Each day of this forced incarceration we review the 50 binders of “proof” from the investigation of the “Caso Bombas,” we find more reasons and spirit to continue with firm conviction our hunger strike we started on the 21st of Feb. to achieve the freedom we long for.
The binders are filled with 5 years of monitoring, tracking, and checkpoints of our movements laid out in print. Espionage by hundreds functionaries formed into various teams of the elite members of the Investigative Police (PDI) and the Carabineros, and coordinated by the National Agency of Intelligence (ANI), accumulated 60,000 recorded telephone conversations (1), in which our privacy was never important. Everything was ordered by a team of Prosecutors with an exclusive dedication, who asked for advice from Italian experts in anti-system groups and solicited advice from the very similar FBI in order to break up dissidents.
And what are the irrefutable proofs that this entire gigantic repressive apparatus wields to implicate us? In order to show but not dwell on this, we will give some examples:
1. A telephone conversation between Rodolfo Retamales and the mother of his child, during which he asked her if she had been giving the cat food and if his son was still lying down. According to the prosecution, this constitutes proof of “communicating in code”
2. A diagram found on Camilio Pérez Tamayo’s computer containing specific and transverse objectives, materials to utilize, etc. These educational plans are required for organization by all
schools.
3. A photograph of Felipe Guerra in which the youth is depicted writing his names and drawing an ACME type bomb on the beach.
4. The completion of only the minimum requirements and years in education. According to the prosecution, this constituted a “criminal plan” of the organization, yet they never mention that the accused studied General Education at the university.
5. 44 images referencing the locations of bombings occurring in the last years. According to the prosecution, this “proof” demonstrates the sophisticated technology applied in preparation for the bombings. What they have “forgotten” to mention in the hearing is that these archives were not created by any of the accused, but by the designers of the newspaper La Tercera and they were published on the newspaper’s website.
What should be noted is that none of the the “scientific evidence” puts us at the site of any bombing, there are no videotapes, no fingerprints, no DNA, there were not chemicals nor materials to build bombs in our houses that were raided on the 14th of August, none of the evidence is categorical, only presumptions and dreams of a prosecutor desperate for fame and glory who has had us locked up for over 200 days without a drop of concrete evidence.
We are accused of illicit association only for living and visiting squatted houses and radical libraries. What they intend to do is illegalize friendship, and to criminalize affections between individuals who have similar emancipatory ideas, and whom at least half had NEVER met each other before the formalization of the charges.
Although they have not demonstrated out responsibility for the bombings, the government has condemned us for a long time. Minister of the Interior Hinzpeter repeatedly asked for results from the National Prosecutors, who ceded to his pressure and took the old prosecutor off the case and put prosecutor Peña in charge, who in only 58 days “resolved” the intricate case, using the same “evidence” that the prior prosecutor had. Meanwhile, smiling and happy the President of Chile Sebastian Piñera declared: “I am happy to hear that our forces of order and security have been able to capture a band that acted with an illicit association to place bombs and terrorize the population.” (2) In every part of the world these words denote that a fair trial is impossible. But since then, the government has ridiculously assured that these statements are not to pressure the judges and that “there will be a fair trial.” ?!
Obviously this case signifies many things; the first is to make the public that the sophisticated investigation and the many resources wasted on control and vigilance have not been in vain. The second thing is to demonstrate to anyone and everyone who dissent, individuals or collectives, that they will be persecuted without piety by the authorities
Power intends to make the attacks on the institutions and symbols of capitalism into a “small Baghdad”, arguing that they “terrorize society.” Nothing could be further from reality! There has never been a single bombing that targeted people nor indiscriminate attacks against the general population. We have never met anyone who is afraid to go out into the street because they are afraid of being wounded by a bomb.
Because of this we believe that the anti-terrorist law is unfair. This fatal law, which has among its attributes the ability to globally use unidentified witnesses, the tripling of sentences, and requires the unanimous decision amongst judges for an appeal for release, when normally only a majority is required to decide.
We don’t think it is necessary to continue extending this statement. We believe that the the evidence backing the accusations brought against us is clearly weak, because since the inception of the “bombs case,” it has been a house of cards falling to pieces.
We affectionately salute all those who have supported us during these 7 months of imprisonment y and to all of those who have demonstrated their solidarity and spread our hunger strike. Our love and spirit go out to them.
We continue to demand:
1. IMMEDIATE FREEDOM
2. AN END TO THIS JUDICIAL-POLITICAL FARCE.
3. AN END TO THE INVESTIGATION PERIOD AND AN IMMEDIATE TRIAL
4. TO NOT BE PROCESSED UNDER THE ANTI-TERRORIST LAW, AND THE ABOLITION OF THIS DICTATORIAL LAW.
Santiago, March 10, 2011, 17 days since the beginning of the hunger strike.
Notes:
(1): Diario El Mercurio, August 15, 2010
(2): Diario La Tercera, August 16, 2010
