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On August 21, 1971, there was a prisoner uprising in a housing unit at San Quentin, led by George Jackson. According to the state of California, lawyer-activist Stephen Bingham had smuggled a pistol concealed in a tape recorder to Jackson, who was housed in San Quentin’s Adjustment Center time awaiting trial for the murder of a prison guard. On August 21, 1971, Jackson used the pistol, an Astra 9-mm semi-automatic, to take over his tier in the Adjustment Center.
On April 10, 2010, the Anti-terrorist Department of the Greek Police arrested six people in Athens: Nikos Maziotis, Panagiota “Pola” Roupa, Kostas Gournas, Vaggelis Stathopoulos, Sarandos Nikitopoulos, and Christoforos Kortesis. All were known for their long presence in the anarchist/anti-authoritarian movement. Two weeks later, Nikos Maziotis, Pola Roupa, and Kostas Gournas admitted to participating in the organization known as Revolutionary Struggle (Epanastatikos Agonas).
The Malaga court of appeal sentenced the anarchists Giovani Barcia, Michele Pontolillo and Claudio Lavaza, already sentenced to 11 years on September 1999, for an incident in the Italian vice-consulate in December 1996. Three persons wearing balaclavas imprisoned the consul and an employee, sending a message of solidarity to the Italian prisoners jailed by the Judge Marini (the judge who built a false accusation against Italian anarchists) and disappeared with passports and some money.
The “Halandri Case,” as it’s been dubbed by the mass media, represents a decisive point in the trajectory of the new urban guerrilla war.
To illustrate its importance, it’s worth referring back to the state and conditions in which the anarchist current and urban guerrilla warfare found themselves at the time.
The Cuban Five are five Cuban men serving four life sentences and 75 years collectively, after being wrongly convicted in U.S. federal court in Miami, on June 8, 2001.
They are Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René González.
The Five were falsely accused by the U.S. government of committing espionage conspiracy against the United States, and other related charges. Instead, they were involved in monitoring the actions of Miami-based terrorist groups, in order to prevent terrorist attacks on their country of Cuba.
In 2004, several separate FBI investigations into the animal rights and environmental movements were combined into Major Case #220, also called Operation Backfire. On December 7, 2005, the FBI’s “Operation Backfire” revealed its public face. That day, seven people living in four different states— Chelsea Gerlach, Darren Thurston, William Rodgers, Kendall Tankersley (Sarah Kendall Harvey), Kevin Tubbs, Daniel McGowan, and Stanislas Meyerhoff—were arrested in connection with a variety of sabotage actions.
The Nebraska 2 were charged and convicted of the murder of Omaha Police Officer Larry Minard and given life sentences. Minard died when a suitcase containing dynamite exploded in a North Omaha home on August 17, 1970. Officer John Tess was also injured in the explosion. Both have insisted they never manufactured a bomb, and never instructed a 16-year-old to make a 911 call to lure police to a trap. So much evidence has come to light since their convictions to corroborates their story that Amnesty International and the Lincoln NAACP have called for their release, or for a new trial.
The Cleveland 4 were Occupy Cleveland activists, that were arrested on April 30th, 2012. They were accused of plotting a series of bombings, including that of an area bridge. However, the real story is that the FBI, working with an informant, created the scheme, produced the explosives, and coerced them into participating.
On May 16, 2012, Chicago cops raided an apartment in the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago in an all-too-common attempt to scare people away from the imminent protests against the NATO summit. With guns drawn, the cops arrested 11 people in or around the apartment and quickly disappeared them into the bowels of the extensive network of detention facilities in Cook County, Illinois.
Over many years Philadelphia's power structure earned itself a reputation for brutal treatment of radical and revolutionary Black movements. In 1966 the Philadelphia police, under their notorious chief Frank Rizzo, raided four meeting places of the civil rights organization SNCC, planting dynamite in one of the locations to justify further repression. In 1970 Rizzo's men raided three offices of the Black Panther Party. Many people still remember with anger how Philly police beat the arrested Panthers, then forced them to strip off their clothes and line up naked in public.
