In a letter sent from Korydallos prison, Nikos Romanos alleges that he is being scapegoated, and cast as “forever guilty”.

“My life is being sold as a political product,” he writes, “on the shelf of the communications supermarket, with the price of a plastic bag charged to me, waiting for would-be voters to shop the merchandise piece by piece until next time.”

Nikos Romanos was remanded in pre-trial custody in alleged connection with the explosion in an apartment in Ampelokipi. 

The Greek police have announced the explosion was caused by the unintentional detonation of an improvised explosive device. The target of the device is yet not known, and is being investigated by the anti-terrorism police. The explosion resulted in the death of one person reportedly handling the explosive device and serious injury of another, who was arrested. So far several people have been arrested in alleged connection with the case, and held in pretrial detention. 

Greek Minister of Citizen Protection, Michalis Chrisochoidis, argued the case is related to a group of young people who “aspired to be the next generation of terrorists”.

Romanos was arrested after the Greek police announced they had found a fingerprint on a plastic bag containing a gun in the destroyed Ampelokipi apartment. His name was soon leaked in the Greek press. Romanos denied any connection with the case. The prosecutor decided to hold him also in pre-trial detention. 

In 2008, a teenage Romanos was hanging out in central Athens with his friend Alexandros Grigoropoulos, who was suddenly fatally shot by a police officer. The killing of Grigoropoulos triggered some of the largest protests in modern Greek history. Demonstrations spread to other cities in Greece and lasted for weeks.

In February 2013, Romanos was arrested along with three other people for attempted armed robbery at a bank in Kozani and sentenced to prison. In 2014, Romanos went on hunger strike in Korydallos prison to demand educational leave, as he had passed university entrance exams in prison, which was eventually granted. He wrote letters from prison about his anti-state and anarchist beliefs. He was released from prison in 2019.

In the letter published Thursday in EFSYN, again from Korydallos, Romanos called the accusations against him  “vague, baseless, inflated, unsupported, which arises abusively, raising more questions than the answers it actually gives.” He wrote: “Following the established political logic of the anti-terrorism law, which creates a category of persecuted persons who are outside the law, everyone is guilty until proven innocent. The language spoken by the system has already delivered its condemnation.”

His full letter is as follows:

“Monday 18 November, was the day when time stopped once again for me. Anti-terrorist hoods, handcuffs, detention centers, TV cameras, news reports, journalistic scripts, police theories. Behind this familiar pattern and the communication storm of guilt, there is another reality.

It is the traumas that reappear and have a multiplying effect, breaking up families, destroying human relationships, annihilating dreams, hopes, plans of a life condemned once again to the death of frozen time.

Because the language of truth cannot be hidden, I repeat, I deny the indictment in its entirety. An indictment that is vague, baseless, inflated, unsupported, which arises abusively, raising more questions than the answers it actually gives. Following the established political logic of the anti-terrorism law, which creates a category of persecuted persons who are outside the law, everyone is guilty until proven innocent. The language spoken by the system has already delivered its condemnation. I became a walking prey for all kinds of exploitation. An exhibit in the showcases of museums of lies and oblivion. With the “terrorist” sign hanging in the “guilty in all instances” annex, for observation by usually naive, but mostly frightened and complacent visitors.

For those who play dice with  human lives in a vile and vulgar political gamble, for those who believe that the power they hold enables them to crush souls for their own reasons, I will repeat the obvious.

From the bloody pedestrian street of Messolongiou, to the interrogation offices, the grey corridors of prisons, the courtrooms, the slow death of incarceration. Of the choices I made with all my soul, choices engraved with real blood, at great cost and unyielding knees– I do not surrender even a millimeter.

They are part of the history of a generation of people who rebelled, a generation on whose backs large sections of the political system laundered their sins by hanging them on the pegs of repressive and media cannibalism.

But now I am not in prison because I made conscious choices that carried corresponding risks. Instead, my life is being sold as a political product, on the shelf of the communications supermarket, with the price of the bag being charged to me, waiting for would-be voters to shop the merchandise piece by piece until next time.

It is truly sad for me (and not just me) that I will be called upon to prove that I am not an elephant, with a looming sentence hanging over my head that will condemn me to live again, for an unspecified period of time, as a prisoner.

I have lived half of my adult life in prison. I will not accept without a fight that such an unjust statistic consisting of much pain and countless loneliness, to cover me in concrete and bars.

I will not accept extreme measures such as that of pre-trial detention without a legal and political battle to win back my life.

In this hasty and necessary first statement I want to thank from the bottom of my heart those who have stood by my side with selfless love. The struggle for my vindication and my final release from this unjust accusation now begins.

In lieu of an epilogue…

Honor to those who in the life they lead

define and guard a Thermopylae.

Never betraying what is right,

consistent and just in all they do

but showing pity also, and compassion;

generous when they are rich, and when they are poor,

still generous in small ways,

still helping as much as they can;

always speaking the truth,

yet without hating those who lie.

 

And even more honor is due to them

when they foresee (as many do foresee)

that in the end Nightmare will make his appearance,

that the Medes will break through after all.

(Konstantinos Cavafy)”