Chile: Bombs Case political trial update, March 5 to 23

from solidaridadporlxspresxs, transl waronsociety:

After continuing to recount and show various evidence from the CSO Sacco and Vanzetti and from the house of the comrade Felipe’s family, now the chapter begins relating to the incendiary attack on the Church of the Sacrament linked to the comrade Mónica Caballero and the raids on the “La Crota” squat where she lived, it is in this way that we have already surpassed the 100 witnesses who have testified in this trial, and the more than 40 experts. But there still remains the chapter on “financing of terrorism” and finally some police chiefs who have not yet presented themselves.

Raids on Sacco and Vanzetti (December 11, August 14)

Various police officers from BIPE continue showing the things found in the house, books, posters, computers and more of the same, showing photographs of different parts and rooms. It is necessary to understand that in this case during both raids there were various people living there but only one of them is on trial… What sense is there in showing things from other people’s rooms? Things from communal spaces? Since the only sense that it has is to play this squatted social center as the “center of evil.”

In one set of photos of that raid it is clear how the police moved evidence and arranged it so that this horror story would seem “creepier,” this by having an “overview” photograph,” in each photo of the sequence one can see pieces of furniture full, then empty, and finally another photo with some things that were not there arranged in a totally cinematographic way.

As for the evidence collected in the raid of the family’s house, the prosecutor is crude when showing what was found. From a complete library that was seized, the prosecutors hide the books that are less “suitable” for the accusation and show in a histrionic way the most “radical” books, even hiding under the courtroom desk the other books in order to hamper and hinder the defense.

Surveillance, intelligence

Some BIPE investigation officials come, those supposedly charged with carrying out the investigation and surveillance that goes back at least to 2007. It is thus that they begin to show the photos from the surveillance, where the only thing that they observe is people entering and exiting from the Sacco and Vanzetti. To then show the photographs of a hooded person getting to a march, indicating that this would be one of the accused according to what he heard another police officer say (an officer whose name he does not know and does not testify).

Finally, they often ask the detectives who make arrests and investigations: Do you recognize the accused here in this room? It is a ridiculous question, all the “witnesses/police” finish by saying that they recognize the accused, obviously if they’ve done surveillance and reporting for more than 5 years! Even so, the awkwardness is on their side, various photographs show other people and are grossly confused with the accused. The surveillance only show them walking along streets or close to some squats.

One of the police testifies about the famous “model of the BIPE,” which according to their fantasies was intended to plan an incendiary attack of enormous proportions. The painted cardboard box was nothing but another of the many “piñatas” used in an event for the eighth anniversary of the CSO Sacco and Vanzetti; the defense, in their turn, brought out the rest of the piñatas of identical construction that portrayed for example the Sacco and Vanzetti itself made as a “model.” It is perhaps a less Hollywoodesque, less spectacular and less terrorist explanation than what the persecutors would want.

Given the police’s stubbornness to forget some facts, they turn to exhibit “special report” to remind them about the piñata’s strings and to clarify whether there had been authorization to record the procedure, the detective denied any authorization and the existence of any police or journalist recording. It is clear that at the time they were more interested in the media condemnation than judicial sentencing, going so far as to pass over their own laws in the effort to satisfy their own anti-terrorist hypochondria.

Video:

Secret Witness: The Neighbor

The delirious testimony and actions of a neighbor of the Sacco and Vanzetti are exposed in the trial. This delirious “pseudo-artist” subject took the house that he found abandoned next to the Sacco and Vanzetti and once there sought to appropriate the space to himself. Even after his sale of drugs, the beatings he gave to his partner and his innumerable prior cases, he collaborated and remained close with the police.

The prosecution uses the schizoid testimony of R.J.V.M. (the name he was given as secret witness) where he indicates that on May 22nd (while there had been riots outside of the Sacco and Vanzetti) a bomb had been placed at the door. He had cleverly deactivated it and kept it in his house for 3 or 4 days to then hand it over to the police. The supposed and nonexistent bomb begins to transform itself. From a bomb, it becomes a number of detonators and fuses, then arrives at being a pair of fire extinguishers and some drums, until finally pointing out that the fire extinguishers were really his. Of this supposed “explosive material” there is simply no record. Incredibly, no one photographed these items, no one did tests, no one took fingerprints, no one knows what they are like, no one knows where they are now, no one knows who picked them up, no one knows what they were like, they are not within the offered pieces of evidence, and the only thing coming out of these is a supposed and doubtful record of seizure by a couple of police officers.

There have only been the testimonies of these two doubtful policemen without any background, ending their testimonies with more questions and doubts.

At this time, no secret witness has been presented, nor is it known if they are going to.

Here is some information from the “yungay barrio”:

Church of the Sacrament.

On Saturday, November 21, 2009 in the morning hours and some time after the caretaker moved the door of the Church of the Sacrament, a small incendiary device was activated by electric initiation, producing a flame that managed to burn the door, to then diminish and finally go out under the caretaker’s fire extinguisher. The attack was claimed by a “Rodrigo Orias cell” (communique here in Spanish) and the prosecution links it to the comrade Mónica Caballero, requesting a sentence of 10 years in prison for her under the anti-terrorist law.

But… Who the hell is Rodrigo Orias?

Rodrigo Orias is a satanist youth who traveled to Santiago from Coyhaique for the July 24, 2004 assassination by knife of the priest Faustion Gazziero in one of Santiago’s main cathedrals. This strange case ended with Rodrigo interned in a psychiatric institution for having paranoid schizophrenia, but the bizarre story does not end here; presently the former-satanist and metalhead is an athlete with success in body-building. It goes without saying that Rodrigo did not have any link nor motivation of anarchist or “political” character.

Raid of the squatted house “La Crota” (December 11, 2009)

On the verge of the last presidential election, Power decided to carry out a massive raid on different squatted houses seeking to “prevent” some attack on the voting process. In that context, the “La Crota” squat, where the “Itinerant Anarchist Documentation Center” functioned, is raided. They show photographs of all the rooms, and hold up different pieces of evidence to try to link the comrade Monica Caballero such as posters and patches “against the church” with the aim of linking these with the incendiary attack on the Church of the Sacrament.

Lawyer arrested in march

One of the lawyers in the trial was arrested during the last day of clashes in the context of the repression of the student demonstration, after being arrested he was transferred in dreadful conditions to end up being accused of an absurd police mistreatment (more here in Spanish). This is only one of the many cases with which the forces of repression are acting to suffocate the innumerable struggles that are leaving the established boundaries. The daily news is forced to speak of the undeniable repression: buckshot, rubber bullets, tortures and arrests.

DOWN WITH THE ANTI-TERRORIST LAW!

END TO THE POLITICAL TRIAL!

ABSOLUTION OF THE 5  COMRADES!

Previous summaries:
* Last days of November #1
* December 5 to 16 #2 (and situation of the accused),
* December 18 to 30 #3,
* January 2 to 13 #4,
* January 16 to 27 #5
* January 39 to February 17 #6
* February 20 to March 2 #7