The solitary confinement system there was developed on military command in a special research project at the University of Hamburg, which saw some ot the following things for these prisoners:

• Strip searched several times a day.
• Not hearing or speaking a single word for days.
• Lights left on all night.
• Cells being ransacked every day.
• No clothing allowed of one's own.
• One visit lasting 2 hours per month, done so behind glass, and every word spoken during it, written down.
• A guard looking in every 3 minutes and writing down what is occurring in the cell.

When some of the people were arrested, they were shot, and have had to live in the "hole" with these injuries. The effects of doing the hunger strikes caused the brain heart, kidneys, and liver to begin malfunctioning. Just being in the "hole" over a prolonged time caused them to be disoriented, physically exhausted and have difficulty speaking, thinking and feeling. Yet, the officials still wanted these prisoners to be able to participate in their trials.

Activists in Germany were visibly happy at the thousands of former political prisoners from all over the world and activists that attended the International Political Prisoners Conference in Berlin, 1999, because they would again be able to focus attention and inform people about the plight of political prisoners behind bars in Germany. The mother of one such prisoner spoke at an event at the Conference, touchingly thanking those in attendance for remembering her child. The urgent demand is for the immediate release of Irmgard Moller and the others who are sick!

To contact the Solidarity Committee, write:

TazBerlin c/o "Briefs aus dem Knast",
Kochstrasser 18,W-1000,
Berlin 61, Germany

"We know ample to say about the isolation. For most of our time in prison she was our speechless and unsubstantial counterpart. Torture used to be violent, today it is the manufactured congealment of life, the social and sensual vacuum, the attempt to create a nonentity architecturally, that drains the vitality like a pump draws water from a well. The attempt to seal the human being, to kill the senses, to extinguish his experiences of life, at first from the outside, but then to conquer the introspective vigour, to create a hell of solitude, making language senseless and reflection an anguish. To expose the human being to an infinite exhaustion was not just the consequence, it was the conscientiously planned intention."

Karl-Heinz Dellwo, prisoner from the RAF, imprisoned for 18 years.

Gerd Klusmeyer, lawyer (Hannover). 23 years of solitary confinement and special measures against political prisoners in Germany.

"It is not easy for me to talk about 23 years of special conditions and measures against political prisoners, not because I would not have enough information...What makes it difficult is that I am not talking about numbers but about human beings...I am talking about 10 hunger strikes and which the prisoner fought against solitary coniinement. Hunger strikes in the course of which people have died..."

Irmgard Moller is in prison now for 21 years. Of all political and revolutionary prisoners in Germany she is imprisoned for the longest lime and no social prisoner in Germany is in custody for appmximately as many years. Mobilized and decisively influenced as a student in Munich by the student revolt of 1967/68 and the Vietnam War Irmgard Moller decided to take part in the armed struggle and joined the RAF (Red Army Faction). She was arrested on July 8, 1972 in Offenbach, within only a few months nearly the whole goup was arrested. The program for the prisoners is fixed by the Supreme Federal Court: 24 hours of isolation a day.

"I was arrested in November 1982. From them til the begining of 1984 I was totally isolated. The first three weeks in Hamburg-Holstenglacis. The next three weeks in Frankenthal. From then til the beginning of 1984 in Straubing. The "segregation" was complete. When my trial ended in the autumn of 1985 I stayed in Stammheim although the prison is only for prisoners in remand. It is however one of the few prisons in which complete isolation can be realized.

"I was arrested in Frankfurt in June 1979. Entering a flat I was received with the shout "hands up!" and a shot in the head. I was lying on the floor, unable to move but not unconscious...During our hunger strike in 1978 I fell into a coma on the sixty-third or sixty-fourth day. The next morning I realized that I was in a hospital outside the prison. Afterwards I had to learn to walk again but the situation has stayed that way, that I feel like a drunkard moving on shaky ground."

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  1. Time is no inexhaustible resource re: German Political Prisoners
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• Writings by and about Standing Deer, Native American Political Prisoner and Spiritual Activist