Earth First! Newswire Editor’s Note: The cam­paign against the build­ing of the Turin-Lyon high speed rail link has been run­ning for 20+ years and reg­u­lar­ly pro­duces new arrests as the Ital­ian State tries to sup­press resis­tance. Chiara Zeno­bi, Nic­colò Blasi, Clau­dio Alber­to and Mat­tia Zan­ot­ti were arrest­ed on Decem­ber 9, 2013, and accused of com­mit­ting an act of sab­o­tage occurred in May 2013 against the high speed rail­way (TAV) con­struc­tion yard of Chiomonte, Val Susa. The charges pressed against them are heavy: attack with pur­pos­es of ter­ror­ism car­ried out with lethal and explo­sive devices, pos­ses­sion of war weapons, dam­ages. Below is an account of their state­ments to the court.

 trans­lat­ed by Act for Free­dom Now

Turin, 24th Sep­tem­ber 2014

From com­rades who were in court we learn that Chiara, Clau­dio, Mat­tia e Nic­colò were smil­ing and in good spir­its dur­ing the tri­al and with their heads held high they claimed their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the action of sab­o­tage that took place in May 2013 at the TAV yard in Chiomonte. The com­rades dis­man­tled the accu­sa­tions and the­o­rems that pros­e­cu­tors built up on a very dif­fer­ent real­i­ty and reject­ed the label of ‘ter­ror­ism’ attached to prac­tices that belong to the NO TAV resis­tance, thus get­ting rid of the jar­gon and seman­tics of repres­sion and domin­ion.

Here are the com­rades’ dec­la­ra­tions to the court:

Mat­tia:

I knew Mad­dale­na and Val Clarea before the TAV yard was erect­ed there. In those woods I walked, slept, ate, sang, danced. In those places I expe­ri­enced pre­cious frag­ments of life togeth­er with friends who are no longer there and whom I car­ry in my heart.

To those places I went back many times in the course of the years.

In the day­light, in the night, in morn­ings and evenings; in sum­mer, win­ter, autumn and spring. I’ve seen those places chang­ing and trees falling down after being cut down to make room for barbed wire. I’ve seen the yard expand­ing and a piece of wood dis­ap­pear­ing, head­lights pop­ping up and the army com­ing over to watch a des­o­late land­scape from the same armoured vehi­cles that patrol the moun­tains in Afghanistan.

So I went back again in Val Clarea dur­ing the now famous night of May.

Too much was writ­ten and said on that night and it’s not up to me, nor is it my inter­est, to say how the action trans­lates in the gram­mar of the penal code.

What I can say is that I was there on that night.

That I was not there with the inten­tion of pur­su­ing ter­ror or even worse can be under­stood by any sen­si­ble per­son who has even a slight idea of the nature of the NO TAV strug­gle and of the eth­i­cal coor­di­nates with­in which this strug­gle has been express­ing its resis­tance for twen­ty years.

That I was there to demon­strate once again my rad­i­cal hos­til­i­ty to that yard, and if pos­si­ble to sab­o­tage its func­tion­ing, I’m telling you myself.

And if we decid­ed to speak today before the tri­al enter the tan­gled for­est of phone tap­ping evi­dence and counter-evi­dence it is because we want to reaf­firm a sim­ple truth: the inter­cept­ed voic­es are ours.

Pros­e­cu­tors built up a sto­ry on this.

A sto­ry where mobile phones become the evi­dence of the exis­tence of a chain of com­mand, even para­mil­i­tary plan­ning, but the truth – as often hap­pens – is much sim­pler and less bom­bas­tic.

A say­ing in Val Susa has added to the com­mon bag­gage of the NO TAV strug­gle for years, and it guides the prac­ti­cal actions of dis­rup­tion of the yard.

The say­ing goes: ‘we leave togeth­er and come back togeth­er’. Which means we go along togeth­er in this strug­gle. Togeth­er we leave and togeth­er we come back.

No one is left behind. This was the rea­son for mobile phones on that night, to this pur­pose were our voic­es used.

On the con­trary to talk about lead­ers, orga­ni­za­tion charts, com­man­dos and strate­gists means to want to cast the shad­ow of a world that doesn’t belong to us on that par­tic­u­lar fact, and to twist our very way of being and con­ceiv­ing com­mon actions.

As far as I’m con­cerned, I leave to the enthu­si­ast high speed spec­u­la­tors the sad priv­i­lege not to have scru­ples about oth­ers’ lives, and I also leave to them the cult of war, com­man­do and prof­it at all costs.

We hang on the val­ues of resis­tance, free­dom, friend­ship and shar­ing, and from these val­ues we’ll try to gain strength wher­ev­er the con­se­quences of our choic­es lead us.

—Mat­tia.

Clau­dio:

In the night between 13th and 14th May I took part in the sab­o­tage of the yard in Mad­dale­na, Chiomonte. Here is revealed the mys­tery.

I’m not sur­prised that while attempt­ing to recon­struct the fact inves­ti­ga­tors use words such as ‘assault, ter­ror­ist attack, para­mil­i­tary groups, lethal weapons’. Those accus­tomed to live and defend a high­ly hier­ar­chized soci­ety can­not under­stand what have been hap­pen­ing in Val Susa in recent years. In order to describe it, they draw from their cul­ture full of bel­li­cose words. It is not my inten­tion to both­er you with the rea­sons why I decid­ed to com­mit myself to the strug­gle against the TAV or to explain what the defence of the val­ley means; I just want to point out that any­thing con­nect­ed with war and the army dis­gusts me.

I under­stand the dis­may of pub­lic opin­ion and its sto­ry­tellers in the face of the reap­pear­ance of an illus­tri­ous unknown char­ac­ter, sab­o­tage, after they did their best to bury it under tons of lies.

To the strug­gle against the high speed train goes the cred­it of hav­ing revised this prac­tice, of hav­ing been able to choose when and how to use it and to have man­aged to make a dif­fer­ence between what’s right and what’s legal.

To the strug­gle against the high speed train goes the big respon­si­bil­i­ty of main­tain­ing faith in the hopes that many exploit­ed place in it and of mak­ing them taste the savour of revenge.

I take the lib­er­ty to send the charges back to the sender. We are accused of hav­ing act­ed to strike at peo­ple or at the very least of not tak­ing care of their pres­ence, as if we dis­re­gard­ed oth­ers’ lives. If there is some­one who express­es such a dis­re­gard, they have to be found among the troops export­ing peace and democ­ra­cy all around the world, the same that patrol the yard in Mad­dale­na with zeal and pro­fes­sion­al­ism. As far as the charge of ter­ror­ism is con­cerned I’ve no inten­tion of defend­ing myself. Such a bold charge has been suf­fi­cient­ly dis­man­tled by the sol­i­dar­i­ty we’ve been receiv­ing since the day of our arrest. If behind this oper­a­tion there was the attempt, not very well con­cealed, to put an end to the NO TAV strug­gle once and for all, I’d say it has mis­er­ably failed.

—Clau­dio.

Nic­co­lò:

The rea­sons that led me to take part in the strug­gle in Val Susa are many; the rea­sons that led me to stay there and con­tin­ue on this path are even more.

In the mid­dle there is a tra­jec­to­ry of col­lec­tive growth, pub­lic and pri­vate meet­ings, camp­ing and demos, dis­cus­sions and con­flicts. In the mid­dle there is life, every­day life, a life of ear­ly starts and sleep­less nights, of dry throats on rocky slopes and fru­gal meals, of small com­mit­ments and big emo­tions.

In this tra­jec­to­ry those who strug­gle learned the pre­ci­sion of lan­guage, to call things for what they are and not accord­ing to a for­mal shell with which they are adver­tised, like a yard that was a block­house and now is becom­ing a fortress. Words that can give back the emo­tion­al con­tent and the impact on one’s life caused by the choic­es of one’s ene­my, the ene­my who decid­ed to be involved in this big work. Words dust­ed off from a lex­i­con that looked old and instead they are redis­cov­ered in all their pow­er and sim­plic­i­ty in describ­ing one’s actions.

A sagac­i­ty of lan­guage that I real­ize not being so wide­spread in the sur­round­ing world, as I read of improb­a­ble ‘com­man­dos’, which accord­ing to some recon­struc­tion also pro­posed by the press would have stormed the yard in the night of 13th May. A word as sad as ever, not only because of its ref­er­ence to the action of com­mand­ing but also because of a cer­tain mer­ce­nary hint, an unac­cept­able one, relat­ing to those who are ready to do any­thing in order to achieve their goal.

On the con­trary those who strug­gle learned to con­vey with intel­li­gence the strong and impetu­ous pas­sions pro­voked by the many blows tak­en, like when a friend lost an eye because of tear­gas or anoth­er one was dying.

As for me, Val Clarea has been a friend of mine since 2001, when we used to throw the soil back into the holes dug by bull­doz­ers with bare hands as work pro­ceed­ed in the yard.

I remem­ber a song echo­ing between the tents of that year’s camp­ing, one of the many invent­ed on the tune of an old par­ti­san song, just for fun and to give our­selves some courage. The first line went: ‘from the woods of Giaglione unit­ed we’ll come down ….’ In recent years these words have been fol­lowed by actions on many occa­sions, and so was it on that night of May, when some­one decid­ed to do it with deter­mi­na­tion, and I was among them. One of the voic­es behind a tele­phone is mine. But to linger on per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty in order to praise it or blame it can’t give the idea of a col­lec­tive feel­ing matured in the hous­es of so many fam­i­lies, in the val­ley and in cities, between a chat and a drink in a bar, in piaz­zas and streets, in cheer­ful moments and in crit­i­cal ones. A feel­ing that expressed itself in one of the most shout­ed slo­gans after our arrest and which describes the real belong­ing of that action very well: ‘we all were behind those fences…’ A slo­gan that takes us straight back to a pop­u­lar meet­ing held in Bus­soleno in May2013, when the whole move­ment wel­comed that action and called it sab­o­tage.

And if we all were behind those fences, a bit of every­one sup­port­ed us and gave us strength behind these bars. For this rea­son, even here, what­ev­er the con­se­quences of our actions are we won’t face them alone.

—Nic­colò.

Chiara:

In this court­room you can’t find the words to tell about that night in May.

You use the lan­guage of a soci­ety accus­tomed to armies, con­quests and oppres­sion.

Mil­i­tary and para­mil­i­tary attacks, indis­crim­i­nate vio­lence and war weapons belong to the States and their adu­la­tors.

We didn’t throw our hearts beyond res­ig­na­tion.

We threw a grain of sand in the clogs of a progress whose only effect is the inces­sant destruc­tion of the plan­et we live in.

I was there on that night and it is mine the female voice that was inter­cept­ed.

I went through a piece of my life along with all the men and women who have been oppos­ing a dev­as­tat­ing idea of the world with an irrev­o­ca­ble no for over twen­ty years. I’m proud of that and hap­py with that.

—Chiara.
For updat­ed address­es on these NO TAV pris­on­ers and oth­ers, see the Inter­na­tion­al sec­tion of the Earth First! Eco-Pris­on­er List.