Italy - More arrests in Florence and Milan

italycalling

23/06/2011 - Florence: just about a month after the events of May 4th (5 arrests and 22 banning orders among students involved in last autumn’s revolts) another raid on June 13th concluded with another 7 arrests and 9 banning orders. The measures applied to the arrestees are if possible even stricter than for the previous arrests: 6 people are under “home arrest” and can’t communicate with anyone apart from people they live with. An activist from Milan was arrested simply for taking part in the big solidarity demo against the arrests of May 4th. In total, more than 90 people are now under arrest or investigation, and this includes people of all ages, from secondary school to university students.
From the statement by the Network of Florence Collectives: This year and the previous ones it was more than 90 people on the streets of Florence. We were thousands. We appeal to those thousands of people we shared our fights with, to go back to the streets, express their ideas and show their solidarity to the comrades hit by the repression.
A few days later, in the early morning of June 15th, two anarchists were arrested in Milan. They were spotted by the police cycling and were stopped. A home-made molotov cocktail was supposedly found in their bag, and more incriminating materials were found in their houses: wigs, balaclavas, petrol, fireworks. The two men didn’t carry documents with them but were later identified by the political police Digos as anarchists linked to the local animal rights/enviromental movement and to a local social centre in Saronno, the Telos (which stands for Free Occupied Territory of Saronno). In February this year, the police had issued warnings against 12 people involved in the same social centre, for being a “threat to public order and security” by having taken part in a series of “invasions and occupations of public and private buildings, and violent and aggressive protests against the local police forces”.
Mattia and Federico can be written to at:
Mattia Petit / Federico Buono
Piazza Filangieri 2
20123 Milano
Italy
Numerous initiatives are being organised all over Italy in solidarity with all the arrestees, from benefit gigs or meals, to pickets outside the prisons. Quote from the leaflet:
“They aim at our legs, but it’s too late: we have already learned to fly”.