Prison Struggle – Page 19

Italy: Update about the health condition of Alfredo Cospito on the 99th day of hunger strike (January 26, 2023)

Posted on 2023/01/27 by darknights

Update about the health condition of Alfredo Cospito on the 99th day of hunger strike (Italy, January 26, 2023)

With the publication of the following texts – an update circulated yesterday, January 26th, and two transcripts of as many radio speeches by the trusted doctor, dating back to January 26th and 19th – we provide an update on the current serious health condition of anarchist comrade Alfredo Cospito 100 days after the start of the hunger strike.

The attempted annihilation against Alfredo was ratified by the State in July and December last year, first (by the Court of Cassation) with the reclassification as ‘political massacre’ of a charge in the Scripta Manent trial, then (by the Court of Surveillance in Rome) with an order confirming his detention in 41 bis, the most afflictive detention regime in Italian prisons, to which Alfredo was transferred on May 5th.

In the face of this attempt at annihilation, it is of the utmost importance that the ideas, deeds, and contribution of the comrade are not forgotten, condemned to oblivion as desired by the repressive apparatuses with the Scripta Manent trial, Sibilla repressive operation, and the transfer to the 41 bis prison regime. To the isolation and censorship of the State and its prisons we oppose, today as yesterday, the tenacity and consistency of our ideas and practices.

“Allow me to say, with a modicum of pride, that my life (like the life of every anarchist worthy of the name) is characterised by the attempt to make theory and action coincide. To the servants of Power I say only one thing: you can keep me in jail for the rest of my life but resign yourself, you will not succeed in taking away my coherence and self-respect, let alone the pleasure and desire to fight you“.
(Alfredo Cospito, ‘About Sibilla Operation’, 2021)

An update on the current health condition: the comrade collapsed, the torturers took him to hospital and then returned him to 41 bis

Serious news is arriving from Bancali prison, where Alfredo Cospito has been on hunger strike for 99 days. Our comrade now moves around in a wheelchair, he has worrying microchemical values, he has serious thermoregulation problems, that is, he is getting colder and colder, he covers himself with many jumpers and several pairs of trousers.

Perhaps in order to warm himself up, he decided to take a shower last night, around 11:30 p.m.. There Alfredo allegedly collapsed, fell and broke his nose in a compound manner. In addition, due to low platelets, he allegedly started to lose a lot of blood from the wound. For these reasons he was rushed to the hospital in Sassari. After initial treatment, the murderers of the prison police took him back to prison.

A few hours earlier, yesterday [January 25th], came the Minister of Justice rejection of Alfredo’s transfer to a prison with a hospital ward: according to Nordio [Carlo Nordio is the Minister of Justice], Cospito is ‘in excellent health’… Continue reading “Italy: Update about the health condition of Alfredo Cospito on the 99th day of hunger strike (January 26, 2023)” →

$hile: Text by Juan Flores from “La Gonzalina” prison, in Rancagua

Posted on 2023/01/27 - 2023/01/27 by darknights

Each step, decision and even mistake have been lessons learned, never regretted or part of something that is posed as absolute that can disregard or belittle the courage of so many comrades through the centuries of struggle against the power of which I consider myself a continuity, without exalting always questioning even the steps themselves.

I continue to firmly consolidate the certainties of our infinite negating capacities, their potential to break with isolation, norms, logics, power in all its amplitude, in the daily and clandestine in anti-authoritarian complicity. For this there are no absolute truths or manuals that can more than our yearnings for freedom, dignity and rebellion, for many the anti-authoritarian struggle seems to be extinguished to many would accommodate them, for our pleasure and their concern will continue to exist, breaking with the indifference of their society of death and misery, solidarity becomes a weapon of struggle, every cry, gesture and action feed our convictions and yearnings becoming an impulse to continue responding to every blow, persecutions, aggressions, isolations. We will put forward our attitude without turning back … indifference in the face of reality is not our option.

In this place, ideas are not abandoned, nothing ends. Today, while the states seek to bury our lives in prison with legal tricks such as the modification of January 2019 to DL 321 that regulates access to parole, regimes such as 41 bis in Italy, Fies in Spain, the renewed high security prison in Chile that promises to be a tomb for refractory soon to be reopened and all attempts to exterminate us democratically, in silence and with the complicity of all those who need and legitimize the prison. From that almost invisible character, owners and masters of the world or the judge and prosecutor who for their slice of power will bury us with laws and years to the miserable henchman who lives at will imprisoned to bury lives, passivity or legitimization of the majorities. In this scenario already known by all I want to give my complicity, respect and affection to Alfredo cospito brother of deep convictions who has made his life a war willing to keep it until its end.

Solidarity/Act so that our enemies cannot bury our lives with the normality they desire and impose. When your body becomes your last weapon of struggle… indifference and lightness cannot be an option, not for anarchists, anti-authoritarians and those who determine themselves as real deniers of power. All my complicity with all those indomitable captives who without looking back defend themselves with tooth and claw… solidarity with the prisoners on hunger strike in Italy, Greece, France, Israel and Turkey.

Juan Alexis Flores Riquelme
Anti-authoritarian prisoner

Source: Publicacion Refractario

$hile: Active Solidarity with Alfredo Cospito by Joaquín García

Posted on 2023/01/27 - 2023/01/27 by darknights

Even being distant from any idealization, it is inevitable to feel a deep admiration and respect for Alfredo Cospito, who has been able to sustain an extensive hunger strike, with his body as a battlefield, and an unwavering decision, in his struggle for the end of isolation in the nefarious 41 bis regime in which he has been for many months. Sometimes it is intangible for many to have a concrete notion of what this means, I think that perhaps it is the individual experiences that bring us a little closer to such a crude reality, and even so, it is impossible to feel what those who throw themselves into this battle feel, the physical and mental exhaustion, the sleepless nights and that every gesture costs as much as the greatest effort. We are left with the anguish, the dizziness in the stomach, and the eternal frustration of feeling that we still have to do a lot to balance, at least a little, the scales on which our defeats and victories are measured.

Anarchic, nihilistic, informal and international solidarity with Alfredo!
Let the cry of his body at war resound in every action!

Joaquin Garcia Chanks

-La Gonzalina Prison
Rancagua, territory occupied by the Chilean state.
January 2023.

Source: informativoanarquista

France: Ivan ended his hunger strike

Posted on 2023/01/27 by darknights

On January 23, I ended the hunger strike I started on December 22, in solidarity with Alfredo Cospito’s struggle against the regime of isolation and psychological torture 41 bis.
I wish him a lot of strength in this difficult moment and I thank all those who have supported me during these 32 days (and, more in general, who have supported me for seven and a half months).

Today, January 25th, I went before the JLD, who decided to renew my preventive detention, for another four months.

Besides, here are some small episodes of prison-judicial repression.
On Monday, January 9th, for the second time (the first one was on December 6th, as if by chance, shortly after I had been heard by the investigating judge and also shortly after the end of my previous hunger strike), the henchmen searched the cell I share with a fellow prisoner (definitively condemned).
In both cases, they found two cell phones, with their chargers.
We’re going to the disciplinary commission tomorrow, January 26. It went surprisingly fast: usually there is a delay of two or three months, between a search which makes them discover forbidden objects and the corresponding disciplinary commission. Is this another aspect of my “special treatment” (like the mail blocked for months, the impossibility of access to certain activities, to work or to trainings…) or simple, petty reprisals for the two hunger strikes?

Moreover, there is something that makes me think that the search of January 9 could have been made on request of the Investigating Judge (who was necessarily informed of the phones found on December 6). Indeed, the next day, the head of ELAC (the “big guys” of the AP) who led the search, asked me (alone) to sign a document “for the exploitation of my phone”, something we had never seen, here (and that they did not ask me in December). Obviously, I refused to sign.

Otherwise, I’m fine and remain determined.
Courage Alfredo!
Long live Anarchy!

Ivan
Villepinte prison
January 25, 2023

To write to him :
Ivan Alocco
n. 46355
M.A. of Villepinte
40, avenue Vauban
93420 – Villepinte

Source: Anarchist Bure Cross

Italy: Vicious, obtuse and stupid. DAP officials want to gag even Alfredo’s doctor

Posted on 2023/01/25 by darknights

Yesterday, Jan. 23, the Department of Penitentiary Administration in Sassari, in the person of “Director on Mission” Carmen Forino, forwarded a formal ban against Dr. Angelica Milia, the doctor who visits Alfredo Cospito in the Bancali prison. The doctor is warned against making any statement to Radio Onda d’Urto, under penalty of revoking her authorization to visit Alfredo. All this “in order not to thwart the purposes of the regime under Article 41Bis.”

In short, DAP officials-on whose shoulders fall the responsibility, to stick to recent history alone, for the massacre carried out in Italian prisons in March 2020, as well as the beatings and torture perpetrated in Santa Maria Capua Vetere in the following month-would like Alfredo not only to crack in that grave in which he was locked up, but to crack in general silence. As a poet wrote at another time and to other state officials, “You are murderers, gentlemen; and I would also add (this is a point of view I cherish) that you are ridiculous murderers.”

Being the most vicious and most obtuse part of state institutions-used to being accountable to no one for their repressive actions-the DAP is also the stupidest. Only fools, in fact, can write in black and white that the very fact of informing about the state of health of a prisoner on hunger strike for ninety-six days succeeds in “nullifying the purposes of the regime under Article 41Bis.” Here it is, then, the purpose of 41Bis, openly and brazenly declared by Ms. Forino: to banish her inmates from the world of the living, mute bodies that no one should talk about.

Vicious, obtuse and stupid, you will get the exact opposite.

Source: ilrovescio.info

Continue reading “Italy: Vicious, obtuse and stupid. DAP officials want to gag even Alfredo’s doctor” →

Genoa, Italy: Statement read during the appeal trial for Operation Prometeo in solidarity with Alfredo Cospito

Posted on 2023/01/24 - 2023/01/24 by darknights

We receive and publish:

At the opening of what will likely be the last appeal hearing in the Prometo trial, the defendants present took the floor at the opening of the hearing to read the following brief statement:

“Genoa, January 23, 2023, The question of solidarity, for us anarchists, is fundamental, diriment. That is why today we cannot refrain from taking the floor in this courtroom, knowing that there is someone who is being prevented from doing so. Alfredo Cospito is today on his ninety-sixth day of hunger strike in the prison of Bancali, Sassari, to protest, in the only way he is allowed in the tomb for the living in which he is locked up, against the repressive abominations of 41 bis and hostile life imprisonment. The institutions are all demonstrating their democratic ferocity by entrenching themselves in a muteness that reeks of retaliation and ineptitude. If this, then, is claimed to be a courtroom, no man or woman of conscience should sit idly by, aware that the hands, for Alfredo, are about to stop on the last hour, minute, second, in a prison of this torture-smelling state. A cry should rise where justice was sovereign, real, possible:
AGAINST 41 BIS
AGAINST HOSTILE LIFE IMPRISONMENT
FOR THE IMMEDIATE DOWNGRADING OF ALFREDO COSPITO, FREEDOM.”

Nat, Robert and Beppe

The presiding judge ruled that thirty seconds was too long, and interrupted them after just a few lines. After a brief squabble with the comrade who was reading, in the face of the disinterest that these characters are bringing to bear at all levels of this affair, confirming that a curtain of silence is to be drawn over this story, the fellow defendants and sympathizers decided to leave the courtroom, taking to the streets the story of this morning and the reasons for Alfredo’s protest.

Source: Inferno Urbano

$hile: From Chile to Italy. A loud cry of insurrectional complicity for Alfredo Cóspito (Marcelo Villarroel)

Posted on 2023/01/24 by darknights

November 23rd, 2022
Source: Informativo Anarquista
Via & Translated by Act For Freedom Now!

Words of comrade Marcelo Villarroel from prison. From Chile to Italy –
A loud cry of insurrectional complicity for Alfredo Cóspito!!!
Alfredo Cóspito is an anarchist comrade from Turin imprisoned since September 2012 after the kneecapping of Roberto Adinolfi (on May 7), executive director of Italian nuclear company Ansaldo Nucleare. This act claimed by the “Olga” Cell Informal Anarchist Federation / International Revolutionary Front for which he was sentenced to 10 years and 8 months. He was also sentenced to 20 years (first degree), for the explosive attack on the Carabinieri training school in Fossano (Cuneo) on June 2, 2006, claimed by Terrible Anonymous Revolt – Informal Anarchist Federation, which provoked the state response through the operation “Scripta Manent”.

Alfredo has been an anarchist comrade in active praxis for decades. Always consistent with his anti-authoritarian projectuality, he has maintained several antagonistic initiatives for which, even though he has been in prison for more than 10 years, the Italian fascist state does not forgive him.

In May of this year he was transferred to the Bancali prison in Sardinia where he was locked up under the 41 bis extreme isolation regime.

This prison regime was the Italian state’s response in 1992 to the rising violence of the mafia.

Since then, political prisoners of the Red Brigades have also been imprisoned under the same regime. Continue reading “$hile: From Chile to Italy. A loud cry of insurrectional complicity for Alfredo Cóspito (Marcelo Villarroel)” →

$hile: Text from compañero Juan Aliste to Alfredo Cospito

Posted on 2023/01/21 - 2023/01/21 by darknights

When the journey is without return or hesitation for a revolutionary subversive or anarchist. The decisions of struggle are based on the conviction of life.
Life that we defend with integrity and consistency in every scenario. We understand freedom as a reflection of our actions, we understand it in the indomitable, in what removes and combats the slave order and not in the precarious and miserable capitalist format of opting for alternatives of welfare and consumerism.
Thus owners of our steps and sighs, owners of the life that runs through our bones and skin in war.
Life that we defend free from any space and with all means and capacities.
Hand in hand with decision we pick up the continuous thread of direct action, brotherhood breaking frontiers and impossibilities.
Today the complicity, the multiform and horizontal conspiracy unfolds and positions itself by building from resistance and international solidarity.

Far from old organizational logics or authoritarian parties, I raise my war cry. In the same trench of Alfredo Cospito, who began by making visible the isolation and perpetuity of his sentence. Faced with a State that has a whole structural framework and a doctrine of constant, sinister and class oppression. Today the mobilization of the Italian anarchist comrade battles with death. After almost 90 days on hunger strike and adding up, only sustainable in the conviction and fortitude of an unwavering heart and a life at war.
Putting the body as a weapon of confrontation and struggle is a sign of revolutionary strength. From his anarchist foundations Alfredo is not one of those who are just passing through. Alfredo is fighting against all the rottenness of the State and its machinery. He fights with his body this subversive battle.
I write from anger and as an enemy of the State from the pain that strengthens us and puts us to the test. The real word that emanates from the fierce certainty that the only freedom lies in action. That these prisons that they invented to contain us fail and will fail as long as we stand up to fight against it and all the shit that sustains them.

Strength, compañero/brother, my respect for the struggle.
I have nothing to say to power. My energies go to you Alfredo, every breath of oxygen of these letters belong to you and to each one of the comrades who fight to close the 41 bis.
A complicit embrace of struggle and unwavering resistance in tenderness.
Our life in war does not end with torture, jail or death.
Death to the prison society and to all the states and institutions that sustain them.
Internationalist Solidarity for Alfredo Cospito
Against 41 bis and life imprisonment.

Juan Aliste Vega
Subversive prisoner
Territory dominated by the State of Chile.
Company prison Rancagua. January 16/2023

Source: Publicacion Refractario

Milan, Italy: Statement by anarchist Dayvid Ceccarelli in solidarity with Alfredo Cospito on hunger strike to the bitter end

Posted on 2023/01/21 by darknights

The following text is the statement read by comrade Dayvid Ceccarelli in the courtroom in the Milan courthouse on Dec. 2, 2022, during the hearing of the “Rompere il silenzio” trial, and given as the reason for not returning from the air for an hour in San Vittore, in solidarity with Alfredo Cospito on hunger strike to the bitter end, starting Oct. 20, against 41 bis and hostile life imprisonment.

Statement by anarchist Dayvid Ceccarelli in solidarity with Alfredo Cospito on hunger strike to the bitter end (Milan, Dec. 2, 2022)

The reason I chose to be in this courtroom and attend this hearing today is only one. I decided to be here and use this medium, the spontaneous statement, because it is one of the few that the condition of a prisoner leaves me. I want to use it to shout out my anger at a situation that you, the men and women of the court, should know about. I am referring to the detention condition of Comrade Alfredo Cospito since May 25 subjected to the 41 bis regime. I make a premise: the act that brought Alfredo to prison and claimed by him in the courtroom is the kneecapping of Ansaldo Nucleare CEO Roberto Adinolfi as a result of the atomic disaster and subsequent massacre at the Fukushima power plant. Therefore, in my opinion, this act is rightfully part of all those lights that have illuminated for more than a century the path of many exploited and rebellious people, including me. This is the anarchy of action and for this it can only find all my complicity and solidarity. Coming to more recent times, the fact that Alfredo despite his years of imprisonment has never bent and has always with enviable constancy carried out his struggles publicly has aggravated his detention regime to the maximum expression of psychological and sensory torture that our legal system provides for: the 41 bis. A regime he has opposed by deciding since October 20 to go on hunger strike to the extreme. I do not want to waste time here asking for humanity or listing the immense restrictions that this detention provides. As Machiavelli wrote any state, whether monarchical or republican, bases its opulence, wealth and strength on crime. For me a simple person trying to make a living as an anarchist, it is unthinkable to demand justice from the latter or any of its representatives, but any action aimed at increasing the strength of Alfredo’s struggle against 41 bis can bring him closer to the need closest to him and to us: to have him healthy and in touch with his affections.

For the downgrading of Alfredo
For the end of the physical and mental cages that make possible the exploitation of ‘man on man and man on nature
For anarchy

Dayvid
[Milan, December 2, 2022]

To write to him:

Dayvid Ceccarelli
C. C. di Civitavecchia
via Aurelia nord, km 79,500, SNC
00053 Civitavecchia (RM)

Source: La Nemesi

Turin, Italy: First-degree sentence in the Scintilla trial

Posted on 2023/01/21 by darknights

Jan. 17, 2023

Late in the afternoon came the verdict in the Scintilla trial, the one that put 18 defendants and the decades-long struggle against administrative detention centers in Turin on the stand.

The reading of the verdict took place while a protest was underway right under the walls of Corso Brunelleschi, in that uninterrupted flow of solidarity that still feeds between inside and outside.

The general accusatory structure based on the crime of “Subversive Association against the State” (art. 270 c. p.) fell decreeing the acquittal for all/all.

The heavier specific crimes, manufacture – possession – transport of explosive material, which were charged against two comrades and a comrade also fell; the prosecutor had asked for 6 years and four months for them in addition to a fine of 20,000 euros.

There were, however, some convictions, which we report and for which we await the reading of the papers:

– 4 years and two months for an explosive device at the company that managed meals in the center of Turin for a comrade at that time;
– 3 years for conspiracy to commit arson (for a riot inside the former Cie), for a comrade;
– 1 year and three months for a comrade; and 1 year for incitement to commit a crime affixed to 10 others.

The operation began on Feb. 7, 2019, with the clearing of the Asilo and high-security imprisonment for some comrades, thus concludes the first degree.

Source: La Nemesi