Il/Legal Team: how to go on?
31.Jul.02 - We are participants in the No Border camp; we are not lawyers nor barristers (see the text presenting the legal team in the camp's legal defense guide). We act, in connection with both local and out-of-town lawyers who accept our way of working, with a perspective self-organization, in the face of repression, both via mobilization and via defense in the courts.
Several trials will take place after the camp:
- August 21 (the trial for Ahmed, who is currently incarcerated, which will be preceded by a hearing for a release from pretrial detention, for which we do not yet have the exact date.)
- February 23
- February 25 (two trials, of which one is for two codefendants tried jointly)
- February 28 (two defendants)
It is obvious that political, financial, and court support has to be organized to go on working effectively.
We want:
- local or affinity support groups to be created and organize themselves
- to facilitate a coordination of political reactions, financial solidarity, and common mobilizations among the different collectives.
We propose the following model:
Every support collective makes its own legal, political, and media choices according to the choices of the indicted people, within the limits of a minimal basis of unity:
- that all money be pooled collectively (whether that money be collected by each support collective for a particular case, or collected on the basis of general financial solidarity concerning the repression against the whole camp).
- that different lines of defense not contradict each other, because that damages everyone
- that there be neither any dissociation expressed between indicted people, nor, more generally, any dissociation from the actions of the No Border camp.
The Il/Legal Team has 3 goals:
- to collect money for the trials and redistribute it according to the needs of each group (we will soon propose an account number and an address to spread far and wide, to organize financial solidarity.)
- to promote the formation of self-organized support groups, relaying the choices of each defendant (the il/legal team will collectively support of any isolated defendant who wants support)
- to help the groups to communicate with one another, forward calls for mobilization, and help to place events within the larger context of repression of the camp's activities.
Responding to repression involves all the groups and individuals who took part in the camp. As this has been collectively decided upon in the preparation phase, we consider the following formula to be usable for all occasions: "In the name of the No Border Network and all of the collectives and people participating iin the camp, we demand that all those accused be liberated immediately and that all charges against them be dropped." (Groups may use or decline this phrase, depending on the context.)
You can write us at the following address: il-legalteam@lalune.org
Il/Legal Team in exile