Zone A Défendre
Tritons crété-e-s contre béton armé

Home > Campaign News > Attempt to recruit a mole in the woods

Attempt to recruit a mole in the woods

Sunday 1 January 2012

All the versions of this article: [English] [français]

For a telephone and some peanuts, NDDL, Oct-Nov

They took us for greens?

In a suburb of Nantes (15km in the direction of la ZAD) at the end of October, two people on bikes got stopped by a police car and an unmarked cop car. This was on the same day that Vinci’s offices were ’visited’ by around 50 people and the police straight away said that the people stopped were squatters and that they were involved in the action that afternoon against Vinci.

In the street the cops pulled out a topographic map of La ZAD and asked the people to point out where they live within the occupied zone. The people gave their identities but refused to answer any other questions. They were seperated and taken to the police station in Sautron. The French speaking person was dealt with entirely by a civil cop (on the street, in the police station and during the transport to and from where they were stopped) while the other only spoke to the Gendarmes.

In the station the civil cop (local undercover working on the ZAD? Member of a special team coming from elsewhere?) continues to ask little questions, not about la ZAD or specific people, but to try to start a conversation- ’how long have you been here?’, ’where do you live?’, ’do your parents know you’re here?’ etc.

A cop comes in and interupts his monologue saying: “We know you’ve been on la ZAD since May” and the one ’unlike the others’ tries to provoke a reaction by threatening: “You’re so young, this will destroy your life”, “you were on this action earlier, you could be prosecuted for the crimes of the group” and “if you don’t cooperate I will leave you with the gendarmes (you will stay under arrest longer). He lets to believe that he can help the person with material and judicial problems if they cooperate.

Just before leaving the police station (after 1 hour of ID control) and before embarking the car to be brought back to their bikes, super cop gives a phone number and office hours to call back the next day repeating that if they cooperate they will set them up with a telephone and money (“like this you can join us if you need us”). In the car, he makes sure she has enough money to call and tries to threathen once more “if you don’t, I will destroy your life and it won’t be possible anymore to live in and squat in the area”. (without and further follow up nor from the cops, nor from the comrade who didn’t call)

One of the elements used by the cops to get cooperation during this id control is affirming that they know that this person has been around for several months even though they had never been controlled before (to make it clear they know them and have information about them). It is good to prepare for this kind of coersion because the pigs regularily take pictures on the ZAD (in helicopter or civil car) and a trombinoscope with pictures of people related to this struggle exists since several years (pictures and names, collected by the political police and by ID controls). This trombinoscope has been seen in the police stations around and during some bigger operations on the ZAD (like drillings). In the police station of Sautron other comrades have been confronted with one cop “physionomist” who seems to have been formed to recognise and remember faces, names and CV’s of people linked to this struggle. The fact of linking the pictures of this trombinoscope of people controlled together or spotted together allows the cops later on to find all the moments when they have seen a person afterwards once they have found their real identity.

Locally it is not the only history like this and the cops usually seem interested in young people or people with legal trouble. Whether or not we really have legal trouble, they will often say so just in order to pressure us into giving them information which will really be used against us or others. Anyway there is no such thing as innocent conversation with the cops. One of the most certain ways not to give them information about ourselves or others is not to answer their questions whether it is during arrest, or when we are called as a withness. It is not obligatory to follow up an invitation to come to the police station. In the worst case the cops will come to get us, in the best they drop the case. In certain cases, taking this decision collectively has helped people who felt like they were in danger or who were afraid of what they could say, those who didn’t want to risk giving their DNA to the cops. If we don’t want to decline their invitation, which can happen, because we want to know what they are after, it is important to prepare this together and foresee their possible threats and the possibility of being arrested.

Here and elsewhere the cops have tried to recruit informers to improve their view on the movement. It is valid in different scenes whether political activism or various kind of traffic... This new attempt ressembles the one described in Lyon (« 22 V’la la SDAT ») or Paris (« Quand la brigade criminelle cherche à acheter un camarade », « https://nantes.indymedia.org/article/24409 »), or Brussels (« ils cherchent des mouchards, ils n’auront que des mollards »)...

In the bigger picture this problem goes beyond informers on the inside, as has been documented recently; state and corporate infiltrators have been discovered in movements across europe (and of course there will be many that haven’t been discovered). The benefit of inserting people inside a movement is on the long term to better understand tendencies and groups inside a mass of individuals to be able to make a faster analysis of who might have commited a specific attack and also to have a finer long range view of who does what.

Without giving in to paranoia, and even though at times we don’t feel directly targetted by repression, it is indispensible to have practices which make their work harder in order to protect our friendships and struggles. Because we can never be totally sure they aren’t present, either physically or by means of gadgets (microphones, cameras, gps...) and so we wouldn’t give them helpful information. We make their work more difficult by making public their attempts (failed or otherwise) to recruit informers, by not giving more information than necessary, by not speaking whereever (places potentially under surveillance, telephones) or however about anything that can attract their attention (actions or writings) when it concerns ourselves, or even worse, other people and while being aware of what we allow to be said in our presence...

Without forgetting that we don’t control everything and that our precautions will never suffice.

Renversons l’existant !

(http://grenoble.indymedia.org/2011-01-26-Paris-Quand-la-brigade-criminelle)

NdT: See the recent case of Mark Kennedy/Stone, Securitas infiltrating AntiRep and Attac (an anti-globalisation group, on behalf of Nestlé) in Switzerland and the German state sending undercover officers to the G8 mobilisations in the UK are just a few examples. As always, there is a need to be security conscious when discussing your actions or those of others, don’t share information unless the people you’re sharing it with absolutely need to know it. It’s better to be careful than caught and we should always be looking to creating a security culture within our movements.