Appello per la liberazione dei compagni arrestati il 1 maggio a Parigi - traduzione in inglese

To all unions, associations, collectives, social centres, community council men, Mps, individuals.

May 1st in Paris was a day of celebration.

The entire movement in Europe launched the day to celebrate the victory against the CPE and to relaunch the struggle against precariousness.

The French government of Villepin thought well however to spoil the festivities. With a fascist-style police operation at the end of the match a group of Italians were stopped, scarched and handcuffed and brought into the prefecture under arrest.

In the course of their detainment, two protesters, one from Modena and the other from Bologna were separated from the group, forced to put on hoodies and other items of clothing they had with them and strike poses while being mocked, in order to establish an arbitrary identification based on an alleged film recording in possession of the police.

Since the 1st of May they have been detained in Parisian prisons, accused of assaulting a public official and destruction of private property.

These serious charges smack of a political frame-up.

Two police officers claim to have seen a video in which these two are seen, committing the crimes they're accused of. There do not appear to be eyewitnesses, and the video itself hasn’t been deposited in the dossier and during the detainment there hasn’t been any identification by the two police officers which accuse them. There is also the aggravant of resisting arrest, an arrest that occurred with the maximum of tranquillity.

After having been brought and detained for two days in the tenth arrondissement, without being allowed to either choose legal counsel or receive information from the outside, they underwent a first hearing on the fourth of May 2006.

In the course of this hearing an infervorated court and a DA determined to not conceed them any facilitation, that would be necessary considering their not knowing french and their distance from friends and family, issued a verdict establishing May 29th as the date for the trial, refusing the request for release on bail, despite all the guarantees that they were not flight risks (their work contracts, availability of a place to stay in Paris while waiting for the trail, their domiciles and residences in Italy) given.

Disturbing signals show the will to proceed with a stigmatization of these two protesters, starting from a post-it attached to the dossier presented to the judge by the prosecution marked “dangerous individuals”; continuing with the video used to recognize them that has not been presented in the dossier and never showed to their defense; the use of two black and white pictures, both decidedly blurry; the requested use of phrases to the effects of “and the winner is” pronounced in the moment of their arrest by some agents of the gendarmerie; the complete militarization of the palace de justice in the moment of the judgement being pronounced, with twenty officers present in the courtroom and the public surrounded by police and escorted until their exit from the building.

To us this all smacks of a vindictive action in response to the victories which social struggles have obtained in recent months in France.

We find ourselves therefore appealing to all those who in Europe fight for the obtainment of new rights agains the precarization of daily existence, to sustain the necessity of the immediate liberation of Federico and Nicola, by adhering to this appeal and creating networks of support for the imprisoned, and renewing the request for the immediate release of the arrested during the mobilizations that in these last months have crossed France and Europe as a whole.

For their immediate liberation

Freedom now for Federico and Nicola and for the end of the judicial persecution

Students and precarious of the faculties and schools in revolt

For agreement to the appeal send an e-mail to anomalia51@hotmail.com