and time was going by and nothing was happening I was expecting somebody to be stabbed but nothing happened and even when the time came for the guards to take people back to the cells people started going back up with no fuss just as usual and so everybody went back up and I went back up lagging behind talking to another comrade and I didn’t have the faintest idea that at that very moment a fuck-up like that was happening
I got back to my cell and it was just a few minutes after I got back to my cell when I heard shouts coming from the direction of the rotunda I should explain what the rotunda is the special section of the prison we were in was a small three-storey block ground floor first floor and second floor and each floor was split into two wings at the centre of these wings on every floor there were two gates and in between the two gates there was a space that was the rotunda the same rotunda where the stairs were and from there people dispersed into one wing or the other the right wing one side and the left wing the other side I was in the left wing of the top floor the second floor that is
on the first floor there were all the non-politicals and on the ground floor there were the so-called working prisoners the ones that carry out food distribution duties in the corridors and do the cleaning in the corridors and so on the top floor on the other hand held all the politicals there were sixty of us politicals and incidentally it’s worth mentioning that shortly before this there had arrived the overwhelming majority of prisoners both politicals and non-politicals who’d staged a very tough revolt in another special prison and who’d then been transferred it had been a very tough revolt there had been two dead two prisoners with a reputation as bastards had been killed and just about the whole prison had been wrecked and so now in ours the politicals’ floor was full there was no room at all to spare there were sixty of us and it was full up
I was at that time in a cell with four other comrades and I heard shouting coming from the rotunda very agitated shouting and I saw the guards who patrolled the corridor of our wing at first I saw them running towards the rotunda at the far end of the wing and everybody in the cells came to look through the bars separating them from the corridors and a moment later the guards came back at a run shouting and they started closing the armoured doors because the cells have a barred gate and in front of it they also have an armoured door and precisely because of the protests there’d been in that prison we’d won the right to keep the armoured doors open all day and have them closed only between eleven at night and seven in the morning
so this was in the afternoon the armoured doors were open and so the guards reacted that way as soon as they realized what was happening was that the guards in the rotunda were being seized by two comrades because at that time we came up the stairs in pairs which was later stopped so when those two comrades got up to the rotunda they brought out the knives they had on them and they seized the guards they seized them and threatened to kill them they got them to open no since the guards had the keys of the gates on them they removed them and themselves opened the two gates that led to the two wings the left wing on one side and the right wing on the other
and so the guards who happened to be in the two wings found the way closed off they found themselves closed in a trap because at one end of the corridor there was the gate to the rotunda with the comrades who had captured the guards and at the other end of the corridor were the big windows at the far end of the corridor and so there the guards were left with no way out they were scared stiff too because they had no idea how things would go so the thing they did instinctively because it’s probably what’s laid down in their rule-book is that in these cases they have to close the armoured doors and so all that occurred to them to do and all they did was to try and close the doors
and so they managed to get some doors closed no just one door they didn’t get any others closed because in their confusion in their fear they didn’t manage in time to get any others closed they didn’t manage to close them because the comrades who were in the cells immediately stuck brooms broom handles through the bars past the door between the bars and the door stopping the doors from closing you have to picture all this happening in a split second so they really only managed to close just one door there were others they tried to close or forgot about or didn’t make it in time to close the fact is that all the guards surrendered at once they all surrendered in wholesale terror
but in the meantime while those two comrades were taking the guards in the rotunda they were taking three or four guards I don’t know how many in the meantime it turned out that in the right wing I was in the left in a dormitory cell in the right wing the comrades had sawed through the bars there were eight comrades in that dormitory because then you could leave your cell for the midday meal to cook and eat together this was another thing we’d won with the protests there’d been in the months before in that prison and you could get together in a dormitory cell to eat along with other comrades and so at that time up to eight of us could be together in a dormitory
they’d sawed through the bars of the gate and by the time those two comrades seized the two guards in the rotunda they’d already sawed through them and were waiting for that moment they removed the bars of the dormitory cell and the eight of them went out then there were really ten prisoners who were out the eight from the dormitory and the two in the rotunda and that’s how they also got all the guards who were in the second floor corridor obviously I found all this out later because I was locked in my cell I was in the left wing and I saw nothing we just heard loud shouting we heard shouting and we just heard all this uproar the guards trying to close the armoured doors running up and down the shouting but it was all no more than a moment
what happened and what then became known later or at least in part because these stories can’t always be told in full was that very quickly the comrades who’d taken the guards came down with the keys they’d taken from the guards they opened the gate leading to the stairs and they went down to the first floor and they seized all the guards down there and in that way they opened the two wings of the first floor and then they began unlocking the cells of the non-politicals and so all the non-politicals came pouring out of the cells and then they too came up to the second floor and started unlocking all our cells as well
they didn’t go down to the ground floor because it couldn’t be defended like the upper floors and the working prisoners stayed there for the whole duration of the revolt cooped up in their wing between the two floors in revolt and the guards that were outside at this point I saw people wearing masks arriving in my wing they got to my cell and they unlocked every cell in the left wing they unlocked my cell too and then there was enormous confusion and some people told us there’s a revolt we’ve taken the guards we must keep calm put mattresses over the windows because they’re likely to fire teargas rockets into the cells and then everyone put mattresses over the windows and then we all poured out into the corridor
just at the same time as I went out of my cell into the corridor I heard a tremendous rumble an incredible bang what had happened was that a comrade who’d stayed on the first floor to keep watch had seen guards reaching the ground floor and trying to come up guards already turned out in full force so he’d thrown a few grams of plastic explosive but loose I mean not packed in a canister but just with the detonator and the fuse he threw this plastic purely to frighten them away in fact I don’t even think anyone was injured I’m not certain only in that enclosed space it made a terrific bang then the guards all ran away and from that moment the revolt was under way
7
I remember that when I was transferred to that special prison I was a bit scared just that name special prison scared me and the evening before I left I was up all night talking with my cell mates they realized I was frightened and they stayed awake all night with me to keep me company then there was the whole transfer trip which was very long the whole length of Italy chained up in that armoured van but I’d no sooner arrived at the special when that fear more or less went when I got there I was pretty astounded by the way that prison worked I hadn’t had any idea it was like that now that I’m describing it I realize that in fact the atmosphere there was tense to say the least there was enormous tension but on my arrival it looked to me like
