Alfredo Cospito: who is the anarchist at 41-bis

The story of the hunger strike by Alfred Cospitothe only person held at the 41-bis for political reasons, he brought the use of the harsh prison regime back to the center of public debate, to which he was convicted of a massacre that did not cause any deaths or injuries. It is a discussion about the proportionality of the penalty and the possibility that his sentence could turn into a life sentence, with which he would lose any possibility of accessing penitentiary benefits.

The events that lead Cospito to prison begin in 2012. Those were the years of the policies of austerity by Mario Monti after the record spread. Peak years of individual and collective layoffs, when from 2011 to 2012 are just under 2 million male and female workers were left behindas he reports Confindustria.

With Alfredo Cospito, the Italian state is transforming hard prison into the death penalty

The anarchist militant, detained in 41 bis for a massacre that never took place, is dying from a hunger strike. But the State does not intervene and indeed forbids talking about the case

The convictions

And it was precisely in 2012, on May 7, that Cospito attacked Roberto Adinolfi, the CEO of Ansaldo Nuclear since 2007, shooting him in the calf. For that ambush, the anarchist is sentenced to ten years and eight months in prison in 2013. But while he was already in prison, he was accused of having planted, on the night between 2 and 3 June 2006, two homemade bombs at low potential in a dumpster near the police school in Fossano, in the province of Cuneo. Their explosion caused neither deaths nor injuries.

For this new charge, Cospito was sentenced to others 20 years in prison for common massacre, being placed in the high-security penitentiary circuit provided for associative crimes, with very strict surveillance but the guarantee of some rights, such as the possibility of writing publications. However, in 2022, after six years of detention, under the request of the Attorney General, i.e. the prosecution, the Court of Cassation has decided that Cospito must be tried for the crime of “political massacre”.

Matteo Messina Denaro will go to L’Aquila in 41-bis: what hard prison is

The penitentiary regime establishing the so-called “hard prison” was born as a temporary measure before the mafia massacres of 1992 and 1993

At 41-bis

A much more serious crime that calls into question the “state security”based on theitem 285 of the penal code, which provides for life imprisonment even if the attack did not cause any deaths or injuries and provides for the possibility that this could be transformed into an impediment to life imprisonment. A very hard and little used choice, given that Article 285 was not applied neither for the massacres of Capaci and via d’Amelio, nor for that of the Bologna stationwhere 80 people were murdered.

For this reason, without having caused any deaths, for an explosion that took place in the middle of the night and in a deserted place, Cospito is sentenced directly to 41-bis and runs the risk of his sentence being turned into life imprisonment. This is because, although Cospito himself defines himself as a individualist anarchist and is part of the informal anarchist federation-International Revolutionary Front (FAI-FRI), a horizontal organization made up of cells that act completely autonomously in various countries, the judges equated the Fai-Fri to a vertical and hierarchical structure such as organized crime of the mafia typeheaded by Cospito.

An equation in direct contrast to the very definition of anarchist organization, but that it was the only one capable of justifying the 41-bis regimeenvisaged for mafia-type crimes in such a way as to prevent mafia bosses from communicating with their subordinates and forcing them to collaborate with justice to get out of it.

Thus, a 55 years oldlast October 19, Cospito began a long hunger strike which still lasts today. A protest against the use of the 41-bis and life imprisonment, accompanied by an appeal presented to the Court of Cassation. The hearing was initially scheduled for next April 20, but brought forward to March 7, after which, as reported HandleDr. Angelica Milia, who follows the anarchist, explained that Cospito could die before April 20 if he were to continue with his hunger strike.