The anarchist who puts pressure on Giorgia Meloni

Alfredo Cospito is serving life in an Italian prison. In October he went on a hunger strike. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is therefore in a dilemma.

Isolation, monitoring of mail and all conversations, no contact with family members – all in a 3.75 square meter cell. The prisoners have to spend 22 hours a day there: the conditions of detention under Article “41-bis” of the Italian Penal Code are brutal. Actually, they are intended for high-ranking mafia sizes. This is to prevent them from continuing their criminal business from prison.

But the anarchist Alfredo Cospito is also in prison under these conditions. He was detained in 2014, since May 2022 he has been a prisoner under the conditions of Article 41-bis. Last October he went on a hunger strike that has now lasted 120 days. Cospito, who was born in 1967, has now lost 50 kilograms, and according to his lawyers he is now doing extremely poorly.

The strike is putting pressure on the government of post-fascist Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Of course, the state doesn’t want to risk a prisoner starving to death in its custody. On the other hand, Cospito is considered a terrorist in Italy – and Giorgia Meloni’s government does not want to negotiate with them. Not an easy situation – because the whole Alfredo Cospito case has explosive potential that could damage or even destroy the government.

But why is the imprisoned anarchist considered a terrorist? In 2012 he shot Roberto Adinolfi, head of the nuclear company Ansaldo Nucleare, three times in the knee. The anarchist confessed to the crime and was sentenced to ten years and eight months in prison.

Cospito is also accused of detonating two parcel bombs in front of a Carabinieri recruit school in 2006. He had denied this act, it could not be clearly proven to him. Nevertheless, he was initially sentenced to 20 years in prison.

In the spring of 2022, the Court of Cassation, Italy’s highest court, rated the bomb attack as an “attack against state security”. The sentence is drastic: life imprisonment with no chance of early release. In response to the verdict, former Justice Minister Marta Cartabia signed a decree imprisoning Cospito under the terms of Article 41-bis. A precedent, because the controversial article actually only concerns mafia sizes.

The coercive measures were justified by the fact that Cospito was the chief ideologue and leader of the anarchist group Federazione Anarchica Italiana / Fronte Rivoluzionario Internazionale (FAI/FRI), which the group immediately denied.

Cospito himself resists the attempt not only to lock him up for life, but also to silence him: “When it was seen that I was continuing to work for the anarchist press from prison, they decided to use Article ’41- shut up forever,” he said in early December in a letter that was smuggled out of prison.

Not only in Italy, but in many other countries, anarchist groups show solidarity with Cospito – and caused further attacks. On January 29, the car of an Italian diplomat caught fire in Berlin. In Barcelona, ​​unknown persons smashed a window of the Italian consulate general. The Italian consulates in Bolivia and Greece were also attacked and graffitied in solidarity with Cospito. There were demonstrations against his prison conditions in Switzerland, Chile, the USA and many other countries.

International solidarity with Cospito is putting pressure on the Italian government. However, Giorgia Meloni and her cabinet repeatedly state that they will not allow Cospito to be released from prison: “I found out about the health of the prisoner Cospito and ordered his transfer to a prison in Milan,” said the office of Justice Minister Carlo Nordio at the end of January. However, Cospito’s conditions of detention under Article 41-bis would not be eased.