[NOTE: everyone’s a bit busy these days, so from the letter are outlined the practical consequences of the proposed extradition]. . .

 

Translating the consequences at a practical level

. . . We are now awaiting the Council of Appeals which will decide if the students will be extradited to Italy. That is to say, if they will remain in pretrial detention for twelve (or more) months in a foreign country, away from their families, away from their studies, a violent disruption of their plans for the future, all because they participated in a political protest. And they will be tried without access to means of defense, first because of restrictions necessitated by the foreign language (no matter how good the interpreters), and secondly because of the prohibitive cost to appoint lawyers or experts abroad. We refer to experts (or other specialists) because, since there is no question of apprehension “in the act” (recall that they were detained the next day and not in the area of the No Expo demonstration), apparently “the evidence” invoked by the Italian authorities (which might be non-existent) will be something that could easily be checked, challenged and refuted if someone gave this case in the country where they live, where they might easily examine evidence according to the law, and where they might have the appropriate financial means to do so. Let us clarify here that the accusations that are attributed to the five are in Greek law misdemeanours, but according to Italian laws are felonies punishable by sentences of up to 15 years.

Our interpretation

In essence it is a staged plot: a prejudged trial in Italy made to destroy them, because either they will be condemned to heavy sentences as they will be unable to successfully defend themselves, or even if they somehow defeat these stale accusations, they themselves will have collapsed, isolated by long detention and the entire judicial voyage abroad. And besides their own annihilation -and of course that of their families as well- the politicians of the neighboring country will appear as the guarantors of orderliness and the managers of a spurious fear- the fear they themselves have created. It is no coincidence that while domestic Greek media keep silence as far as possible (most reports occurred after mobilizations of the solidarity movement), conversely the Italian media has served up a sewer of filth and has already judged and condemned our children. (It is perhaps needless to say that we condemn the violation of personal data with photos and names in newspapers or remind others of a forgotten presumption of innocence).

They have already built an “internal enemy”, expanding the “boundary lines” and preparing the scene for the case to be presented as a great success for the Italian prosecutors and accordingly also for the cooperative government passing austerity measures in the neighboring country in the midst of crisis.

It is clear that this is political persecution and criminalization of participation in demonstrations at the international level. . .

http://thebarbariantimes.espivblogs.net/letter-from-the-relatives-of-the-five-students-excerpt/