ATHENS
About 50 anarchists who had occupied the headquarters of Greece’s ruling SYRIZA Party in Athens in a protest over the controversial construction of high security prisons and new laws have left the building.
Their departure came on Monday a day after they launched the protest in support of calls for the abolition of "anti-terror" laws and hunger strikers' protests against conditions in new-style "C-type" high-security prisons.
SYRIZA staff were forced on Sunday to leave the building in the face of the action by the group members calling themselves "anti-government anarchists".
Security forces did not intervene against the anarchists occupying the building, but kept it surrounded.
The activists had draped banners from the building's balconies calling for anti-terror laws put in place in 2001 and 2004 to be scrapped along with the legal framework for the Type C prisons.
'Criminalize and destroy'
Under new proposals, news surveillance measures such as the installation of CCTV monitoring systems would be implemented in C prisons and type C cells would be constructed in prisons all over the country run by a special unit of the police and not by a judicial authority.
Retired high-ranking police officers would also be able to serve as directors for the first time in Greece's judicial history.
Newspaper To Vima reported prison inmates had called on the Justice Ministry to abolish the new type of prisons, arguing they would form the basis for the creation of a "Greek Guantanamo Bay ... a prison within a prison, without leave, without visits, without tomorrow…”.
The protesters also staged their occupation in support of calls for new laws to be scrapped which they say seek to criminalize and destroy political opposition.
They also called for the immediate release on health grounds of Savvas Xiros, convicted for his participation in the Revolutionary Organization 17 November, and protested against what they said was the criminalization of family members and relatives the members of the Revolutionary Organization.
