All of the Thessaloniki 4 are free*

Monday, January 31, 2011The four* comrades, including UK anarchist Simon Chapman, have been found not guilty for all (except one minor charge) in Greek court of the charges going back to the EU Summit protests and riots in Thessaloniki in 2003.
All four of the defendants are free. All the initial charges were dropped apart from “distinguished defiance of authority” which was then reduced to “minor defiance of authority”. This is a misdemeanour, carrying a 6-month suspended sentence, but none of them will be imprisoned unless of course someone is charged again during these six months. This was the best the juries could ever do, since they had to be charged of something, in order to “justify” the six months they had spent in prison back in 2003.

*Three are officially free while one of the four, comrade Michalis Traikapis, although aquitted for this charge is imprisoned accused of bank robbery.

At 11:20 a.m. on September 17, 2010, four people in ski masks robbed a bank at gunpoint in the small town of Psachna on the island of Evia north of Athens. A half-hour later, on a motorway road near the island’s capital Chalcis, a 27-year-old man, a 28-year-old man, and a 35-year-old woman were arrested. They were brought to the Chalcida police station, where the men—Alexandros Kossivas and Michalis Traikapis—were charged with the armed bank robbery and the Maria Ekonomou was charged with “aiding and abetting fugitives.” The charges were based largely on the comrades’ connection to the anarchist milieu (Traikapis was one of the Thessaloniki 7, along with two Spanish comrades and others, arrested during the riots surrounding the 2003 EU summit in that city and finally released thanks to a lengthy hunger strike) and http://saloniki2003.blogspot.com/2010/05/call-for-solidarity-with-prisoners-of.htmldubious witness testimony (one of the witnesses, a kiosk attendant, supposedly remembered one of the comrades—just prior to the robbery—asking: “Excuse me, but where is the bank?”). The comrades didn’t have any weapons or “loot” on them at the time of the arrests, while searches of their Athens homes revealed nothing more than “ski masks, four 9 mm bullets, and other objects that are being investigated.” Nevertheless, Kossivas and Traikapis are currently in prison, while the Maria was released on probation. It’s expected that they will soon write something that states their position regarding the charges, their political identity, etc. Letter from the three accused of the robbery in Evia, central Greece 19/10/10 clik on to read the letter.... actforfreedomnow.blogspot.com/search/label/Letter from the three accused of the robbery in Evia