Tasos Theofilou
Diary of operation “Angela Davis”
Tasos Theofilou was arrested in Athens accused of robbing a bank in Paros Island August 18th, 2012, where a man was killed while trying to stop the robbers. He states that he is an anarchist. He has denied having anything to do with the robbery and the murder at Paros. He claims he wasnt even on the island that day. He is also accused of being part of the organization “Conspiracy Cells of Fire” and of carrying ot terrorist actions. ALL CHARGES ARE BASED SOLELY ON THE DNA EVIDENCE. Dna does not give 100% safe results as it has been pointed out by scientists. His lawyer, Spiros Fitrakis, had stated since Wednesday that his client denies all charges, and also disputes the way they take the dna, through which he was identified as the perpetrator in the Paros case. It should be noted that the cooperate snitches media have already shown photos of him since the first day and have condemned him before there is even a trial.
We would like to express our solidarity to anarchist comrade Tasos Theofilou.
ACTFORFREEDOMNOW/BOUBOURAS
August 18th, 2012
I come out of Keramikos station (athens). I look for an internet café, which is find closed. My detox from my avatar will last just a little longer. I make my way towards Thissio. Two motorbikes stop in front of me. A herd of people fall on me and immobilize me. I don’t know what is going on. I scream. They cuff me and put a black hood over my head. They do not identify themselves to me. they put me in a car, a Toyota yaris or something. It does not matter. They tell me “You messed up our summer you wanker! We have to deal with you now?”. So, I think. This is the punch line of the antiterrorist force. “Hey, we got him” notifies the driver on his mobile. “You sure its him?” wonders the one who is holding me in the back. “What is your name?” they ask me. I tell them, they are relieved. I have heard stories with a beginning like this about a dozen times. I couldn’t imagine such a continue. Not even in my narrations. I am in an underground garage. At the entrance.
I am still wearing the hood and my hands are cuffed behind my back. We wait for the elevator. To “13”, orders someone as soon as we get in. I think of my damn luck and their semiology. What I can see through the hood is the shoes of an endless line of cops in civilian clothes and the floor. They lead me to room. I recognize it. It is the known room in which from time to time various anarchist comrades have posed for the needs of the filming of the now famous force, the antiterrorist. I sit on a chair with my hands cuffed behind my back. “Have you done anything illegal?” asks one. ‘You have arrested me, you waiting for o tell you?’ I thought. I do not answer. “Have you done anything that makes you feel guilty?” he continues. Again I do not answer. I do not understand what they are cooking up. Someone grabs my head from behind. He opens my mouth and puts in a que-tip. I protest. Not that there is any point. I know very well that the antiterrorist is above laws. I know it pumps whatever prestige and uncontrollable authority, not from the authorities of penal justice but from the rules of journalistic barbarity. After a while and after taking my finger prints, without answering my incisive question of whether or not I’ve been arrested, enter the office a new couple of cops. “Did you kill him?” they ask me. I think: this trick they must have learnt from CSI. They threaten you that they will charge you with homicide in order for you, in your panic, to admit anything else. I do not answer. Yes or No. not only I do not know what they are cooking but mainly, I do not even know how they are cooking it. They take the hood off and photograph me. They put it back on and stand me up with my hands cuffed behind my back staring at the wall. Behind me some make stupid sounds. They pretend to be the air or an airplane. They whisper to me: “We will fuck you up baldy!” The hours pass. I count the seconds in my head in order not to lose the feeling of time. One, two, three until sixty and again from the beginning. As soon as I get to ten minutes I get confused but at least this way I can roughly calculate who long is an hour. When I think it’s been an hour, I stop and start again. One, two, three… I am anxious. Not about what they will do to me but what they are cooking again.
I know, I am the main course this time but I do not know in which recipe. Someone comes from behind me. He says to me: “whatever you are going to say, say it now, because in two hours we will change our tune. In two hours we will identify your DNA and we will fuck you up”. What DNA and why such certainty I wonder. I do not answer. “What happened on the island? The job went bad? We will also be robbing banks soon the way things are going but killing someone is different!”. First of all, I thought, I killed no one and I didn’t rob any bank, despite the fact that I fantasise the latter whenever I see one of them. Also, rob some poor lottery seller like you usually do and leave the banks aside. Do not bite the hand that feeds you. .. The hours go by… I still am standing looking at the wall which can barely be seen through the hood. “The DNA came out!”, I hear someone cheering. This explosion of joy is accompanied by punches, slaps, kicks. I fall to the ground. The jump up and down on my back. I think of the words of Chronis Missios: “Whatever they might do to me they will have to put me back together”. I think that the times have changed. Whatever they do to me, they have to deliver me to the cameras as the victimizer not the victim. They stop after a couple of minutes. They stand me up and tell me: “You will be here for three days! We will rip your soul out!” They tell me: “We have been following you since 2009, what were you doing with Karagiannidis in Agrinio? You thought we couldn’t see you?”. I think: I have never been in Agrinio and I only know Karagiannidis from your photos.
Their delirium continues. Amidst swearing and threats I hear the word “Sect” and the name “Nektarios Savvas”. Also the phrase “We are on opposite sides”. Ok, I thought, but what where do I come in to this story? They tell me “the other two blame it all on you, say something to lighten your position!”. I wonder who these “other two” could be? In the epicentre of the interrogation are now my narrations. They try to make whatever conclusion. The interrogation continues for a few hours and the interrogating couples change all the time. They ask me whatever comes to their minds. If I have ever felt fear in my life and such things. At some point they leave me. They leave in the office with my hands cuffed to a chair behind my back. I do not know for how long. Surely a lot. Surely endless. I look at the wall.
My hands are dead numb from the cuffs. The skin around my wrist is bleeding, it has swollen up so much it covers the cuffs.
August 19th, 2012
It is now, according to my calculations, about 10 am. The first 24 hours has gone. They un-cuff me and look at my wrists. They discuss on whether I need a doctor. They decide I do not. They put the white bullet proof vest. The white vest of shame. The presumption of innocence existed in the time when societies were influenced by the Enlightenment. The same goes for the respect to the personality of the accused. In the modern post-industrial obscurantism, the accused is not punished, as happened in the middle ages, with the public shaming but something more. The accused is shamed as proof of guilt. The accused is the “scum”, with the ancient greek meaning of the word.(katharma: the petty, immoral one). They move me around like a trophy between dozens of cameras. I think: these people are trying to dispute Umberto Eco. There are news in August. All it takes after all is for you to control the media and establish modern dictatorships. Tanks might be passé but Special Forces’ jeep Cherokees are now a must. Return to GADA. They through me into a literal cage one by three with out of course a window, with no contact with my outside environment and with the light constantly on. There I will be kept for the next five days. A steel door seals it.
They let me rest for a few hours and lead me again cuffed to the interrogating office. They state to me: “it is not personal if we wanted to we would have crushed you. We are simply on different sides”. They ask me if I have anything to say. I say no. they say: “Take him out of here and until he goes to prison don’t even give him water”. Back to my cage. They tell me: “The other ‘cells’ (CCF members) had much more water!”. Which “others”? I wonder. They’re going to charge with participation in the CCF as well? Is it a revolutionary organization or a legal passe-partout? Me in the CCF?! My critique towards this organization is equal in tension as the explosives they put and in length reached their texts. But you scum if this is how you want it, this is how it will go. In this struggle we will be together. I seek what connects me with whatever is hostile against the old world and whatever divides me from whatever stops the new one from rising. The next 15 to 24 hours find me in my cage.
Every three minutes they bang the steel door hard and consecutively. The noise which is created is worldly. Every three minutes for endless hours. I am so tired that sometimes I manage to sleep in-between. They have taken my narrations as real incidents. From their comments and reactions I suspect they are not their cup of tea. They are furious with me. I think, how lucky was Kokkinopoulos, how lucky were frank Miller, Mancet, Tarantino and Rodriguez! They were never in the foresight of the anti-terrorist. I think, unfortunately for me, as a writer I am inspired by crime and not the vanity of middle-class relations. At some point they put some music on. “Cell 13” (old Rebetiko song about a prisoner). They laugh. A superior arrives. “Put some Aggelakas or Thanasis fot Tasoulis! This is what he likes!”. He continues: “With Makis (he obviously meant Gerasimos Tsakalos) at Kavourotripes and with Papadimoulis a friend on facebook and you voted for Syriza!”. He leaves. At some point I hear some people talking about Paleokostas with great admiration. They called him ‘Rambo’!. Someone comment that they found a print of his connecting him to the murder of Vasilakis. “And you believe that?”, mocks another.
August 21th, 2012
The special interrogator waits for me in his office. He accepts me with the look of a thousand Pretenderis (greek panel political and crime journalist) and shows me the trial brief which is about half a metre high! It concerns my alleged participation in the R.O. C.C.F. He asks me about existing and non-existing meetings with other accused for participation in the same organization. The funny thing is that they deny their participation in the specific organization. I want to tell him. Are we speaking of terrorism or a virus that can be passed on with a handshake? I do not tell him. I want to tell him: I did not see anyone being accused for participation in the para-juridical network because they ate kebabs with a childhood friend of Bourboulias. I do not tell him. I want to tell him McCarthyism might of remained in history as a tragedy, but in Greece it is being repeated as a farse. I do not tell him. But I feel trapped. I tell him. I feel McCarthyism compared to what is going on now, seems like a children’s song. I tell him. He is relieved.
The imprisonment is “locked in”. Back to my cage. I think: I do not mind prison. Besides my position is next to the damned of this world. The only thing that bothers me are the unfair and false charges. But I do not even feel enraged. Someone only feels enraged when someone takes their place in the supermarket queue, not if a police service decides to trap him in 2009 and finally succeeds in 2012.
I look to the wall on my right, someone else who has been hosted in this cage before me has written with a pen: “The Struggle continues”. I smile. I think, the Revolution is on, the Struggle evolves, the damned of the earth must finally play ball.
P.S. : In my house in Lamia were found “compelling evidence” which excuses, in the opinion of the journalist and police authorities, my prosecution. According to the journalists, they found a digital pattern to imitate police identity cards, some videos with a dumb Texan pretending to be a commando and a bullet proof vest. Also were found dozens of books and movies. Dirty and clean clothes. Sheets, blankets, toilet cleaning products, notes for my narrations as well as finished narrations. Together with the rest of the findings e.g. my couch, the rest of the furniture, the tv, the fire place and the food will, I wonder, the anti-terrorist characterizing this as a safe house?
A.K. Theofilou, Domokos prison — B2 wing, Fthiotida — Greece