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Letter from Ruben from jail. The anarchist arrested in Barcelona 9th Feb

solidarity! | 04.03.2006 17:25 | Repression | World

¡Salud compañeros!

I’m writing from the prison of Can Brians, in the module number one, and i will make a brief summary since that shitty february 9th (the date of our kidnapping) up today (february 15th).

Everything starts at 8:30 AM when a friend calls us awakening me and my friend telling me that it seems like Ignasi’s house is being evicted in la Clota. We are a bit slow in reacting, but we decide to go to solidarize with him. We take a breakfast and we go down to the street to go there, when all of a sudden, as appearing from nowhere, a undetermined number of masked catalan secret police jumps on us, telling me i’m arrested for terrorism. The impact on me is pretty brusque, we’re searched against a wall and in this moment i lose my friend from sight, i’m taken into a car and they tell me the charges are setting up fire in a Banco Sabadell and in C.I.R.E. (a public-private enterprise that controls prisoners labour in catalonian prisons), and that they’re going to go upstairs to search my house. I tell them i want my lawyer to be there. They ask me his name and when i tell them, they start to laugh and tell me that only happens in movies, but i insist in my “rights” to be respected. They bring me up to my house handcuffed, with the hood down and making me look to the floor. In the street door i can finally raise my eyes up and then i realice the massive operation they set up, i believe about 14 secret police to be there, since there were 3 cars full of them and other 3 anti-riot vans in Drassanes Avenue.

When we enter home i see 6 mossos d’esquadra (name of cataln police) and my friend, something that makes me more quiet, and they start the searching taking away: posters, books, fanzines, clothes, 2 computers and they didn’t take tha cats because they had no room for them... Then i realized i wasn´t applied the counter-terrorist law, because my friend was there and also because she asked. At this time, no one was able to enter or leave the building, it was literally taken by police. When they finished their dirty job they leave my friend in the house, take me into a car y trasnfer me to the police station in Zona Franca. There i’m made a record and take me into a cell, i see the “third comrade” (not Ignasi) and we talk about the thing a bit, and without understanding it too well, since the arrest order was only for Ignasi and me, but he’s soon released.

The stay in the police station is pertty disgusting, but in short time, around 12 i guess, they take me up to talk with the officer in charge and with another undesirable person, who with a sarcastic smile in their torturer faces ask me if i want to declare, which i obviously deny to, so i stay sit down with them, smoking a cigarette and having to listen to questions such as “who made that thing of the Italian culture institute” (a coffe-pot bomb was placed there this summer) “and who made everything else that’s been happening lately?” I simply do not reply and we spend some minutes staring at each other, hating each other, at least me hating them, until i end smoking. Then handcuffs again and back to the cell.
Next day we’re transferred to the police station of Les Corts, where we spend two days, eating just two sandwiches a day, and from them to the court. Ignasi is taken to a cell with another guy, i’m isolated in another one with an iron door with only a window of 40x40 cm and a second door with bars. There we spend some hours, i don’t remember how many, and the judge’s secretary comes down and tells me my lawyer is unavailable and asks if we want to declare with a state’s lawyer; we refuse until our lawyer appears. They said that the lawyer was making an “habeas corpus” appeal since he was told we would declare on sunday, something that was illegal. I guess this all was a lie to make us declare with a state’s lawyer. Finally he arrives and we go up to declare: a complete farce, where only with some clues but without evidences, the public prosecutor, without even taking a look at us and making no questions, asks for preventive prison without bail until trial. The lawyer asks for parole with bail, since there’s no risk of escape neither investigation blocking, since that investigation was ended. Obviously the judge of court number 3 does what the public prosecutor asks for, preventive prison. We then go straight to prison Modelo. In the moment of putting us in the van there’s some mistreats, pushing us with our arms raised, handcuffed, walking backwards and our mouths shut since they saw our comrades in the outside waiting for us outside. The van then drives us as if it was a rally and hitting us a bit since they couldn’t hold us. When arriving to prison we’re given a treatment of political prisoners: in two hours they transfer us two time, we can’t talk to other prisoners. We also feel that when we’re sent to see the doctor, the assistant, the educator and the teacher...we do all of that alone, when regular prisoners do that in groups.
Next day, when the case is handed to court number 13, he not only maintains the other judge’s decision but he also scatters us to different prisons, me to Can Brians. There a prison guard in a disgustingly ironic tone says to me : “such paradoxes life has, yersterday you put bombs in CIRE and next day you’re behind bars” I tell him he should respect innocency pressumption and i’m yet to be judged, and he says “you’re one of those that talks about guards brutality, now you’re going to feel that”

Up today, physical punishments have been non-existant, but mental one is pretty hard, since we’re constantly despised as if we are not persons, and i can’t rest good enough. At nights i always suffer nightmares, about arrest, and i remember you comrades, family. But it makes me strong to know you keep fighting as we will do here in state’s dungeons, resisting and looking ahead, to that freedom we will achieve being strong and constant. Avoiding any barrier state puts in front of us, self-organising and fighting. Neither political police, nor courts, nor prisons will end up anarchy. If they haven’t yet, they will never will.

I only ask you to continue fighting, to support us because we need that so we don’t fall. See you soon, we know we will be out in short, they can’t kidnap us for long time. Us going out depends on them applying their fucking legislation, but even more by the fights outside: protest, scream and resist.

From module 1 of Can Brians prison.

Salut and anarchy!

solidarity!