Kaspar Stratta On The Legal Aid Strike: Holding Space With One of Our Political Prisoners

This is part 1 of a series of articles interviewing Kaspar.

Kaspar is one of three actionists who stormed Shannon Airport on the 22nd of November 2025 to disrupt a US warplane that was using the airport as a refuelling station on its way to deliver the mechanised force of imperial war and extermination.

Kaspar has since been held on bail awaiting trial. An Aontacht reporter took comment from Kaspar regarding the state of his case, and his experiences of the legal aid strike:

I really do support the strikes, a stand has to be taken. But the solicitors aren't the most vulnerable party in this. It's those who are being persecuted. It's those who are having harsh bail conditions set on them who will have no choice but to maybe pay legal fees. If you can’t afford legal fees of up to 30 grand, you’d have to represent yourself.

This moment seems to indicate 1) the need for legal aid and that 2) the Shannon actionists have Jim O'Callaghan's attention as he instigates bureaucratic disputes with the legal aid solicitors.

Our next date is the 13th of November. And we are supposed to be for... kind of setting a date for the trial, whether or not that'll actually happen, or if it'll just be like kicked further down the line. We don't know. There's a million and one predictions you have when it comes into going to court. Anything could happen. Yeah, it's quite stressful kind of having the weight of it and still not fully grasping what it actually means. But yeah, so we might start trial. And the reason why we aren't sure that we might have a new trial date is the current judge presiding over Ennis. He's refusing to hear out cases for the circuit court, regarding Shannon and the actions that have been happening over there.

Kaspar then lays out his understanding of legal aid from experiencing it as a political prisoner of the Irish Free State:

I didn't know about how legal aid works? So legal aid is an agreement that you enter between your solicitor and the court building and the judge. So like the solicitor asks permission to accept legal aid from the State and the judge will either grant that or not, typically they do, 'cause why the fuck wouldn’t they? And then that's set about. But if a solicitor is striking, they can't go to the court building to ask that. They can't, you can only then make changes in your bail, with what the prosecutors agree with. So you can't then make changes, like it's so much harder to actually advocate for clients and exchanges.

Kaspar further elaborates on his experience with how the strike and austerity in the justice system have affected the kind of legal representation that he is able to receive from his legal aid solicitor in a strained environment, where legal aid solicitors are already oversubscribed.

When asked if he was able to exercise any meaningful agency in the legal process, he said:

That's not something that's possible with my current solicitor... if she doesn't have time, she doesn't talk to us. It's very hard to get like emails back. But that unfortunately now isn't just her. It's been very hard to figure things out, because there's currently legal aid strikes going on. For anyone who's not aware, Jim O'Callaghan in all of his dick face wisdom, decided to give a flat fee for solicitors and this is not just case by case, it's client by client, which is even fucking worse. I believe it was originally in a figure of like 400, and he's now increased that to 520, the wonderful bastard. The solicitors are currently on strike, which means they are refusing to show up in court buildings, to show the impact this will have, and strike how they can... and put pressure on the court buildings as well. This means it's very hard...

When asked about the emotional process of the court system and living under the persecution of a state that materially supports genocide, Kaspar Stratta had this to say:

God, [I've felt] fucking anything and everything... exhaustion, frustration, anger, fear, panic, you kind of just fucking get over it like um... the process of the court itself isn't new to me. One of the things that really woke me up to just how ineffective the State is to making progressive social change... [it] is showing up for court support and just sitting in that building listening to just gobshite... injustice after injustice for hours on end... so you kind of get used to that. I bring my sewing in, I'm making a wonderful jumper and that helps me kind of stay with focus on it... but a lot of frustration, a lot of just kind of helplessness, yeah like your faith kind of wanes a lot... I'm kind of just taking this in... Yeah, it's been hard.

I've come to my own kind of acceptance of it and my own, like, world view. Where I don't view – even if I get a guilty conviction and I'm put in prison – I don't view that as the end of my life. I definitely know if I am, it's gonna be a very, very hard thing to deal with, but I don't think it's, like, life over, then and done. And I'm kind of just mentally thinking, and preparing that... I'd rather prepare that I'm living my life at the moment as if I'm going to spend the rest of my 20s in prison, because I can't really deny that that's possible.

So yeah, it's kind of it's hard, it's kind of like you're grieving and kind of frustrated, a lot of the time you have... because it's finite and there's just more and more things keep happening and I feel like I'm stuck and I feel like I'm in a circle and it's hard to move forward. I also, I've been holding a lot of grief in my heart... for quite a while... and it's that grief that gave me the strength to take action against Shannon Airport because its fucking genocide! It's genocide... that there is something tangible here... so I kind of just feel insurmountable grief for so many things and then just the... I think whatever happens, I want some fucking answers. I wanted there to be answers and I want there to be stuff to be moved forward, through and past me. I want this to be like all protests, to be a vessel of change. And... terrified of just yeah realizing that a big part of this as well, is risking your life and the way you risk it, you're using this personal kind of like suffering of going through the court systems for inevitable aim, and change in other parts; and to expose the state in their own complicity and hopefully to use their own bureaucratic nightmares against them... in a way that they say 'we have to enact change' and enact this, use this thing slightly differently.

But it's kind of hard not to have a pit in your stomach when you think about the daunting processes because I was so bad at homework [laughs]. Let alone I feel like I'm getting a free legal education. Oh my god, you should see the amount of books I'm reading and it's so heavy, but yeah, I mostly feel fried. I feel... like the emotions are out there I kind of feel like I'm living a little bit in this bubble that's on my head like a fish bowl, and I just had the same couple thoughts swimming around and swimming around again um... 'Cause it's just, yeah.... it kind of feels like an insurmountable hill that you kind of can't get past. And it's because of how inaccessible it's structured.

One of my solicitors, she always talks about – you'll hear her mentioning – her secret codes all the time. She says this usually when her client is there, the prisoner is up on the screen and they're confused because everything moves so quickly. You don't really know what's happening. It's so disconnected from the people whose lives it impacts.

The judge is fucking hungry. He ruined someone's life. There's so many studies on this. The absolute lack of consent, lack of compassion, lack of understanding of circumstances in so many ways it's just... It really chews you up and just spits you out, like... you feel like you're taken for a ride every fucking time and it's hard to fight as hard as you can when you've got a sword [in] one hand [and] the rulebook in the other. Through the clinical languages, through just how much effort and money it takes and connections to have a legal background. There's so many hurdles that are just taken out of your hands.

Yeah, it's been a while since we've been in the court building, um and... I kind of don't miss the like, helpless frustration and boredom and anger you feel in that fucking building. I just, as soon as I step inside, my stomach just fucking turns and just... I can't help but think, in buildings like this, all around the world, how lives and generations are destroyed because a certain culture and class decides what is right and what's wrong, for their own self-interest. And that these court buildings are not just processes. They are incredibly unjust and they're using their own rules to their own advantage.

When asked about experiencing State persecution in the context of the housing crisis, Kaspar said:

So she [his solicitor] was explaining it to me that if I was put up in social housing, whoever runs the hostel can't consent to me being there. It has to be the owner... but it's very hard because, as most people know, the affordable housing in our cities is not the legal kind. It is the kind where the landlord is keeping it on the hush, and you have mold ta fuck, and there's just so many rooms and everything... and that's going to be impossible because of the way the gardaí can immobilize you with paperwork.

At first I was explained [to] that it was just the owner of the building, whose name they had to provide, they would also have to write and give their consent to the judge to me living there, knowing that I've been a very bad boy... and the court [presses] charges against me, and that I'm still allowed to live within their property, and also they have to show proof that they own it as well, and then they wanted to do a house visit as well! And then later on they were like, okay, cool, not enough, we want all of the names of the potential people who are living there, and it just kept... like, what I thought was one thing that I was asking from someone just suddenly kept snow-balling and just...it was so much, and it was such like an invasive thing... and because of the time pressure as well that was put on me, I didn't feel what was being asked, and I didn't feel like I had the choice, I just felt like I was being swept along for the ride, which is a feeling I feel so much when it comes to the legal processes.

And yeah, eventually just the person was like “listen I can't do this” um... which is so fair. Like it is a lot to ask from someone. I just kept having to have this invasion of privacy because again it feels like the State wants to punish not just me but all of those around me, all of those who choose to support me, who choose to support direct action, and this kind of protesting. Yeah, more deterrence tactics.

As the situation develops Aontacht will endeavor to stay up to date with Kaspar. It is this reporter's opinion that the injustices put upon him speak to the larger systemic injustices in a policing system that is made to do the dirty work of capital, United States imperialism and genocide.

From his vantage point of peril in service of disrupting these despicable systems, Kaspar has a valuable view inside the State's carceral machine for processing the bodies of the poor and those who hunger for justice.

We can not look away, free the Shannon actionists, and free Kaspar Stratta!