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Raid in amsterdam legelized squat beacause of ETA.

Scaven | 17.01.2002 21:36

The legalized squat Vrankrijk was raided last night after a housegeust was arrested earlier that day. The man was arrested on demand of the Spanish state because of his allegedly ties to the ETA.

At 3.30 hours in the morning of Thursday the 17th of January, the police of Amsterdam raided the residential part off the legalized squat Vrankrijk, (Spuistraat 216/218). With use of apprehension units, Special Criminal investigators and riot police (about 200 in total), the police searched all 14 apartments. They did not find anything they were looking for, but confiscated a couple of Spanish books, 2 mobile phones and a toy gun collection.

The reason for the raid had to do with the arrest off the Spanish activist from Barcelona, Juan Ramón Rodríguez Fernández, who was on holyday in Amsterdam.
On request by the Spanish state, the arrest was made, because Juan allegedly had connections with the ETA. He is now held in a Dutch prison, awaiting his extradition to Spain. Lawyers are already working on the case. For weeks, the Spanish Guardia Civil and the Dutch police have been working together on this case.

Juan is the lead vocalist of the band KOP, a political orientated band from Catalonia. Juan is suspected to have ties with the last year rounded up ETA-cell from Barcelona and being an active member of the cities squat movement ‘Okupada’.
Juan supposedly gave the ETA information about extreme-rightwing organisations such as Cedade (Neo-Nazi’s).

During the raid, more and more sympathizers came to the place, but could not do much. One girl was injured through a hit on her head by a police baton. She was beaten when she walked out of the door from the squat across the street from the Vrankrijk, without doing anything towards the police. She had to go to the hospital to get some stitches.
From within the bar (separated from the house at the ground floor of the building) bottles were thrown at the police. The police did not do anything about that and left them alone. At the end, the Riot police left, while the criminal investigators left at the backside of the building because they were afraid of being hurt by the flying bottles. They did not have a warrant to pass through the backside of the house, which has a different address.

There are video-images from the raid, a bit unclear but you will get the idea.
Noise  http://www.indymedia.nl/media/1511.ram
Riot police being bombarded  http://www.indymedia.nl/media/1512.ram
Street blocked by the police  http://www.indymedia.nl/media/1508.ram
Riot police and noise  http://www.indymedia.nl/media/1509.ram
Riot police goes away  http://www.indymedia.nl/media/1506.ram


More info will follow

Scaven
- Homepage: http://www.indymedia.nl