At dawn on April 21, acting on orders from Deputy Prosecutor Maurizio De Marco, the political police in Italy searched the homes of six comrades: five in Naples and one in Florence.
Among them were three members of the National Executive Committee of the CARC Party (Paolo Babini, Igor Papaleo, Marco Coppola), activists from the Campania Federation’s local chapters, and a young sympathizer who is a minor.
The search warrant lists the alleged offenses:
– promoting, establishing, organizing, directing, or financing an association that aims to commit acts of violence for the purposes of terrorism and subversion, drawing on the methods of the Red Brigades and the New Red Brigades (with the aggravating circumstance of having induced a minor to commit the crime);
– condoning acts of terrorism with explicit references to the operations of the Red Brigades and the New Red Brigades.
At the end of the searches, according to the fragmentary reports we have managed to gather, some comrades were taken to the police headquarters for the customary attempt at interrogation without a lawyer and the other typical forms of intimidation that the political police reserve for the youngest militants to scare them.
Comrades from Naples are gathering there, outside the police headquarters on Via Medina and so are other comrades in Florence.
With this initial statement, in addition to spreading the news of the raids, we denounce the attempt to strike at the CARC Party with an obvious and provocative judicial setup that combines the old tools of the bloodthirsty and anti-communist prosecutors (“terrorism”) with modern repressive perversions such as “speech crimes” and terrorist propaganda via social media.
We call on the organizations and parties of the Italian communist movement, workers’ and popular organizations, movements, and social networks to take a public stand against this dirty maneuver: with the “terrorism” charges against the CARC Party, the judicial authorities are expanding their attack against the entire front of the popular masses and the struggle against the Meloni government. The more their attempt falls flat, the more the struggle against the Meloni government, the system of the Grand Coalitions, and their judicial authorities develops and strengthens.
