The very choice of this courtroom (justified many times with the lack of big courtrooms, and eventually revealing itself for the clear political choice that it was) proves it. [1] The heavy militarization of the courtroom, the heavy controls and searches at the entrance, the registration (and the duplication) of the identity documents of the audience are nothing but expedients to create a mood of social dangerousness around the NO TAV movement devoted to condition public opinion about the legitimacy of increasingly heavier measures. It it not by any chance that the ordinary resistance charges were switched to those of terrorism.

The admission as plaintiffs of no less than three ministries – interior, defence and economy – an unprecedented occurrence in front of simple charges of resistance and injuries, proves how this mood, purpose-made by the Turinese public prosecutor, may find in the tribunal its legitimacy and the blessing of the various governments of the TAV.

At the opposite, the non-admission – as witnesses of the defendant – of the NO TAV technicians is yet another proof of the intention of leading the trial on preset tracks; that is, presenting what happened during the days of 2011 June 27 and July 3 extracting it from any real context and without trying at all to understand the motivations and the rationale of the indicted. The NO TAV movement is put under trial, but without ever mentioning the TAV at all.

The very manner in which the defendants’ rights are regulated and limited – the repeated rejection of any defendant request, the impossibility to know (and therefore to be able to issue a subpoena against) the names of the supervisors of security forces in the days for which we are accused, the impossibility of counter-questioning the witnesses of the prosecution about topics on which the public prosecutors did not ask questions already, the impossibility of assessing the reliability of the witnesses in the case of police agents resorting to the same phrases in drawing up service reports – are to us the proof that everything has been already decided and the hearing represents only a necessary procedural formality.

The very urgency with which they want to get to the verdict, the pace imposed by the tribunal – with back-breaking hearings lasting several hours, interlarded only with a most short lunch break, and held at an already heavy weekly pace (obtained only after the unanimous protest of the defence attorneys, unavailable to accept two hearings per week) – represent a serious impediment to exerting our right of defence.

The repeated ban by the tribunal to hear the indicted – by almost always denying them the chance to speak and inviting the carabinieri to expel them – are the blatant proof of how the indicted are not considered as supporting actors of the trial but simple walk-ons, necessary but without rights, useful only to the progression of the performance.

For these reasons we came to the conclusion that any generous effort from our defence attorneys will always be frustrated by the hostile mood that permeates this courtroom.

We thought that the manner in which the Turinese public prosecutor sets up its own inquiries against the NO TAV movement could be freely called into question during the hearings by our defence attorneys.

We thought to be put on trial for some alleged crimes, but we realized – during the lawsuit – that we are put on trial not for what we may have done, but for what we are.

We thought to have a normal trial in a normal courthouse, but it seems to us – as NO TAVs – to be put under a lawsuit that reveals itself as being more and more “special”.

For these reasons, we decided today to defect this trial.

We abandon this courtroom, leaving you free to experiment new methods of legal procedure to be used against the NO TAV movement, and we leave for Val Clarea, the iconic place of our resistance to the devastation of Val Susa, to prove once again our determination and our commitment in this struggle.

[1] The courtroom in which the NO TAV trial took place, located in the Vallette jail, was previously used by the Turinese judiciary for important mafia and armed struggle trials.