Ampelokipi Case – Statement of Anarchist Comrade Nikos Romanos (Athens, Greece)
Ampelokipi Case – 8th Trial – 17/04/2026
Nikos Romanos: I am here after almost 18 months of arbitrary and vindictive detention. I also want to contribute to the restoration of the truth with my statement. In general, I believe that the only reason I am here is my past. And I will explain later why I say this.
First of all, let me repeat here, as I have said from the beginning, that I have nothing to do with this specific case. I have not committed any of the offenses attributed to me and I believe that this entire story, this entire path that has led me here, is the result of a revenge that has brought me to this objectively unfavourable position.
Before we get to how I ended up here, let me tell you that since my release in 2019 I have had an active social and political life. As for my social life, I will not describe it to you because the witnesses have described it and I do not want to repeat things. I want to say more things that have not been heard.
I would like to talk to you about the difficulties that have to do with the adaptation of a person who is released from prison after 7 years. Difficulties that have to do with the obligations – at least as I perceived them – towards my family environment, which has supported me from the first moment of my arrest until today. Some other formal obligations that I tried to fulfil in many ways. And schematically, what should be captured here as an experience is the image of a person who has just been released from prison.
Prison is the land of frozen time. There is a rudimentary social life. Outside, everyone moves forward, relationships develop, everyone makes their choices, people change, mutate, all the things that happen happen. And, when it is a long-term confinement, when you come out, you essentially come out of a refrigerator. You try to come face to face with material reality. A reality which has changed since the last time you remember it, possibly rapidly. You are called to be able to cope with this, to try to lift weights, something that you had not done in all the previous years. Because, in a way, in the previous years, others lifted the weights for you. So, I want to present them in a way that draws on personal experience. So that it can also be understood by you.
I tried, anyway, to adapt to this reality. To get back in touch with the people I had left behind. For example, high school seniors, some of my friends. I had had very little contact with these people until then, i.e. we would say a “happy new year”, a “happy birthday”. All of this was a difficult and arduous process. I tried to find a job, and I found a job. I tried to build some social relationships, which created joy and pleasure for me, with my family, my partner and with my other friends. Essentially, I started to make some plans for my life, some plans. This is a schematic description of my social life.
At the same time, I obviously had a political life, a public political life. I participated in cultural and all kinds of other events. I participated in demonstrations, obviously. I participated in demonstrations for issues that raised awareness, for prisoners’ rights, in events with the bar association, for criminal codes. We have coexisted with several lawyers in such events, whether they are from the anarchist space or from the left. We have been in such places.
Again, to record this specific experience, I want to say that for me the most important moment in my political life, the most important thing I did from my release until today, was the restoration of the monument of Alexandros Grigoropoulos and the event that was held in connection with it. I believe that, in a way, an attempt was made to restore a monument that was in decay. And to give some meanings, some narratives, some testimonies so that the memory of the people who lost their lives in the way they did could be “conveyed”.
So, these are schematically the social and political life I’ve had from 2019 onwards.
This was violently interrupted with my arrest outside my parents’ house, in Papanastasiou Street. Essentially, I experience it as a déjà vu, because I have gone through all these stages. It was like a trauma that reopens and repeats itself. Quite a bad experience. Unfortunately, I have had the misfortune to go through these processes many times. After a while, when I understood what was happening, I had exactly in my head what was going to happen. That is, that I would be treated like a prize, there would be the channels, and that would be the framework. I would be sold as a product of political marketing. All these things, which unfortunately you cannot avoid. I was aware that they would happen from the moment I understood what was being attributed to me, because at first I did not understand.
And the most important thing about this is that I actually experienced, and I’m here with all that has happened, for a choice that I didn’t make. On the contrary, in the past, for the choices I had made, I always took responsibility. I defended them. And I didn’t just defend them to a friend. I defended them publicly, I defended them in courtrooms like this one. I stood before my real judges and explained in detail what the history is, what the social context is within which I made certain choices. Choices that are a part of my existence, no one denies that.
As well as, I have been in courts where I have been accused of things I have not done. And these, the truth is that there were not a few – if I am asked I can list them for you. With elements that were without criminal significance, where they were part of a broader context of that period. In these courts, the reason I continued and went and said “I have nothing to do with it”, was not because I sought better criminal treatment – because my criminal treatment was horrible anyway. I simply sought the restoration of the truth. Everyone will face the consequences of their choices, for what they have made. Not for what they have not done.
So, right now I’m in a Kafkaesque situation, that’s how I characterize it. It centres on a tragic incident, where a man, the anarchist Kyriakos Xymitiris, lost his life, his partner, Marianna Manoura, was seriously injured, and a load of people have had problems in their daily lives. A truly tragic incident.
A tragic incident that has been politically instrumentalized from the very beginning, and I consider my own case to be the icing on the cake of this instrumentalization. This instrumentalization has stages: it started from point zero and reached the final point, within which various incidents developed: media, police, etc. Essentially, what I wonder, and I am expressing it here publicly, is how much discussion can there be about a bag?
I repeat again, for things that I have done, I have no problem taking responsibility for my choices, defending them, exposing them, formulating the context in which they were made and facing the consequences of the law on the part of the state. In this case, however, I have not made any choice, I have not done anything. And I find myself here, essentially, having to prove that I am not an elephant. Within a context that says “there is a bag”. And then a criminalization of the bag begins which says “this bag had 2 fingerprints”. “No, after all, it did not have 2, it had 102 fingerprints”. “Yes, but it was “this way”” or “it was different”. The persecutory – let each one put a characterization – narratives are constantly changing. And I am in a position where I have an unchanging, fixed view from the beginning: I say that no matter what happens, I cannot know when I came into contact with a bag. If I said that I remember, it would be hypocritical. It would be hypocritical to say, “Yes, I remember this bag.” No matter what questions are asked, I cannot know. No matter how much I think about it, all I can do is speculate. And because you talked about probability theory, probabilities remain probabilities. One can only speculate, only scenarios, only versions. To answer and say when I came into contact with a bag is something that I am unable to do.
Concluding this brief apology of mine – because I believe that I have nothing more to contribute to the case – I want to reiterate that I am not in a position to know the path of the bag. All I can do is make assumptions. I believe that no matter how many assumptions I make, I do not come to a conclusion that I can be certain of. To repeat what I said before, I have nothing to do with the case. I have paid more than enough for the choices I made. At this moment I am being asked to pay for something that I did not make and I believe that this is unfair.
I would consider it more honest – although “honest” is a big word, I would consider it better, if someone told me “you know what, you’re going to jail because we don’t like you, because we don’t like you, because we think you’re a person who should pay for certain things”. I consider that more honest and, in part, it’s also defensible. To know that I’m in jail because I know that certain circles don’t like me. To be in jail and the argument being a bag, from my point of view, is incomprehensible.
Thank you for your time.
source
Translated by Act for freedom now!
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