Italy: Police Raids Against the CARC Party
Featured image: CARC Party flags hanging at the entrance to the courthouse. Source: CARC Party website.
Italian State police carried out a series of raids on the homes of six individuals linked to the CARC Party (Committees in Support of Resistance for Communism): three members of the Party’s National Leadership, two activists from the Campania branch, and a young, underage supporter, at dawn of April 21. Five homes in Naples and one in Florence were raided. This repressive operation has sparked condemnation from numerous social movements and political organizations in Italy, as well as abroad.
The repressive operation was ordered by the Naples Public Prosecutor’s Office and involves the seizure of electronic devices, such as cell phones, computers, etc., as well as the closure of several social media accounts. The Italian State is invoking the infamous Article 270bis of the Italian Penal Code, “promotion and organization of associations for terrorist and subversive purposes,” as well as Articles 110 and 414 for “glorification of crime.” The six individuals are accused of seeking to “reestablish an organization such as the Red Brigades or the New Red Brigades,” a group that carried out armed actions in the 1970s and 1980s.
The CARC Party denounces this as a police fabrication amid a growing repressive crackdown by the Meloni government. Thus, it denounces this as “an operation of intimidation and manipulation.” It also points out that this is not the first repressive case of this kind against the CARC, as there were similar cases in 1981, 1989, and 1999, as well as a case that lasted from 2001 to 2008. In all of these cases, there were raids, seizures of materials, and arrests, and all of them resulted in the acquittal of the accused activists.
To demonstrate that this is a fabricated case and that the accusations are baseless, the CARC Party has shared the full search warrant:
Numerous groups have expressed their solidarity with the CARC Party and condemned the Italian State’s repression. Among others, the Communist Party Marxist of Kenya (CPM-K) has expressed its solidarity, as we recently reported:
Per la Democrazia Popolare has also done so:
