Marco Camenisch
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Marco Camenisch is a Swiss anarchist and environmental activist. He is currently in prison for murdering a border guard in Brusio, Switzerland.[1]
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[edit] Early life
Camenisch was born on January 21, 1952 in Schiers, Switzerland and raised in a middle-class home in canton Graubünden. He dropped out of high school because he felt the teachings were elitist. During his apprenticeship as a farmer at the Plantahof school, he opposed the use of chemical fertilizers in farming. Marco became a mountaineer but soon started to believe that his political aims could not be achieved unless he became more direct in his activism.
[edit] Activism
In the late 1970s Camenisch was involved in local opposition against the nuclear power industry. In Switzerland, as in other countries too, the movement against nuclear power plants resorted to means of direct action: cutting down electrical pylons, sabotage against power stations, and actions against leaders of the nuclear industry.
In January 1980, Camenisch and other activists were arrested for sabotaging a pylon and a power station of NOK (Nordostschweizer Kraftwerke = "Northeast Swiss Power Stations") at Bad Ragaz. After spending a year free on bail, the court of Canton in Chur and Graubünden sentenced Camenisch to 10 years in prison. A co-defendant was sentenced to 7.5 years. At the trial Camenisch refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the court or cooperate with its procedures. In court he read a statement in which he connected direct actions as a protest against the enviornmental degradation caused by energy industry and with the struggle against the capitalist social order.
[edit] Escape
In December 1981 he escaped from Regensdorf prison near Zürich, along with 5 other prisoners. During the melée a prison guard was shot and killed, and another was seriously injured. Camenisch claimed he hadn't been part of the group which committed the shootings. After the escape he spent 10 years living in hiding. In 1989, Swiss federal police and media claimed he was responsible for killing of Swiss border police officer Kurt Moser at Brusio.[citation needed] After a shootout with the Carabinieri, he was arrested in November 1992 in Tuscany, Italy. The Italian Court of Massa Carrara sentenced him to 12 years for assault and sabotage of electrical of pylons. He served 9 of those years while in solitary confinement in a maximum-security prison.
In April 2002 Camenisch was extradited to Switzerland and transferred to a prison in Pfäffikon near Zürich. In January 2003, after a hunger strike against the conditions of imprisonment he was suffering, he was transferred to a prison in Chur with better conditions. Recently the Swiss government transferred him back to Pfäffikon. In July 2004 he was sentenced to 17 years in prison for the murder of Kurt Moser. However, in November 2006 the Federal Supreme Court nullified this sentence on the basis that the sum of the two prison terms would exceed the maximum of 20 years set by Swiss law. On March 13th the sentence was therefore reduced to 8 years.
Camenisch has maintained his political beliefs during his time in prison, and he has remained a political activist.
