Amadeu Casellas: a life story of struggle

Amadeu Casellas is a prisoner who has spent more than 25 years in jail due to his participation in dozens of bank robberies, helping with that money to the funding of worker’s struggles in the late 1970’s. None of his activities involved blood crimes. Amadeu has always been a committed and active person, participating in many actions, in the streets as well as in prisons.

When he was 14, in 1973, working at a factory, he discovered anarchism. He believed in the armed struggle and in an essential revolution. In 1976 he robbed the Banco Mercantil de Manresa. During the next two and a half years he robbed more than 50 other banks. In 1979 he enters prison and is welcomed with a brutal beating. During all the time he has spent jailed, he has undertaken many hunger strikes and other types of protests, he has sewed his lips and has made countless denounces: about the prices inside prison, against the irregularities and exploitation of the inmates work, against the faking of blood analysis or penitentiary reports… All of this has caused him many “first grades” (isolation) and transfers from prison to prison, with the intention that he gave up. He has reported abuses to prisoners rights and of the entire prison system.

Last year, after holding a 76 day hunger strike, Amadeu gained the compromise of the penal institution to enjoy permits that would allow him to get to the “third grade” (weekend permits, the possibility to work outside prison and just go there to sleep…) and a subsequent freedom. Such compromise was blatantly ignored by the institutions.

Since july 15th, Amadeu is again on hunger strike. More than 85 days already. This particular hunger strike started after the repression he has suffered since he wrote some communiqués where he explained, with actual names, some facts related to the people in charge of the Catalonian prison system. Since july 2008, Amadeu has spent more then 200 hundred days in hunger strike!

He has been in forced feeding: 3,5 litres a day since september 24th. His lawyers and family find it extremely difficult to talk to him. Many “prison workers” and jail unions have tried to sanction the lawyers. When he wants to smoke, the rest of the inmates of the penitentiary wing of the Terrassa Hospital are forced to go back to their rooms.

As well as the hunger strike, Amadeu has felt forced to add a thirst strike so to be able to get visits from family and lawyers. That first thirst strike accomplished his intentions. Since Sunday October 4th, he has started another one because they're trying to transfer him again to prison, because “his health has improved”.

Some actions and demonstrations have taken place, in Spain as well as in other countries. We feel the need to ask for solidarity with this anarchist fighter. A call for decentralized actions has been made until he gets his third grade and leaves the hunger strike. It should be noted that Amadeu's position depends solely on the Catalonian prison and political system, not of Spain's. Anyway, actions, information and solidarity should be carried in any possible way.

It might also help (as happened during last year's hunger strike, along with many actions) to saturate this fax number and e-mail accounts with messages supporting Amadeu:


Fax number: (++34)932140179

You can send it with this program for free: http://www.myfax.com/free/


e-mail accounts: sindic@sindic.cat

justicia@gencat.cat

We should not leave Amadeu in the hands of the State. Adelante compeñeros, until the liberation of Amadeu and the demolition of their dirty prisons!

After his 23 years in prison, (condemned for taking part in robberies in banks in the 1970s as an income for labour struggles, fighting against injustice) he should be given a "third grade" which means he could be out of prison with some conditions, and get a better treat. But the Penitentiary direction seems to ignore his demand.
Concentrations, and actions of solidarity are hapening widespread in Barcelona and in many locations in Spain. Lets spread the solidarity .




Amadeu Casellas has been a prisoner for the last 23 years, but has continued his struggle from within the prison. He is currently on his 82nd day of hunger strike. Despite this, he still has enough strength to declare himself once again on thirst strike, starting from tomorrow.

Even though Amadeu Casellas recognises his physical state has diminished, and he is suffering pain in the legs, he is convinced of what he is doing and is still keeping all of his mental faculties. It is foreseeable that tomorrow he will again be provided with saline solution in order to keep his vital signs at an acceptable level.

The notion that sentences should be served to their full length, with no opportunity to change this, is being applied to the case of Amadeu Casellas in an extremely strong manner; this to a person who has never been condemned for blood crimes, but purely for social crimes that are a product of the prevailing social injustices of then and now. His continuous efforts to show the importance of human dignity, by denouncing the existing injustices inside and outside of the prison, have doomed him to the arduous situation he is going through.

The penitentiary Institution can deny him the permisions, break their promises of freedom, can intercept the comunications, forbid the visits of his friends, take away the letters we send to him and intercept the ones he write to us. They can limit the phone calls and reject his money order. They can incomunicate him, they can keep him isolated, threatened. They plan to let him die slowly, imprisoned, subjected to their most inhuman system, but what they cannot do is to take away his desire of struggling and his passion for freedom.

For the anarchist and the freethinker the state doesn’t reserve for him rehabilitation, nor even his life if he wants to lead his fight to last consequences.



¡¡FREE AMADEU CASELLAS!!

Related Link: http://llibertatamadeu.blogspot.com/





H CNT-AIT ανακοινώνει δύο νέες συγκεντρώσεις για να απαιτήσουν την απελευθέρωση συντροφου αναρχοσυνδικαλιστη Amadeu Casellas:

Κυριακή 18 στην Plaza Tirso de Molina. 12:00.

Σάββατο 24 στην Plaza de las Cortes. 12:00.



Για περισσότερες πληροφορίες:

llibertatamadeu.blogspot.com /

madrid.cnt.es /

¡¡¡¡¡¡¡Since july 2008, Amadeu has spent more then 200 hundred days in hunger strike!!!!!

Active solidarity with Amadeu Casellas
On hungerstrike since April 20.
Coordinadora Anticarcelaria Supresion

In order not to have to fulfill their promises the Catalan Prison Management, the Brians II prison and the treatement team( special team that evaluate the behavior and evolution of a prisoner in order to choose treatement and pahses of his releasement) of the prsison, have organised a new frame up to put more obstacle on the road to his release, to his freedom.

Today Monday April 27 2009, a week after the start of Amadeu’s hunger strike, three comrades and Amadeu’s lawyer went to the juzgado de vigilancia penitenciaria IV(special judge to protect prisoners rights) of Catalonia. We intended, like last Friday, to get to know the state of affairs concerning his request to get a three-day leave. Today we at least managed to see the file and make copies of it. It says that the treatement team of Brians II prison send its official approval to grant Amadeu this leave. But it also says that the 8th of April it send another, unfavourable, report rectifying the former, stating that a new case was filed by the public prosecution against Amadeu demanding 8 years of prison and that there is a risk of him escaping.

Talking to the lawyer two possible ways to obtain such a leave loomed up. One is to appeal with the treatement team concerning its report on the three-day leave. Then it would be the judge who’d be deciding on it, and the public prosecutor the one who has the option to appeal against it, should the decision be favourable and Amadeu’s lawyer should it turn out unfavourable. This way we can’t expect a quick solution. It will take at least two months between filing the appeal papers and the final decision. Besides that, the judge herself has said that without a favourable report by the junta de tratamiento( special team that evaluate the behavior and evolution of a prisoner in order to choose treatement and pahses of his releasement) it’s very hard to get the leave.

The other possibility is 48-hour leave to sign a work contract which the DGSP (Direcció General de Serveis Penitenciaris, General Management of the Catalan Prison Services) itself can decide to give. This would be the quickest and therefore the best way at the moment, without ceasing to try to get the other.

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Five days after having started his hunger strike, Amadeu Casellas was already in a very delicate situation. His health is getting worse much quicker than he had foreseen and he already lost 7 kilos in those first 5 days.

He decided to go on hunger strike after having realised how the DGSP, as well as the management and the treatement tema of the fourht wing of the Brians II prison, failed to meet the agreements that had been made previously: grant him an ordinary three-day leave to start with and then start to transfer him to third grade in order for him to eventually regain his liberty.

Once again the DGSP, the prison itself and the treatement teams, in order not to have to fulfill their promises, have organised a new frame up to put more obstacle on the road to his release, to his freedom.

Amadeu Casellas is facing a new demand by the public prosecutor of 8 years of prison, for the false accusation of trying to get drugs into the prison.

Other times they have tried to accuse him of similar things, but they always failed in doing so succesfully because of the accusations being indefensible.

Because of all this Amadeu started a new hunger strike on April 20, to demand his release. At the moment the request for his first ordinary leave from second grade is at the office of the judge vigilancia penitenciaria(special judge that protects prisoners rights), and she can decide in favour of the request, despite the treatement teams having send her an unfavourable report.

It needs to be stressed that the DGSP, at the request of the management of the prison, always had the authority to grant Amadeu a 48-hour leave, overruling the decision of the judge, and it has never thought of even considering this. Therefore we consider the DGSP, de management of Brians II prison and the equipo de tratamiento del MR-4 , the main people responsable for the situation in which Amadeu finds himself at the moment.

Therefore we ask for your active solidarity with our comrade Amadeu, in any way you find appropriate.