This is not fresh news, but it’s certainly important news; it is not the only example of similar conduct (an identical incident took place in Athens only 2 days ago), but it is representative, it has attracted media publicity (distorting, needless to say) and was the incentive for an open discussion at the Polytechnic School on Monday 11th January:

On Tuesday 5th January, our comrade K.M. was returning home,in the northern suburb of Athens Agia Paraskevi, when he spotted someone examining his mother’s car in the open parking lot on the ground floor of his block of flats. Our stunned comrade asked him what he was doing there, and the stranger tried to run away. K.M. run after him and managed to stop him only a short distance away. The shouts and chase attracted the neighborhood’s attention, people came out and after posing pressing questions, the man displayed his police ID. Frequent customers of a nearby lottery shop recognized him, and reported they’d seen him around those past few days; him, along with another guy that was still in the lottery shop. Unfortunately the latter managed to run away on a big motorcycle without plates, leaving his colleague behind. The intelligent service agent refused to give explanations on “personal and emotional grounds”. When the police arrived (neighbors had called them) the undercover agent became talkative all of a sudden and said that he was on a “mission”; he added that our comrade had attacked him, jeopardising his corporal integrity.

Our comrade contacted his friends and lawyer, and considering the change in the cop’s stand, he decided to lodge a complaint. They then went to the local police station for the procedure, where the local undercover policemen showed off that they know personal information on our comrade’s life (friends, where he works etc). The judiciary (following the prosecutor’s instructions) showed its true face: the agent did not stay the night in the police station and was not taken to the court that normally tries offences that are reported at the time they are committed on the very next day. A day of trial was directly fixed instead.

It is obvious that the surveillance of comrades, on a daily basis, is an additional parameter of the state’s repressive strategy, with the aim to reorganize democracy after December 2008.