Source: Inferno Urbano
Via & translated by Act for freedom now!
Foligno: You bet we’ll remember, and how! About the 41 bis for Alfredo Cospito: Those who are responsible
YOU BET WE’LL REMEMBER, AND HOW!
ABOUT THE 41 BIS FOR ALFREDO COSPITO: THOSE WHO ARE RESPONSIBLE
In recent days, a media campaign of mystification and lies has been going on around the hunger strike that Alfredo Cospito is carrying on to the last breath against life imprisonment without appeal and 41 bis. We’ve heard it all. The prime minister Giorgia Meloni, with her usual victimhood, went so far as to suspect conspiracies about the coincidence of the start of the hunger strike with the launching of her government.
Another lie circulating is the one about a phantom alliance between anarchists and the mafia, deduced from wiretaps between Alfredo and the only three people he is allowed to see in the prison yard. The State, which decided to lock an anarchist up in 41 bis for the first time, is now instrumentalising the fact that that anarchist speaks to the only human beings he can meet. Sociability groupings which, by the way, are decided centrally by the ministry in Rome! In truth, it was with the creation of the DNAA (Direzione Nazionale Antimafia e Antiterrorismo) that the State wanted to set up a war machine against revolutionary insurgency, a machine that had as its weapons the exceptional tools that hitherto only applied to the anti-mafia. We are witnessing a complete reversal of the facts: those who merged completely different realities into the bureaucracies of the judicial and penitentiary administration are now crying ‘bonding’.
Similarly, we are aghast when we hear again the president of the council Giorgia Meloni assert that she will not negotiate with anarchists. And not just because everyone in Italy knows that the State only negotiates with the mafia. Statements like these denote that those in government have completely lost touch with reality. It is the anarchists who, since time immemorial, have never wanted to deal with institutions.
Anarchists who, as is well known, have no leaders, no ambassadors, no recognised interlocutors. So they have nothing at all to negotiate about. Anarchist conflictuality does not arise from the instigation of a jailed ‘leader’ and is not moderated in exchange for the survival of a comrade held hostage by the executioners of repression. Our conflict arises from visceral class hatred fuelled every day, not by political sophistry, but by exploitation, blackmail, misery, and the injustices of this society. The 41 bis was intended to be a warning to anarchists, it was not!
In this mountain of falsifications, there is one that concerns us closely. The minister Nordio, in the order rejecting the request for revocation of 41 bis in respect to Alfredo, cited the Sibilla operation, recalling “that the Court of Cassation, in its judgement of 22 June 2022, annulled by return the order of the Court of Perugia acting as review judge which had failed to recognise the recurrence of the constituent elements of the offence provided for in article 414 c.p. in regard to Alfredo Cospito”. That Nordio would evaluate the Cassation of Sibilla as an element against Alfredo on the other hand, had been anticipated a few days earlier by some of the regime’s newspapers (in particular ‘la Nazione’, ‘il Giornale’ and ‘l’Avvenire’).
Even in what will be remembered as the death sentence for Alfredo Cospito, the minister Nordio confuses and omits some extremely important facts. We recall that operation Sibilla consisted of a raid by the ROS carabinieri unleashed in the early hours of November 11th 2021, ordered by the public prosecutor’s office of Perugia and aimed at the closure of the anarchist newspaper “Vetriolo”, of counter-information sites “Malacoda” and “Roundrobin”, as well as the arrest of some anarchist comrades, among whom precisely Alfredo Cospito. At the end of more than five years’ investigations, carried out by the public prosecutors’ offices of Milan and Perugia, operation Sibilla took its first steps in a halting manner from the very start: of the 8 arrests in prison originally requested by the Perugia pm Manuela Comodi and her superior Raffaele Cantone, the GIP granted four residence orders with a requirement to sign three times a week, house arrest for a comrade of Spoleto and an arrest warrant in prison for Alfredo Cospito. After five weeks, what little remained of the investigation collapsed ruinously and all the measures were cancelled. In the meantime, however, with a sleight of hand typical of the jugglers of which the Italian judiciary is composed, those papers were recovered from the dustbin by the Turin Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Anti-Mafia, so, cleaned up, they were used to request and obtain the transfer of Alfredo Cospito to 41 bis.
Evidently, therefore, the moribund Perugian investigation had to survive in order for a weak support for 41 bis to remain in place with which to annihilate our comrade. Thus we arrive at the supreme court ruling cited by Nordio. It is a singular ruling, which goes beyond the very request of the attorney general (who had argued for confirmation of the previous sentence of release) and which is evidently the result of special solicitations. Nordio does not speak of all this; for the minister a fleeting extrapolation is sufficient to justify the death of a prisoner.
It was precisely the public prosecutor of Perugia, Raffaele Cantone, to recall, during a hearing before the senate ‘justice committee’ on 31 January, the role played by their investigation in this affair. It is precisely this episode that seems likely to lead to a further judicial trail. In fact, we find out from the local press that we have been denounced for having published on our telegram channel the ANSA news ‘Cantone, 41 bis Cospito originated from Perugia investigation’ with the comment ‘We will remember it’. Evidently at the Perugia prosecutor’s office not only our ideas but also our recollections bother them.
We regret for the Perugia magistrates, but the memory of anarchists is notoriously prodigious. Lest we forget that there are also responsibilities in this affair in the repressive centres of our own area, we invite all those in solidarity to an afternoon in which to come together in defence of our writings, our spaces and in solidarity with Alfredo Cospito on the eve of the Cassation called for the last word, if it is not too late, on the measure of 41 bis.
FOLIGNO – THURSDAY 23 FEBRUARY, GARDENS OF VIA MONTE BIANCO (NEXT TO ANARCHIST CIRCLE “LA FAGLIA”)
FROM 16.00 TO 18.30
● EXHIBITION “LA CANTONATA” WITH THE TEXTS THAT THE SIBILLA INVESTIGATION WANTED TO MAKE DISAPPEAR
● INTERVENTIONS AND DISCUSSION IN SUPPORT OF ALFREDO COSPITO’S STRUGGLE AGAINST 41 BIS AND LIFE IMPRISONMENT WITHOUT APPEAL
FOLLOWED BY: APERITIVO BENEFIT IN SUPPORT OF THE ANARCHIST FORTNIGHTLY BEZMOTIVNY.
ANARCHIST CIRCLE “LA FAGLIA”
– t.me/circoloanarchicolafaglia – circoloanarchicolafaglia@inventati.org