All acts of terrorism, all the attacks that have struck and that strike the imagination of men and women, have been and are either offensive or defensive actions. Experience has long since shown that, if they are part of a strategic offensive, they are always doomed to failure. On the other hand, experience has also shown that, if they are part of a defensive strategy, such actions can hope for some success, which is nevertheless momentary and precarious. The attacks by the Palestinians and the Irish, for example, are acts of offensive terrorism, while the bombing of the Piazza Fontana and the kidnapping of Aldo Moro, for example, are defensive acts.
However, it is not only the strategy that differs depending on whether the act in question is an instance of offensive or defensive terrorism, but also the strategists. The desperate and those suffering from illusions have recourse to offensive terrorism, while it is always and only States that have recourse to defensive terrorism, either because they have been thrust into some serious social crisis, as the Italian State has been, or because they fear such a crisis, as does the German State.
Gianfranco Sanguinetti, On Terrorism and the State
The National Court (La Audiencia Nacional) in spain has condemned Mónica Caballero and Francisco Solar, each, to 12 years in prison for the detonation of an explosive in October of 2013 in the Basílica de El Pilar of Zaragoza. The legal sentence held the two responsible for the explosion, on the basis of video images in which two persons are seen with covered faces, in a bar near the basilica. No images were recorded inside the church and there were no witnessses for the prosecution.
Five of the twelve years are for injuries caused to the persons in the church at the time of the explosion and seven more for damages to the building with terrorist aims. Mónica and Francisco have already been in preventative custody since November of 2013. Their lawyers promise to appeal the judgement, during which time their incarceration is likely to continue.
What the court did strike down was the effort by police authorities to link the two accused with a larger supposedly anarchist terrorist complot against the spanish State; something that has served to justify the persecution of anarchist militants during the years 2014-2015, in the police operations Pandora 1, Pandora 2, Piñata and ICE, for which more than 40 people are still awaiting trial. (Periodico Diagonal 31/03/2016)
The solidarity that has been organised since Mónica’s and Francisco’s original incarceration, as well as with other imprisoned anarchists, must continue, for the aim of the arrests and trials is none other than the criminalisation of anarchism.
There is no one “inside” and another “outside”, there are only enemies of the State.