Before the judges and jury make their decision, Aris made this political statement:
“In your insistent question for my position concerning the armed struggle, the answer that you expect is the statement of loyalty. A statement of loyalty to urban order and its representatives. This you will never receive from me. I repeat, therefore, the position that I had promoted in my testimony. In my family and political environment, Marx’s quote from the Communist Manifesto that "communists consider unworthy of them to hide their objectives for the violent inversion of the capitalist system" was a value code.
There is something worse than prison. The absence of dignity. We come from a tradition of struggle that goes deep into the past and goes ahead impetuously to the future. And this we will not throw away like an empty shirt.”