Report
France arrested an Antifa activist on behalf of Hungarian prosecutors
In the same case that led to Ilaria Salis’s ordeal in Hungary, Rexhino “Gino” Abazaj was picked up in Paris on Friday for his involvement in the Budapest protests.
Rexhino Abazaj, “Gino” to his friends, was arrested on Friday evening in Paris. It all started with a simple ID check, when the police found that there was an Interpol Red Notice for him issued at the request of Hungary. Gino, 32, born in Elbasan, Albania, arrived in Italy in 1995 and lived there for a good 20 years, but didn’t manage to obtain citizenship, as he had been reported to police for his activism with the Milan movements, along with anti-fascist groups and building occupiers.
Now, he was arrested on charges brought by Hungarian prosecutors, for taking part in the same clashes for which Ilaria Salis was imprisoned and kept in chains, tied to the February 2023 “Day of Honor,” a yearly event that saw hundreds of neo-Nazis from all over Europe gather in Budapest to celebrate the actions of the SS against the Red Army at the end of World War II.
“Once again, Orbán the tyrant tries to trample on the values of anti-fascism and the rule of law,” Salis wrote on social media in response to the news of Gino’s arrest. “My case clearly shows that, for Gino and for all anti-fascists, one cannot expect a fair trial in Hungary, nor detention that would respect their fundamental rights,” Salis added, now a MEP who was elected in June for the Green and Left Alliance.
She is still facing a pending request from the Hungarian government in October to waive her immunity as member of the European Parliament. The outcome will largely depend on the position the Popular Party will take: namely, whether they will side with the hero of the sovereignists or with protecting civil rights. Abazaj has an outstanding arrest warrant issued by the Budapest prosecutor's office on Oct. 30 last year, part of the same case file for which Italy had been asked to extradite Gabriele Marchesi, a request denied by the Court of Appeal in Milan. The judges deemed that there were well-founded concerns that the young man would be subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment tantamount to torture in Hungarian prisons.
After spending some time in Finland, Abazaj eventually moved to Paris, where he was active with Menilmontant FC, a popular anti-fascist multi-sport club committed to guaranteeing the right to sports and fighting “all discrimination, on the playing field and beyond.” The young man was being held at the Fresnes penitentiary, a municipality in the Marne Valley south of the capital, where he was visited on Tuesday by lawyer Youri Krassoulia, who is supporting his defense on behalf of Laurent Pasquet-Marinacce's law firm.
The preliminary hearing was set for Tuesday, when he would be asked whether he accepted extradition to Hungary. If he doesn’t, the French authorities will have to ask those in Budapest for a European arrest warrant listing the charges, which are currently unknown.
From then on, the case would be heard before the Paris Court of Appeals, which in July 2022 denied the extradition to Italy of ten former militants from the years of armed struggle. More recently, another Italian who ended up before the French courts fighting extradition to Italy, Vincenzo Vecchi, one of the ten protesters convicted for the Genoa G8 clashes in 2008, was the protagonist of a long legal battle in which the Paris court likewise denied his extradition; in March 2023, he won a final denial of extradition to Italy pronounced by the Lyon Court of Appeal.
We will see if the French judges’ civil-rights-oriented approach will prevail in Gino’s case as well, who otherwise risks more than 20 years in prison. Maja T is another defendant facing the same penalties, who was extradited to Hungary in August by German police in an unseemly rush, before the Federal Constitutional Court could rule on her case. She likewise faces charges related to the events surrounding the 2023 Day of Honor.
At the same time, there are ongoing judicial maneuvers against anti-fascists in Germany. Investigators there are speaking widely of the existence of a veritable pan-European crime syndicate that is supposedly responsible for dozens of actions against neo-Nazi groups and militants over the years. When young Lina Engel was convicted by a Dresden court in June 2023, the judge, after stressing that taking justice into one's own hands is undoubtedly illegal, did not fail to point out that by contrast, the investigations into the new fascist groups are mostly characterized by “deplorable shortcomings.”
In recent days, on a regional train in Weimar, police in Saxony arrested Johann Guntermann, considered one of the leaders of the group that German investigators have dubbed the “Hammer Gang.” Guntermann, 31, had been a fugitive since 2020 after serving 19 months in prison for several counts of assault, with an outstanding €10,000 bounty for information leading to his capture.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/antifa-fermato-a-parigi-lungheria-lo-cerca on 2024-11-19