A-Infos (en) Charges Against 'Interim' Magazine Have Been Dropped

[Arm The Spirit <ats@locust.etext.org>]

________________________________________________
     A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
           http://www.ainfos.ca/
________________________________________________

Charges Against 'Interim' Magazine Have Been Dropped

     German authorities have suffered an embarrassing failure in
their attempts to criminalize the Berlin autonomist periodical
'Interim'. All charges against 14 individuals targeted in a
series of highly-publicized raids in Berlin last year have been
dropped. It seems the state's intelligence agency could not find
anything useful in the massive amounts of confiscated materials.
     Last June, 500 police raided a total of nine houses and
workplaces in Berlin, looking for the alleged editors of Interim
magazine. During the six-hour house searches - the biggest in the
city in the post-war era - police confiscated 16 computers, 2,178
floppy disks, as well as posters featuring Berlin's right-wing
Interior Minister Jorg Schonbohm, and some other printed
matter. No criminal materials were found, it has now been
learned.
     Lawyers for the accused, who have since been able to look at
police files on the case, found out that Berlin's state
intelligence agency had been going after the Interim since as
early as 1989. Their activities increased in May 1996 when they
thought that they had discovered the printing shop where the
magazine was produced. State agents rented an apartment with a
view of the location and began more surveillance. As of August
1998, "technical" means of observation - perhaps audio or video
bugs - were employed. In November 1996, police transported an
entire garbage container to police headquarters after "suspicious
persons" threw some printed matter into it. Police were unable to
get any fingerprints off the materials. But police continued
their observations, compiling volumes of notes. One lawyer
characterized the police's activities as "useless data
collection" whose only aim was to "create a disturbance in the
leftist scene".
     German federal authorities in Karlsruhe, who supervised the
Berlin operations, refused to comment to the media after the
charges against the Interim were dropped. 

(written from media accounts, February 1998)

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Arm The Spirit is an autonomist/anti-imperialist information
collective based in Toronto, Canada. Our focus includes a wide 
variety of material, including political prisoners, national 
liberation struggles, armed communist resistance, anti-fascism, 
the fight against patriarchy, and more. We regularly publish our 
writings, research, and translation materials on our listserv
called ATS-L. For more information, contact:

Arm The Spirit
P.O. Box 6326, Stn. A
Toronto, Ontario
M5W 1P7 Canada

E-mail: ats@etext.org
WWW: http://burn.ucsd.edu/~ats/
ATS-L Archives: http://burn.ucsd.edu/archives/ats-l
-----------------------------------------------------------------



     ****** A-Infos News Service *****
  News about and of interest to anarchists

Subscribe -> email MAJORDOMO@TAO.CA
             with the message SUBSCRIBE A-INFOS
Info      -> http://www.ainfos.ca/
Reproduce -> please include this section