On July 17th 2015, the preliminary hearing against Silvia Guerini, Costantino ‘Costa’ Ragusa and Luca ‘Billy’ Bernasconi took place in Turin, Italy. The three have been previously arrested and jailed for several years in Switzerland, accused of having organised an act of sabotage against a nanotechnology research centre of IBM, under construction at the time. On April 15th 2010, they were stopped and arrested by Swiss police who searched their car and found explosives, as well as leaflets claiming the imminent action under the name ‘Earth Liberation Front Switzerland’.
They have now been indicted according to the article 110 of the Italian penal code, which is used to punish offenses of criminal association. Particularly they’re accused of having conspired together to plan the action in Italy, of having illegally obtained the materials needed to assemble and prepare explosive devices, and of having smuggled such devices between the Italian and Swiss border. All charges include the aggravating circumstance of the ‘purpose of terrorism’, historically used in political trials in Italy to obtain long pretrial detention, and longer prison sentence if found guilty.
The judge at the preliminary hearing accepted the thesis proposed by the deputy prosecutor Enrico Arnaldi Di Balme and found irrelevant that Billy, Costa and Silvia have already been tried and convicted in the Swiss Confederation.
The trial will commence on January 13th 2016 in Turin. Let’s use it as an occasion to relaunch the struggle against environmental destruction.
In view of the trial, the three comrades are facing a hard time and need to cover several legal expenses, so they’ve shared a call for support. Any help is much appreciated. Donations can be made to: conto corrente postale intestato a (postal current account payable to) Marta Cattaneo, IBAN: IT11A0760111100001022596116, BIC: BPPIITRRXXX. Please specify donation reason: solidarietà a Silvia Billy Costa (solidarity with Silvia Billy Costa).
More info on the case and updates (in Italian):
silviabillycostaliberi.noblogs.org