On 7th June a German court sentenced a Barcelona anarchist to seven and a half years prison for robbing a bank in Aachen, Germany. The other woman indicted was acquitted of all charges . The demo against the sentence begins at 8pm in Plaza Lesseps. Throughout the solidarity campaign, the support groups have made it clear that they do not care if the anarchists were to blame as they consider the expropriation action against the criminal banks to be legitimate.

rescue people not banks

info via insurrection news and Solidaritat Rebel The Aachener Bank was hit for the first time in July 2012. Around noon, a gang ran into the bank and demanded money at gunpoint. Then they shut the bank employees in one room. One woman was wearing a blond wig, sunglasses. They spoke good German.

The Dutch press reports highlighted that the German police had been harassing and seeking to arrest the Dutch woman who was later arrested and dubbed by them and the predatory media as the ‘leader’ for years and she had previously been held for 5 months and released as there was no evidence.

There has been a worldwide wave of solidarity actions for those accused of the Aachen bank robberies, with reports from as far away as Greece, Russia, Brazil, Australia or Chile……….

The Dutch anarchists who demonstrated and continue to campaign for the release of the 3 described the charges as fabricated. The leaflets and declarations emphasize support for the arrested comrades whether ‘guilty’ or ‘innocent’ and some justified bank expropriations in the context of trillion euro bank fraud, capitalist extortion and planetary destruction.

The police claim they have ‘DNA trace evidence’ on at least one of the women, but of course thousands of people go to banks, DNA evidence is unreliable, easy to plant and left behind on all kinds of objects..

They also claimed to have photo proof and have released both security camera images and arrest photos of the accused, which show their ”proof” to be ridiculous. See below.

‘Then exactly one year later a woman appeared in a bank robbery, police immediately suspected that it had to be the same group. Again, an affiliate of the Aachener Bank was the target.The loot: 42,000 euros’.

In November 2014 the band pulled off their master stroke : 300,000 euros were seized in the raid of the Pax Bank, again in Aachen. The gang entered in the morning and as the bank employees arrived they were tied up. ,, It was an extreme bank robbery “said spokesman Sebastian Fiedler in German media. ”A bank robbery of this size you rarely see.” He described the gang as very professional.

They did not explain why an international gang would travel to rob branches of the same bank in the same German town 3 times.



Signed Communiqué supporting colleagues accused of expropriating banks in Germany

by Solidaritat Rebel translation by thefreeonline

With this statement we the groups here express our solidarity with colleagues accused of a series of robberies that occurred in the city of Aachen.

What we sign here is not just a statement of brother/sisterhood, but also an affirmation of our belief that, despite the criminalization suffered by our comrades, we recognize that they were accused for practicing politics practiced by historically legitimate and revolutionary movements, and we see this as a clear sign that there is still hope in a time when persecution and repression are the order of the day.

Between 2012 and 2014 there were a series of 3 robberies in banks in the German city of Aachen. After these events, the police brigade in charge of the investigation launched a media campaign of denunciation spreading publicly the details of robberies and offering rewards to anyone who could provide information about suspicious people.

In the summer of 2015 the first accused was stopped at the border between Greece and Bulgaria on a European arrest warrant issued in Aachen against a female colleague on charges of having participated in a robbery in July 2013. After several months of custody in Bulgaria she was extradited to Germany only to be released for lack of evidence.

She is currently incarcerated in prison again in Cologne, after her extradition was granted by the Court of Amsterdam on 15 September.

On April 13 this year in the city of Barcelona, huge numbers of Catalan Police carried out three raids; one in the Occupied Social Center los Bloques Fantasma, and the other two in private homes, arresting our comrade.

The arrest was carried out through a European arrest warrant issued by the prosecutor of Aachen with charges of bank robbery in November 2014 in the same city. The comrade passed to the High Court under the order of Judge Eloy Velasco, already notorious and she was jailed in Soto del Real until her extradition on 29 June. Currently she’s incarcerated in a Cologne Prison awaiting trial..

The latest arrest occurred on June 21 in Barcelona, when another colleague was accused of having participated in the robbery of November 2014, imprisoned in Soto del Real prison and extradited to Aachen in Germany, where he is a awaiting trial in a situation similar to the two colleagues.

All these arrests are the result of an intense and close cooperation between European police forces. A collaboration which is specified through the exchange of information and favors. The case is based on traces of DNA that German police decided to compare with data from other European police forces. From that moment police tightened ties that continue materializing through euro orders and technical collaboration.

Moreover, both the German, Catalan and Spanish media have not missed the opportunity to identify and speculate about our partners and develop the story in the interests of State power.

But we remain firm, both in our convictions and with our own discourse:

Whatever the evolution of the judicial process, we want to publicly show our support for our colleagues, claiming as our revolutionary political goals, their struggle and their militant activity. The attempt by the media to turn them into a public danger could not be more perverse.

Especially when this operation involves media manipulation portraying the banks as victims, a total inversion of reality that dignifies those who have been stealing, squeezing, ripping, cutting and evicting with impunity for years, while criminalizing those who rebel against their order and dare to attack them.

To us it is quite indifferent whether or not they are really responsible for these robberies. The practice of expropriating banks is an ethically correct and politically legitimate method of struggle that is part of the history of revolutionary movements.

The police and media persecution deployed after these robberies in Germany should not make us lose perspective or confuse who is our enemy. The detention of our colleagues is one more reason to fight these elites and the system they represent; a system driven solely by the accumulation of money in a few hands at the expense of suffering, dispossession and exploitation of the rest.

Neither the police, the prosecution nor the massive propaganda of the regime can hide what is already obvious to everyone, that, as the poet said,..

What crime is robbing a bank compared to founding it?

Freedom for anarchist prisoners !!

Down with the prison walls !!!

Another Support Communique

by Solidaritat Rebel ”It does not come as a surprise to us that those who oppose and fight against the misery of this world forged on domination are attacked, prosecuted and punished. We are not interested in discussing about guilt or innocence, it is the language that belongs to our enemies and we refuse it.

Our enemies follow the logic of separation and categorization of individuals, in order to then have the possibility of locking up the undesirables. We share with the accused comrades an aversion to this system, and towards the prison system which perpetuates the distinction between good citizens and those who deserve to be punished.

We hate all the repressive infrastructures of all States, just as all the far-reaching tentacles of the Church, with its long tradition of oppression. The Church is part of the State, linked directly to banks and participating in the maintenance of the control that is imposed on us daily

Considerable steps have been taken in the development and the role of repression in our daily lives. New technologies and progress in the deciphering of DNA, biometric analysis, surveillance cameras, …. So many instruments used to study, scrutinize and control. They also represent part of the structure, part of our enemy, against which we take a position and which we want to destroy.

The collaboration of the police, judges and investigators from different States is an old strategy that has been updated in Europe to contribute to a faster, clearer and more cruel Capitalist system.