Renata Zelazna Charged With Attempted Murder On A Policeman

Renata Zelazna is a Polish anarchist and vegan that has been studying and
living in Holland. She is also a friend of many of us here because she spent
some time living in Brighton, England. We received a letter from her recently
detailing what has happened to her. The notes I made from her letter are
below.

We are going to write a letter appeal about her, send out more info and what
she needs done but I just wanted to send this out to people now to let people
know details ASAP. We'll make it all shorter but the detail here shows how bad
she's been treated.

Obviously she needs some good legal advice fast and people are looking into
getting her an account for money donations. If there is anyone on this forum
who is more local to the Netherlands who knows useful
institutions/organisations for legal advice etc. please let us know.

More updates to follow......

Thanks
Genea, Brighton ABC.

Info taken from a letter she wrote on 24/4/10:

Renata Zelazna
Penitentiare Inrichting Ter Peel
T.A.V. Renata Zelazna 7138606 cel 1/10
Paterstraat 4
5977 NM Evertsoord
Netherlands

Renata is Polish but has been living in Holland because she is studying there.
She had been on a holiday to Brighton and two days after returning had an
argument with some workers on a demolition site next door to her flat who had
been causing a nuisance ever since she moved in. She had complained about the
works next door many times, particularly about asbestos contamination and the
vibrations which had caused cracks to appear around the walls of her flat. She
was living in flat which was run by the Idealis who arrange student
accommodation, the building being demolished next door was also run by them.
After ignoring most of her complaints they eventually came to inspect the
cracks in her walls and said they would fix it. They never did and she spent
some time living in fear that the whole place would collapse on her head.

After driving back from Brighton she went straight into college for an exam
and then went home to see a new machine on the demolition site. A big sort of
sledge hammer or drill. There was a lot of noise and trembling and everything
in her flat shook. As all her previous complaints had been ignored she decided
to try something else. She went down to the work site and shouted at the
driver of the digger who didn't hear her because of the noise so she threw some mud
at the window. She tried to explain that these were student buildings, that the
builders were employed by the student Idealis and asked what were they doing
making this noise while students are trying to study for exams, why not the
previous week when there had been no classes and a lot of people were away.
The driver swung the arm of the machine around so that it almost hit her, which he
did on purpose. He then started digging again which made her loose her temper
so she threw a stone. Another builder then pushed her to the ground. She got
up and threw some more rubble and the operators said they were calling the
police. She said, “Good do that so I can complain about the nuisance”.

Renata went back home and a little while later there was a knock at her door.
She thought it was the builders who had come to cause more trouble, if she'd
thought it was the police she probably wouldn't have opened the door to her
flat. Preparing for an argument she opened the door and saw a big man in a
white shirt and thought he was the manager of the demolition site until she
saw a female police officer behind him and then noticed his badge. They said that
she was being arrested for destroying the machine. She couldn't believe they
were being serious, a few bits of rubble would have done nothing to such a big
machine. She explained that she was in the middle of cooking dinner and turned
around to deal with the food. The male police officer stepped in and took hold
of the wok, Renata took back the wok and tried to start cooking again and he
said “I will use violence”. He barged into her and she began to panic
because she had nowhere to escape. She grabbed the knife she had been using to
prepare her dinner and pointed it at him, trying to make him step back. She
did not try to stab him, she just wanted him to keep his hands off her, it was
survival instinct. He grabbed the hand with the knife and twisted it so that
it was pointed towards her abdomen and pushed her back almost causing her to fall
onto the blade. She was then pepper sprayed in the face.

They dragged her to the corridor and threw her onto her belly, hand cuffed her
and the male stood on her to prevent her from moving. Renata screamed and
neighbours came out but they were told to get back in. Then the female police
officer searched her flat without a warrant while she was held down. They
picked her up by the arms and trousers and carried her down the stairs head
first. They hesitated at the top of the stairs and she was so afraid at this
point she thought they would throw her down the stairs. In the squad car she
had to kneel on the floor with her arms handcuffed behind her back and head
between the seats. The male officer was behind her twisting the cuffs every
time she moved. She had trouble breathing because her head was pressed into
her chest and from the mucus and tears from the pepper spray. They shouted at her
not to spit. The male pulled her trousers down and she was just in her
knickers in front of him, exposed to him, and there was nothing she could do about it.

She was taken to a police station in Ede and told to stand up and walk inside.
The male pressed her feet against the car so that she couldn't stand up and
she lost a shoe trying to free her legs to stand up. They dragged her to a cell
being so brutal with the cuffs that she thought they would break her wrists.
She begged them to let her walk on her own but was ignored. In the cell they
took her trousers off completely and locked her up for two days. She had
bruising just above her pubic bone and had marks and a cut from the cuffs. She
was hardly given any water, none at all on the second day, and although she
told them she was vegan they kept throwing meat into her cell to torment her.
She pushed the meat back out the cell window when it was opened and they beat
her hands and pushed them back inside.

When Renata was arrested she was having her period, there was no toilet in her
cell and she was given no sanitary products. She had to go to the toilet on
her cell floor. When she asked for water they told her to “Fuck off”. As soon
as she was in the cell she asked to see a solicitor and asked for a woman. She
saw a female duty solicitor who was helpful and found her a support group for
vegans in prison. After two days in custody a judge came and she had a trial
through the cell window. Renata was sent to prison for attempted murder.

She was told to get dressed. She had taken her trousers and underwear off
because they were covered in blood from her period. She waited and no-one came
so she removed her blood stained clothes again and wrapped her self back in
the blanket. Then the cell door opened and a police man jumped on top of her. They
put a bag over her head nearly suffocating her, handcuffed her and put Velcro
tape around her legs. She thought at this point they would kill her. They
threw her into a car and started driving with the siren on. A male policeman said to
her, “You messed it up”. Renata asked if he was the policeman in her flat
which he said he was. She apologised to him and he took the bag off her head
and she saw it was not him. He said that if she promised to behave she could
walk into the prison. She said that she would so he took the tape off her
legs. Renata walked into the prison naked from the waste down and dripping with
blood.

She was put in a cell, this time with a toilet. They took her top and bra off
and gave her an awful dress, some water and Oxazepam (a benzodiazepine used
for the treatment of anxiety and insomnia and in the control of symptoms of
alcohol withdrawal). She was brought food the next day. She spent another 2 or 3 days
in isolation on suspicion of having tuberculosis because she was Polish. She
has not known anyone in Poland with TB and it's compulsory to get inoculations
for that, she still has the scars from it. She told them that X-rays cause
cancer and that she was very unhappy to have it done to her but she was forced
to have an X-ray of her chest to be allowed into the normal cells.

Now she is in the normal cells in pre-trial detention. She could get 6 years
upwards for attempted murder. She has missed her exams and lost her job. She
will now have to pay back her student grant and for the language course, both
were free if she kept attending, but she will now have to pay them back. There
are services to help people save their jobs and housing but since she is not
Dutch she does not qualify, although she was paying taxes in that country.

She had a very short court hearing recently for 15 minutes where she was not
told her sentence but told that she was a danger to the public and needed to
be locked up, that she caused a disturbance to public order.

Renata said in her letter, “He came into my home and threatened me with
violence. I picked up the knife without thinking about what I was doing. Do I
really deserve 6 years for trying to save my life? Is this justice? I received
a beating, I was starved, refused water, tormented, ridiculed, kept in
isolation, X-rayed and now locked up. When I am released I will have no
education, no where to go, I will be in debt, mentally disturbed and
physically destroyed. All because I wanted some peace and quiet in a flat I was paying a
lot of rent for. I have lost all hope, I look in the mirror and see death in
my eyes. I have lost weight. I'm just skin and bones. I don't know if I'm alive
any more”.