On January 26, he fell in the shower and broke his nose, “he can’t take it anymore to go out and walk in the air, he’s too weak,” said his defender, the lawyer Flavio Rossi Albertini. Alfred Cospito, 55 years old, anarchist, Fai-Fri ideologist, is detained under the 41 bis regime in the Sassari prison and has been on hunger strike since October: for 101 days. His conditions are the engine of anarchist mobilization, with attacks and demonstrations going around the world. Two attacks hit Italian diplomatic offices in Berlin and Barcelona. The Foreign Ministry explained in a note that “unidentified people broke the window of the building where the consulate general is located in Barcelona, smearing a wall of the entrance to the building” and that, in Berlin, “the car with diplomatic number plate of a diplomatic official in service at the Italian embassy”. The track followed – as in the case of the attack on Susanna Schlein, first councilor of the Italian Embassy in Greece – is that of the protests against the harsh prison in Cospito, detained for 6 years in Sassari under a high security regime and for the which since last April the 41 bis.
Who is (and of what is accused) Alfredo Cospito
Cospito has been in prison for 10 years for the wounding of the CEO of Ansaldo Nucleare, Roberto Adinolfi, which occurred in 2012. Now he is also serving another 20-year sentence for some attacks – the disputed charge is that of political massacre – for directing the informal anarchist federation, considered by the judges to be a criminal association with terrorism purposes. In 2006 Cospito and other anarchists allegedly placed two bombs in two bins in front of the entrance to the barracks at the Carabinieri school of Fossano. The explosion had caused neither deaths nor injuries. According to the investigators, the first bomb should have attracted the forces, while the second should have hit them.
The contested crime was massacre, but for the Court of Cassation – which ordered the recalculation of the sentence in the appeal – it is a question of political massacre, which foresees life imprisonment as the maximum penalty and falls within the impedimental crimes: if the prisoner does not collaborate with the judiciary, no benefits are foreseen. In this case, the Consulta must establish whether it is possible to apply the mitigating factor due to the tenuous nature of the fact.
41 bis and the hunger strike
Since May 4, 2022, Cospito has been subjected to a harsh prison regime: the measure has been aggravated by the fact that there have been exchanges of letters with other anarchists and also the publication of writings in area magazines. During the trial against him, Cospito declared: «In addition to the life imprisonment, given that from prison I continued to write and collaborate in the anarchist press, it was decided to shut my mouth forever with the 41 bis». He then explained that he will continue the hunger strike for the abolition of 41 bis and the impediment to life imprisonment.
