to divert attention from the success of the general strike in Vallecas, where the closure of small businesses reached almost 100%.

Police said Alfon was carrying a bag with gasoline at the time of his arrest, he denies this: “I’m calm because I have not done anything, I know I’m a scapegoat, that the purpose of the police was another and have used me for it.” He has told this to his mother in one of the few visits that have been allowed to him in jail. An arrest that seems not to be fortuitous as Elena Ortega is a well-known activist in Vallecas neighborhood.

In an interview with the program Todo por la Causua [all for the cause] of Tele K, Vallecas local television, she says her son and his girlfriend refused to testify without counsel present and therefore suffered psychological torture: they were interrogated every two hours by hooded men who threatened them with doing “horrible things” to their families. As any statement failed, police decided to search at home. Elena realized that when five hooded policemen also appeared at dawn at home, trying to frighten she and her husband, also threatening them with what would happen to his son. She was adamant: “It is clear that we are leftists. Here is my republican flag, my shirt from the public school, the kind of books I have. But we are not terrorists.”

Alfon is inside the F.I.E.S. Regime (Jail internal files and treatments), which involves isolation (called “prison within the prison”), restricts communications (can only receive a visit from his family) and controls correspondence. It applies to the prison system inmates considered “dangerous”, usually people belonging to armed gangs or drug lords. The High Court itself considers FIES illegal, as it violates the rights of prisoners. That has been applied to Alfon because of the same line of their detention: the criminalization of organized youth, critical and demanding through a nearby young antifascist groups and fans of Rayo Vallecano Football Club. Bukaneros headquarters, supporters of this team declaring “racism, repression and football business”, was also under police search.

According to Elena Ortega and Bukaneros, which later issued a statement, the Ministry of Interior and the Government Office will undergo unprecedented persecution from 25-S because banners denouncing parties take, for example, that the Congress of the Deputies was surrounded by 1,500 police while Cristina Cifuentes’s husband is “whereabouts unknown.” Also reported is that the arrest and imprisonment of Alfon may be a smokescreen to divert attention from the historical demonstrations of 14N and the “disproportionate and inhumane” actions of the security forces.

Alfon’s mother, who took her story to the International Congress Against Repression, organized by Animal Equality and held with great success in Madrid on 6 and 7 December, insists that government want to criminalize young people and working class neighborhoods shaken by the crisis, like Vallecas, Villaverde or Carabanchel neighbourhoods. She complains that it is the young who have to deal with a system that denies them the future, kids who have had to leave the university because they cannot pay even for vocational training after the rate hike, kids for whom there is no provision either that they can enter the labor market. “A youth,” She says, “with no expectations, cornered, harassed and persecuted by the police.”

She resists “the force of reason and truth” because she has known Vallecas since it was a handful of shacks and she knows the struggle that can be organized in the neighborhood. So warns that the mothers of these young people are reaching a limit: “We have given birth with love, have grown up with love and with great respect, and now are suffering thrashing, abuse and exploitation. We will begin to react because we are not willing to allow wrecking of our sons.”

Part of the process of destruction is the preventive detention. If a detainee is unprecedented and has a known address, they should not go to prison. Nor if no flight risk or can be controlled by imposing a proportional bail. The opposite is to create a prisoner. In this case, for ideological reasons, he is a political prisoner. As political as a general strike.

http://kaosenlared.net/component/k2/item/40261-alfon-un-preso-pol%C3%ADtico-en-madrid.html

Source: La Tarcoteca contrainfo

http://tarcoteca.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/soilidarity-with-alfon-only-arrested.html

More information in Spanish.

http://alfonlibertad.blogspot.co.uk/

http://rsamadrid.wordpress.com/2012/12/08/yo-soy-alfon/

http://www.alasbarricadas.org/noticias/node/22876

Tags: Alfon, Madrid, N14, Repression, Spain

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 13th, 2012 at 11:43 pm and is filed under Prison Struggle.