Georgia uses ‘political fear-mongering’ in efforts to charge Cop City protesters

State and federal authorities in Georgia are deploying “political fear-mongering” in recent attempts to prosecute Atlanta residents linked to a protest movement against a police and fire department training center also known as Cop City.

The center is being built on a 171-acre footprint in a forest south-east of Atlanta. Opposition to the project has come from a wide range of local and national supporters and is centered on concerns over police militarization and clearing forests in an era of climate crisis. Atlanta police say the center is needed for “world-class” training.

Related: Atlanta Police Foundation ignored Cop City records requests, lawsuit claims

The fight against Cop City also attracted national and global headlines after police shot and killed one environmental protester at a campsite in a public park 18 January, 2023 – the first such incident of its kind in US history. But the legal and political crackdown on protesters has also been intense.

In the last week, federal investigators and a state prosecutor tried to convince a judge at a hearing to impose a $2m bond against John Mazurek, accused of committing arson against police motorcycles in July – and that the 31-year-old carpenter was at risk of fleeing to Mexico to take refuge among Indigenous communities in southern Mexico.

Meanwhile, in a separate incident, two protesters who climbed a crane at a midtown Atlanta Brassfield & Gorrie construction site, the main company building the training center, were charged with felony false imprisonment. That is a “trumped-up charge” based on the false claim that the crane’s operator couldn’t leave the site, said Tim Franzen, Atlanta economic justice program director at the American Friends Service Committee, who was on the scene.

These and other recent details are firsts in the criminal justice system’s ongoing response to a broad-based movement now in its fourth year.

Mazurek was ultimately released Sunday on $75,000 bond, after being held in jail since his 8 February arrest during Swat-style raids carried out on three Atlanta houses, including one Mazurek owns. The raids were the first tied to the movement against the training center in which the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco and Explosives (ATF) played a prominent role.

They came after weeks of Atlanta officials promoting a campaign – including a $200,000 reward – to catch activists linked to arson against construction and police equipment, all the while activists committed more acts of sabotage, alternating with nonviolent, civil disobedience.

For nearly 30 minutes of Mazurek’s bond hearing last week, Fulton county assistant district attorney George Jenkins centered on the defendant’s trip late last year to participate in events observing the 30th anniversary of the Zapatista uprising, in which indigenous activists in Chiapas, Mexico, protested current and historic abuses of their communities.

Jenkins attempted to put forward the idea that the Zapatistas were still a dangerous armed force and somehow Mazurek would flee to Chiapas to seek refuge.

Defense attorney Lauren Brown called academic Margaret Cerullo, recently retired from teaching at Hampshire College after 46 years, as a witness. She’s led students on field trips to Chiapas since 2001, was at last year’s ceremonies, and knows Mazurek.

The academic pointed out that the Zapatistas stopped any pretense of armed resistance after only 12 days in 1994, and had “not fired a single shot since”. Jenkins countered: “How do you know?” – referring to events widely observed by international journalists and extensively documented by historians and others.

At one point, the prosecutor asked Cerullo: “Hypothetically, if a fugitive were to be in the [Chiapas] region, could the state seize them?” Her answer: “In 30 years, I’ve never heard of anything like that.”

Jenkins insisted: Mazurek “can flee to that location … [and] without starting a war, how could we achieve bringing his body to court?”

Related: Georgia police and FBI conduct Swat-style raids on ‘Cop City’ activists’ homes

Afterward, Cerullo told the Guardian: “I didn’t understand what the state was driving at … it was like two ships passing in the night … [like] they were trying to construct the biography of a terrorist, with the Zapatistas as a lawless, guerrilla group as one more element in a radicalized young man capable of doing harm.”

The state argued against letting Mazurek out of jail, but recommended a $2m bond if Fulton county Judge Emily Richmond released him.

Marlon Kautz, organizer at the Atlanta Solidarity Fund – a bail and legal defense fund – described the prosecutor’s approach as “trying to keep activists locked up as long as possible. The $2m was a number to try and make sure he wasn’t released – based on vague, political fear-mongering.”

Kautz, who was arrested in May 2023 and is one of 61 people facing unprecedented conspiracy, or Rico charges in connection with Cop City, described the state’s approach to the hearing as “using [Mazurek’s] political associations and views against him”.

Mazurek’s bond conditions include surrendering his passport, 24-hour house arrest and being prohibited from association with anyone in what the state refers to as “Defend the Atlanta Forest”, a phrase taken from social media, and not an actual group. Notably, they allow him to associate with his fiancee but also prohibit her from engaging in activism against Cop City.

“Prosecutors are using the bail system as a weapon against a political movement,” Kautz said.

Tim Franzen was at the recent action in which activists attached themselves to a crane, unfurling a banner saying: “Stop Cop City”. He said he tried to tell Atlanta police on the scene that the crane operator could safely climb down a ladder, as the activists were “acting in the spirit of nonviolence, and wanted everyone to be safe”. These conversations are captured on police body cams, he added.

Instead, he said, police told the construction worker to stay put during the four-plus hours it took them to remove the protesters – and then charged them with felony false imprisonment.

Franzen said he had never seen these charges given to nonviolent protesters in Atlanta in 16 years of community organizing with AFSC, a Quaker social justice group.

“They’re trumped-up … and clearly punitive, using the law for political reasons,” he said.