Beset by the problems in the Italian recovery plan and by the incendiary statements of its ministers - one of them, the Minister of Agriculture, this week rescued the theory of "ethnic replacement" -, the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, it has not been a good week to celebrate six months in power. Another piece of news that has gone unnoticed must not have left her indifferent: Alfredo Cospito, the anarchist prisoner who sent shockwaves through the State, has interrupted his hunger strike after six months in protest against the harsh regime of isolation jailer
Alfredo Cospito, 55, is sentenced to twenty years in prison for an attack and had been on hunger strike since October 20 against the strict isolation regime 41 Bis, created for the most dangerous mobsters, in which is submitted since last year. His health conditions have worsened to the point that he has lost 50 kilos and has been forced to be admitted to the San Paolo hospital in Milan since the beginning of March. In fact, he was transferred from the Sardinian prison of Sàsser to another Milanese center with the availability of a clinical space necessary in case of emergency, as it ended up being.
The decision, his lawyers have argued, comes after the Constitutional Court ruled in favor of the prisoner and considered it illegitimate not to take into account eventual mitigating circumstances for one of the cases for which he is serving a sentence, the 2006 attack on a carabinieri school in Fossano, Piedmont, with homemade bombs that caused no fatalities. He was also sentenced to nine years in prison for having shot the director of a nuclear energy company in Genoa in 2012.
Cospito entered the harsh 41 Bis prison system in May 2022. Under these conditions, criticized by humanitarian organizations, the prisoners live in complete isolation. They do not have access to common areas and books and magazines are limited. Only in some specific cases are they allowed to walk outside for two hours, supervised by officers. In some cases they can receive one visit a month from relatives, but separated by a glass, and their correspondence is reviewed. The goal is that mobsters cannot continue to take the reigns of their clans.
The case of Cospito, and his protest, motivated a huge debate about these prison conditions to which more than 700 people are subjected, almost half sentenced to life imprisonment. Four of them – like the anarchist leader – live it, not because they belong to organized crime, but on the basis of anti-terrorism. The other three belonged to the Red Brigades. "The problem with 41 Bis is that it was born as an exceptional measure that was supposed to last a few years, but in 2002 it became an effective regime with the purpose of interrupting communications between subjects of various organizations inside the prisons For those who do not have a life sentence, it can be absurd because it is possible for a person to be sentenced for ten years under this regime and then return to the street", explains Mauro Palma, guarantor of detainees in Italy.
At the end of February, the Supreme Court decided to keep him in solitary confinement, against the appeal of his lawyers, and in line with the thinking of Meloni's Minister of Justice, former magistrate Carlo Nordio, who considered him "socially dangerous" and that has made it very clear that 41 Bis "does not touch". The protests of his followers led to a long queue, with several anarchist attacks that reached the Italian consulate in Barcelona. The assailants broke into a building by breaking a window and painted a mural in Subirachs that read "Murderous Italian State" and "Cospito Freedom".
The security forces were on alert especially for the possibility that Cospito, who in the last few days had already relaxed his hunger strike and started drinking milk, could end up becoming a martyr of anarchism. In Berlin, the car of the first counselor of the Italian embassy was set on fire, the same thing that happened in Athens in December, where the target was the diplomatic sister of the current leader of the Italian Democratic Party, Elly Schlein. The heated discussion reached Parliament, where the opposition demanded the resignation of Brothers of Italy deputy Giovanni Donzelli, vice-chairman of the committee that controls the intelligence services, for having revealed confidential information when he declared that the mafia was using Cospito to free hundreds of bosses from the strict prison regime and that the anarchist had held talks with mafia bosses.
