France: Wave of Attacks Against the Prison System

No less than nine attacks took place throughout France against prisons on the nights of Sunday 13 to Tuesday 15 April. This is unheard of since the great mutinies that took place in French prisons in the 1970s.

On the night of Sunday to Monday, seven vehicles were set on fire in the parking lot of the National School of Penitentiary Administration in Agen. This establishment trains future guards. The FO penitentiary union speaks of an “act of extreme gravity in the ENAP car park. One or more individuals arrived in a car, shouted before setting fire to seven vehicles, causing a fire.”

The following night, it was in Réau, in Seine-et-Marne, that the vehicle of a supervisor was set on fire and that three other cars were covered in flammable liquid. Then, seven other establishments were targeted. In front of the Nîmes prison, a car was burned. In front of the Toulon prison, heavy weapons fire targeted the door of the establishment, and fifteen impacts were noted. In Villepinte, in Seine-Saint-Denis, cars were also set on fire in front of the prison, as well as in front of Nanterre, in the Hauts-de-Seine.

In Aix-en-Provence, two vehicles caught fire and the gate of the Regional Intervention and Security Teams (ERIS), a particularly violent police unit specialising in prison interventions – was targeted. In Marseille, guards’ cars were tagged and another set on fire near the premises of the judicial protection of young people. The initials DDPF appeared on the bodywork, for “Rights of French prisoners”, a mysterious acronym. Finally, in Valence, two cars of guards also burned up in front of the prison.

These actions targeting prisons are coordinated, numerous and visibly organized. “Is this a provocation by drug bandits in the face of Gérald Darmanin’s prison policy? The act of members of the ultra-left? Nothing has been claimed at this stage,” wonders the newspaper Le Parisien. The investigators say they have “identified a Telegram channel” entitled “Rights of French prisoners” which is “suspected of being linked to ultra-left groups”. Info or fake news?

In any case, the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office has taken hold of an investigation for “terrorist criminal association with a view to the preparation of one or more crimes of attack on the person and degradation or deterioration of the property of others in an organized gang and attempted murder in connection with a terrorist enterprise”. Highly invasive means of surveillance and investigation are therefore deployed.

The situation in French prisons is terrible. In February 2025, the number of prisoners broke a record, reaching the figure of 81,599. The threshold of 80,000 prisoners was crossed for the first time in November 2024, and it is only increasing. 21,631 people locked up are only defendants, i.e. people awaiting trial and considered innocent in the eyes of the courts.

There are currently 62,363 “operational places” in prisons. The calculation is quickly made: 130.8% occupancy rate. This rate even climbs to 200% in some establishments, where nearly 4,500 people find themselves sleeping on the floor. This prison overcrowding places France in third place among the worst pupils in Europe, just after Cyprus and Romania.

Every year, several dozen prisoners commit suicide behind bars – 149 in 2023. The suicide rate is 6 times higher among people locked up than outside. At the end of January 2025, the Minister of Justice Gérald Darmanin announced the creation of a “super prison” for “super delinquents”, where the “100 biggest drug traffickers” would be kept. More and more means to monitor and punish rather than find solutions to the root of the problems.

Could the fires of the last few days be a backlash?

More figures on the prison here.

Source: https://contre-attaque.net/2025/04/15/attaques-en-serie-contre-le-monde-carceral/

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=18421

Athens, Greece: Incendiary Attack on House and Police Guard of Supreme Court President

“Injustice is not anonymous, it has a name and an address”

Bertolt Brecht

In the early morning hours of June 27th [2024] we attacked the house and the police guard of the President of the Supreme Court, Ioanna Klapa, in the Papagos area. That summer evening found the cop who happened to be on duty instead of carelessly gazing at Instagram photos or playing slots (in earlier watches this seemed to be how those on duty spent their time) screaming from the Molotov cocktails that burned him and then being rushed to the emergency room by his colleagues, badly injured. And Klapa, instead of sleeping, fearfully putting out the fire in the entrance and garden of her house.

But why did we choose to attack Klapa while her house was being guarded?

First of all, it was an operational choice with three political considerations. It was not a matter of mere desire or convenience but of collective recognition of the need to attack, yes, using the element of surprise, but on a guarded target. In a field where, in theory, immediate engagement reflexes have been designed and provided for by the police guard to protect the high profile person. In this area there is not room for much analysis. Their preparedness and the proud spirit of the Greek police corps went out the window. Although their operational planning was disgraced, we, to tell the truth, acknowledge that we did not achieve anything particularly great. Life the next day went on as usual, a world of squalor and rot remained the same and the violence of apathy, misery and deadlock still lingers. We had no illusions that we would achieve the most decisive blow to the mechanisms of bourgeois justice and the police. To be a substantially dangerous pole in the social war, however, you have to sharpen the violent responses quantitatively and qualitatively. This is a finding that is eloquently described even by renowned academics and in particular by the jurist Manoledakis: “The overthrow of a political power, and especially today when the state has a perfected huge mechanism for eliminating its opponents, cannot be done on paper or with wishful thinking. In order for the ‘political criminal’ to reach his goal, he must willingly or unwillingly violate a multitude of legal value so that his crime always appears complex. The state is a legal value entangled with other legal values (human lives, personal freedoms, facilities, services, etc.). To reach it you have to go through these values”. So we recognized the importance of such an action and achieved a goal that was both realistic and decisive. To wound their confidence and arrogance, to wound the security they feel in the quiet of their homes and their service cars. We have succeeded, and literally. The burn scars of the security guard will be there to remind him and his colleagues when they notice them that they are in fact vulnerable no matter how much they may think otherwise.

Here lies the second aspect of the rationale behind our attack and the conditions under which it was carried out. The central outcome of our operational planning was to completely destroy the service vehicle and injure the cop, which is what happened. If to some ears this sounds too violent and alienating to their humanistic, pea-brained little minds, then we are speaking and addressing those who read this text and either consciously and with clear political and ideological commitment advocate revolutionary violence by all means or those who instinctively rejoiced and chuckled when they heard the news of a cop being injured that day. To all of them we say that this act was another contribution to the feud we have with the bollocks of the Hellenic Police. We owe this feud and its continuation to our dead. It is a deep and conscious choice with the first and foremost weapon being the determination that defines the need to avenge our dead.

“People do not judge like courts; they do not pass sentence, they throw thunderbolts; they do not condemn kings, they throw them into the void.”

Maximilian Robespierre

It is these dead people who directed us that night to examine Klapa and – instead of the position of the all-powerful judge as she is accustomed to have – to put her in the position of the guilty party. Klapa deliberately repeatedly and by being in an appointed office has been covering up for two years from her position as President of the Supreme Court the government’s responsibility for the murder of 57 people in Tempi. We found Klapa guilty of covering up and tampering with the traces left by the New Democracy killers. We found this scum guilty for not being ashamed to even take on the relatives of the victims. So we looked at her record as President of the Supreme Court and judged that the response of fire and the terror of an attack where her family comfort is housed is the very minimum she truly deserves. We do not expect every Klapa and every Adilini along with Bakaimi to deliver any justice. Just mentioning it makes us laugh. But we want to say one or two things to them. We know very well that among the worst things you can say to a judge and accuse him of is that he is controlled by political power. It gives them an allergy. They have nothing more sacred than maintaining the veneer of the shop window of the civil justice system as “independent”. Since it is not so unlikely that this text will fall into Klapa’s hands – after all, it concerns her – we say to her something that even the most ignorant (unless of course she belongs to the party apparatus and the core of the New Democracy) now believes: you right-wing tsarina, at least try to keep up appearances when you protect the boss who appointed you and don’t lick the Prime Minister’s ass so much. And one more thing, to the relatives of the victims – of the crime committed by those you so zealously protect – you’re going to make a toubeki*. Save the suggestions because as you saw your guarding wasn’t effective enough and as you remember we know where your house falls.

The duty to defend the memory of our dead cannot stop at a violent gesture, at a single attack. We must create at every opportunity the conditions that will allow a direct and dynamic response to the demagogues of our thoughts and dreams and the usurpers of our lives. The same applies, of course, to those who protect them. The conditions that we must take advantage of also arise from mass violent outbursts such as that of 28 February. Diffuse groups and individuals clashed that day, putting the mentality of acts of revenge for the murder of 57 people in Tempe at the forefront. Any similar opportunity must not be allowed to go to waste. Not with the logic of a fetishistic violent vision and a simple clean-up. Too many years of absence of mass aggressive clashes and the few exceptions in between have damaged the reflexes of the militant minorities and have left behind a conspiratorial logic in many parts of the people who take to the streets. From the righteousness of the December rioters and the mass militant stubbornness of 2010-2012, we have moved on to insatiable securitarianism and the baptism of provocative cops with an obsession that is truly impressive. Most people are more or less aware of the responsibilities of the left, let alone the KKE [Greek Communist Party], for this provocative propaganda. On top of that, the huge crowds on 28 February ensure the presence of many ignorant people about what violent mass clashes at central gatherings signify and their necessity. It can only cause laughter that all of them, at the sight of incidents in other countries around the world, pull out of the quiver of the know-it-all, the shouting at the apathetic new Greek who no longer resists. Only the constant and repeated confrontational presence will answer all these sputtering people. Let us have no illusions that all this number of people will read the analyses of the space on provocateurism. Let’s answer them in the street with our unyielding and determined intention to attack cops, capitalist targets and state property. If they don’t understand words, let’s give it to them in words. In the general strike on 9 April the conflict minorities must, if necessary, respond forcefully to possible challenges and any threat to their security by sputtering vigilantes of social peace.

KYRIAKOS XYMITIRIS ALWAYS PRESENT

“What does it matter if death finds us? What matters is that our cry will be heard and another hand will be by our side to take our weapon and other rebels will rise up to catch the song, to hear the new cry of war and revolution.”

We dedicate this phrase of Che Guevara and its meanings to the dead urban guerrilla Kyriakos Xymitiris. We don’t need to talk about Kyriakos. His choices have spoken. The militant path he took was marked with signs of dedication, unadulterated faith and commitment to the struggle for the HOPE he so believed in. At noon on the 31st of October, Kyriakos Xymitiris left too early after a device explosion on Arcadia Street. But the signs that led him among the cyclones of a reality that struggles to impose apathy and starkism, those roads that Kyriakos opened with the stubbornness and passion of an armed rebel, those signs will be followed by all of us who will commemorate his passage into “illegality” along with the other outlaws Lambros Fountas, Michalis Prekas, Christoforos Marinos, Christos Tsouchouvis and Christos Kassimis. We will keep those streets bright because Kyriakos’ own life and his sacrifice prove so thunderously and blatantly that people who love the struggle for freedom and life are willing to risk it without a second thought. To give it totally to the revolutionary cause.

MARIANNA FIRM AND STRONG AS FREEDOM

IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF POLITICAL PRISONERS MARIANNA M., DIMITRI P., DIMITRA Z., NIKO R., ARGYRI K.

Provocateur Faction

Source: Blessed is the Flame

DN Note

*Τουμπεκί (Turkish: tömbeki) is the tobacco used in ναργιλέ, nargilé (shisha, hookah). In coffee houses until the interwar period, nargilé was widespread. There are various interpretations of the origin of the expression “κάνε τουμπεκί, kane tombeki”, which metaphorically means “shut up”, “shut it up”. The nargilé was prepared by the “tömbeki”, nargilé maker, of the coffee houses, and because they would catch up on the conversation and take a long time to offer it to the customer, the customer would in turn shout: “Kane tombeki”, meaning stop the conversations and make the tobacco.

Athens, Greece: ‘Provocateur Faction’ takes responsibility for the incendiary attack on the house and police guard of the Supreme Court President Ioanna Klapa

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=18293