The statement in detail:

“This baseless indictment leading to pretrial detention exemplifies the intersection of class bias and toxic bourgeois justice. It reveals the face of revanchist policies, where the government seeks to fabricate ‘internal enemies’ to distract public opinion and rally conservative audiences.

Nikos Romanos has pleaded not guilty, denied any involvement in the Ampelokipi explosion on Arcadia Street, and stated he has no connection to his co-defendants. He has established that there is no flight risk. Yet a fingerprint on a plastic bag suffices for him to be targeted by the authorities and the systemic media and, in defiance of legal logic, to be remanded in custody.

Romanos once again finds himself confronting the justice system and Greek authorities. These same authorities have ‘lost,’ failed to locate, or ‘accidentally’ destroyed critical evidence in cases such as Tempe, Pylos, the car of Nikos Sampanis, the murder of Karaivaz, Lignadis’ computer files, and the Kolonos case. These are the same judicial and state mechanisms that, with insufficient evidence, rushed to convict individuals such as Tasos Theofilou, Irianna, ‘Indianos,’ Vangelis Stathopoulos, and Haris Mantzouridis. It is no surprise that public trust in these institutions has eroded.

Through this case, the system is once again targeting, stigmatising, tormenting, and attempting to crush a man who, in 2008, watched his friend Alexandros Grigoropoulos murdered by the state. Romanos has become a symbol of systemic callousness and injustice, standing for himself, his generation, and all of us.

In this fight ahead, we denounce the repressive and vengeful treatment of Nikos Romanos by the mechanisms of the Mitsotakis government and the broader state apparatus that perpetuates criminal populism. This same apparatus supports anti-popular measures by sustaining a strong, repressive state mechanism.

We stand with Nikos Romanos, and in doing so, we stand with all those unjustly targeted.”

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