41 bis – Dark Nights

Italy: “Operation City”, a crackdown on the mobilization against 41bis prison regime in Italy and in solidarity with anarchist comrade Alfredo Cospito

Posted on 2026/02/16 - 2026/02/16 by darknights

“Operation City”, a crackdown on the mobilization against 41bis prison regime in Italy and in solidarity with anarchist comrade Alfredo Cospito

From October 2022 to April 2023, a strong solidarity movement accompanied the hunger strike of Alfredo Cospito, an anarchist prisoner in 41-bis, the most afflictive prison regime in the Italian penitentiary system, a regime of extreme harshness and isolation, a tomb where one spends 22 hours in a cell, with hardly any possibility to communicate with the outside world (censorship on all communications and with only a one-hour visit per month with a family member or a ten-minute phone call, also a month).

Initiatives, demonstrations, direct actions have marked in Italy, and in many other parts of the globe, the steps of a heterogeneous movement that has grown to give strength to Alfredo’s protest. A protest which not only called for the transfer of Alfredo himself from the 41bis regime but also demanded the abolition of this legalized torture together with that of ostensive life imprisonment i.e., life sentences without the possibility of access to parole or benefits, with which the Italian State as of today condemns almost 1300 prisoners to die in prison.

A government that is strongly characterizing its policy on the tightening and embitterment of laws and sentences, obviously had no problem ignoring, and sometimes mystifying, that struggle that highlighted the State’s torturer’s true face and it certainly would not have given in, if Alfredo, after 6 months of struggle, had not interrupted his hunger strike. But the objectives of protest and mobilization remain on the table of causes worth fighting for. Obviously that same government, which probably would have left our comrade to die of hunger, did not delay in presenting the bill with investigations and trials in various territories and cities where the solidarity mobilizations of those months spread like wildfire. Continue reading “Italy: “Operation City”, a crackdown on the mobilization against 41bis prison regime in Italy and in solidarity with anarchist comrade Alfredo Cospito” →

Italy: Anna Beniamino – Contribution from Rebibbia prison ahead of the national assembly on October 11 in Rome, in solidarity with Alfredo Cospito, against 41 bis

Posted on 2025/10/26 by darknights

Anna’s scattered notes as a contribution to the October 11 assembly in Rome against 41bis for Alfredo

There is no shortage of analysis of the authoritarian turn currently underway, a real turn, albeit perceived in these parts as a low-intensity phenomenon, amid the cynicism of the powerful and the indifference of their subjects, sedated by the bread and circuses of the digital age.
The ‘Cospito case’ has been and continues to be one aspect of this shift: Alfredo has been held hostage, under 41bis, as a warning of this repressive crackdown, but it is not an extreme case, a distortion of the system. Rather, it is a tangible sign of the lowering of the threshold of punishability for political and social opposition and the consolidation of preventive repression strategies, from the tabula rasa on active components to the outright annihilation of speech and the silencing of critical thought.
Analyses of the repressive context and of whether or not to focus on the discourse (41bis – Alfredo in 41bis – anti-anarchist repression – repression simply) are not uniform, I believe, but hopefully converge on the need to oppose it, a need that is non-negotiable and cannot be misunderstood as a mere remnant of indignation at a legal distortion.
“Necessity” in the sense that we must maintain awareness, as a manifestation of vitality and planning, that the struggle is an existential dimension, not a ritual deadline on micro or macro issues. Whether it concerns specific and limited issues, such as a campaign to show solidarity with a single comrade or a situation under repressive attack, or macro issues such as the current state of widespread war, the genocide of a people, or the technological restructuring of forms of exploitation of man by man and of nature, we must first of all be aware that this is not a matter of external, superficial adherence, but of an intimate reason for struggle.

Having made this “light” introduction…
Although the authoritarian shift in Italy is being led by a handful of showmen controlled by the interests of global capitalism, such as the current holders of government positions, it is a fact that they are succeeding in carrying out a concerted effort to reduce the scope for protest, tightening prison and legislative conditions in the name of security and the specter of the democratic stability of institutions. Of course, this is not only the result of the new actors on the parliamentary stage; it was already well underway in the 1980s, with repressive strategies launched against the revolutionary component, from which much has been taken in rhetorical and propagandistic form, more indigestible than any reheated dish (if before the “bad teachers” were Toni Negri, now they are mathematicians such as, mind you, not Theodore Kaczynski but… Piergiorgio Odifreddi, to give a small example from recent days). And those who are not obtusely sedated by the institutional narrative, on either side, should grasp the meaning of certain continuities, where the only function is subservience to domination, to capital.
It is no coincidence that, amid this deluge of propaganda and television talk show rhetoric, the battle cries of any regime remain unchanged: in addition to the criminalization of public squares, anarchist press, grassroots trade unionists… even pacifist environmentalists, there is an obsessive search for enemies, political opponents, and terrorists to be destroyed.
If there is a lack of ready-to-use material, given that we live in relatively peaceful times in terms of social opposition, in addition to new or very new material (complete with the criminalization of non-conformist immigrants and keyboard warriors turned into dangerous Islamists), old or very old material is dusted off or kept warm, sought after by entire countries and continents or walled up alive for half a century. Counterbalancing the inconsistency of the initiatives of struggle and solidarity is the constancy and inevitability of the state moloch. It is quite significant that the long repressive memory is counterbalanced by a revolutionary amnesia (to use the definition of some comrades in reference to the German movement grappling with a repressive backlash that culminated in the arrest of Daniela Klette) of everything that has been a heritage of struggle and critical thinking.
Amnesia is not random but is one of the effects of a strategy of tabula rasa on the defeated enemy. “Carthago delenda est” [DN: ‘Carthage must be destroyed’ meaning ‘It must be destroyed’] and let’s throw salt on its ruins. Today’s tyrants prefer luxury resorts built on human bone meal and artificial intelligence that trains young Palestinians to be happy waiters or odalisques [DN: harem slave], but it is a model applied at both the micro and macroscopic levels. It is precisely this feeling of tabula rasa that leads to having to rebuild from scratch every time and in every place, struggling in increasingly restricted and claustrophobic communication bubbles, illusory comfort zones among like-minded people who comment and criticize the moves of others like spectators at the edge of the ring… rather than feeling part of a movement in struggle. Continue reading “Italy: Anna Beniamino – Contribution from Rebibbia prison ahead of the national assembly on October 11 in Rome, in solidarity with Alfredo Cospito, against 41 bis” →

Italy: Arrests and search operations between Pisa and the Apuan Alps in relation to the 2023 attack on the Pisa courthouse

Posted on 2025/09/16 by darknights

ARRESTS AND SEARCH OPERATIONS BETWEEN PISA AND THE APUAN ALPS IN RELATION TO THE 2023 ATTACK ON THE PISA COURTHOUSE (ITALY)

On the morning of 11 September, a police operation coordinated by the DDAA [District Anti-Mafia and Anti-Terrorism Directorate] in the main city of Tuscany and conducted by the DIGOS [General Investigations and Special Operations Division] in Pisa and Florence took place in the municipalities of Carrara, Montignoso, Pisa and Sarzana. The operation appears to have been named “Delivery”.

According to our information, two anarchist comrades who are subject to a preventive custody order under house arrest (it is not yet known if there are any particular restrictions; updates will follow) were arrested in Pisa and Carrara. The comrades – who were already searched on 26 March in relation to the same acts – are under investigation for “terrorist acts involving lethal or explosive devices” and other related crimes. This is part of the proceedings concerning the attack on the Pisa courthouse on 21 February 2023. We would also like to point out that the comrades were involved in the 2023 “Scripta Scelera” operation, which was orchestrated by the Genoa DDAA against the internationalist anarchist fortnightly journal “Bezmotivny” (and which was essentially “shipwrecked” during the trial held in Massa against four defendants).

According to the latest information, the other comrades involved in this operation were only searched at home and in their vehicles. This was also in relation to the crime of “subversive association with the purpose of terrorism or subversion of the democratic order”.

Every day, in every court, hundreds of exploited people are sentenced. By means of sentences, men and women are buried in prisons and their friendships and love relationships are mutilated. By means of explosives, structures will be hit and men of power will be mutilated. For every death at sea, in prison, at work, in the CPRs, not one, but 100 bombs against the masters. Your cameras and guards patrolling the city will never be enough to prevent action from penetrating your buildings”, read the statement of claim by Gruppo di Solidarietà Rivoluzionaria – Consegne a Domicilio [Revolutionary Solidarity Group – Home Deliveries] (joining the FAI-FRI), concerning the action against the court. This action was part of an intense mobilisation against 41 bis prison regime and life imprisonment without parole, and was carried out in solidarity with Alfredo Cospito, who was on hunger strike for over 120 days at the time. “Solidarity with all revolutionary prisoners around the world. Support social struggles with revolutionary struggle”, the text concluded.

ALONGSIDE THE ARRESTED COMRADES
A couple of those searched

UPDATE: The comrades are under house arrest with all restrictions (no communication or visits allowed).

Post campaign: Call for long-term solidarity to Alfredo Cospito (Italy)

Posted on 2025/08/22 by darknights

We circulate this call out for Alfredo to receive more postal correspondence and we understand that it is also within the framework of the International Week of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners, set from 23-30th August. Never a day alone, the anarchist hostages will endure, we’re always with them. Destroy the prisons.

Please, spread widely!

In order to break the isolation to which our anarchist comrade Alfredo Cospito is currently subjected through an almost total ban on mail, we call again to write him postcards and letters. This new callout to write him is also due to news reaching us from the Bancali jail where he’s held prisoner: Alfredo deems extremely opportune to keep on sending him correspondence, even unregistered, even just postcards, with or without sender’s address… If an avalanche of mail arrives, it’ll be more work for the screws working at the jail P.O.
We evaluated that registered mail sent to him is not as necessary as it has been so far, given that over 30 pieces of such mail have been blocked: on this subject, the Surveillance Magistrate must pass sentence: he’s obviously taking his sweet time (lawyers tells us it is standard procedure at the Bancali jail).

This coming Sept. 14th. there will be a hearing about the “compliance judgement” against the Bancali prison: the magistrate is asked to determine whether the jail authorities are respecting an authorization given to a prisoner, in this case Alfredo’s access to the library, which had been authorized but never really happened. If the judge rules in favour of Alfredo, he will have to designate a different officer to ensure that the authorization is complied with. Continue reading “Post campaign: Call for long-term solidarity to Alfredo Cospito (Italy)” →

Total mail blockade to anarchist comrade Alfredo Cospito persists.” Updates on the detention situation of anarchist Alfredo Cospito and the mail censorship to which he is subjected

Posted on 2025/07/15 - 2025/07/15 by darknights

Total mail blockade to anarchist comrade Alfredo Cospito persists.” Updates on the detention situation of anarchist Alfredo Cospito and the mail censorship to which he is subjected (Circolo Anarchico “La Faglia” July 2025)

TOTAL BLOCKADE OF CORRESPONDENCE TO ANARCHIST COMRADE ALFREDO COSPITO PERSISTS.

Update to early July 2025. In these days news arrives again regarding the particularly afflictive situation that the management of the Bancali prison, probably in concert with the Ministry of so-called justice, is imposing on our anarchist comrade Alfredo Cospito, particularly with regard to epistolary correspondence.

Recall that censorship of incoming and outgoing mail is a constitutive element of the 41 bis regime to which the comrade is subjected. For a long time Alfredo has received no letters, postcards, telegrams or communications of any kind. This is despite the fact that many of us are continuing to write to him, even with collective correspondence initiatives such as the one that took place in Foligno last May 31. In addition, the prison management has long since stopped notifying the prisoner of the notice of censorship, a document against which to appeal in order to receive the epistolary material placed under seizure. The mail simply disappears into thin air.

This behavior is in addition to a long series of persecutory dispositions aimed at the psychological and political destruction of his comrade: from denying him access to books already ordered and authorized, to CDs or headphones to listen to music, to reporting him to the bar association for his defenders guilty of shaking his hand and giving him a kiss at the time of the interview-that is, guilty of treating him as a human being.

All this in an already enormously afflictive context such as that of 41 bis, which provides for two hours of air per day in groups of a maximum of four people decided by the ministry, one hour of interview per month with a family member separated by glass or alternatively ten minutes of phone calls during which the authorized family member must go inside a barracks to call. As well as, as mentioned above, the censorship of correspondence and the inability to read books dealing with subjects deemed sensitive (and the great difficulties in finding any books in general).

We firmly denounce that this doggedness is evidently a state vendetta for the intransigence and determination with which the hunger strike of 2022-23 and the international solidarity mobilization were conducted, putting the spotlight on the shadowy zone that is 41 bis with unprecedented intensity, going to pickaxe that phony celestial aura that surrounds the anti-mafia-anti-terrorism structure.

Moreover, a doggedness that comes in the aftermath of Undersecretary Delmastro’s 8-month sentence for revelations of an official act, which matured precisely in the scoundrel’s attempt to smear Alfredo Cospito during his hunger strike.

The misery of these characters in the face of the consistency of an anarchist who never bowed his head jumps to the eye. On the one hand one who kneecaps a nuclear witch doctor, on the other who on New Year’s Eve high on cocaine in a moment of rare consistency shoots himself in the legs.

In the climate of world warfare these days, we reiterate that these incidents should be read as real policies of war against the enemy within. Great are the challenges that engage revolutionaries in such a historical period, but all the more so we cannot and will not leave anyone behind. For whoever forgets the prisoners of the revolutionary struggle, forgets the revolutionary struggle itself.

In view of the possible renewal of 41 bis for Alfredo Cospito in May next year, let us make sure that this, too, returns to being a battlefield fraught with contradictions for the state.

Circolo Anarchico “La Faglia” – Foligno
July 2025
circoloanarchicolafaglia@inventati.org – t.me/circoloanarchicolafaglia

Source: La Nemesi

Rome, Italy: Claim of responsibility for the incendiary attack on 17 cars at the Tesla dealership

Posted on 2025/04/28 by darknights

Claim of responsibility for the incendiary attack on 17 cars at the Tesla dealership (Rome, March 31, 2025)

Few people in the world, nowadays, embody absolute Evil like the infamous entrepreneur and billionaire technocrat Elon Musk. It would be reductive, however, to consider him a classic cartoon “villain”, a character that would fit him like a glove, without realizing that this despicable individual is only the product of an economic and social system that marches towards its own self-destruction and that his expansionist aims symbolically summarize those of the system itself.

Officially entering the field of politics, all this is exemplified in his servility towards Trump, who has placed him in the front row of the reactionary, imperialist, sexist and supremacist offensive underway in the United States. Specifically, as a reward for his billionaire support for the electoral campaign, the newly elected president has awarded his favorite Dark Maga the leadership of DOGE, an ad hoc body that has quickly busied itself on cuts and reforms aimed at directly or indirectly affecting that slice of the population that is recognized by the new elite as “surplus”.

As for the companies he manages or founded, however, there are many examples to give

Neuralink is a startup that aims to create a system of neural interfaces that connect the human brain with artificial intelligence; he claims to have implanted his first brain chip, called Telepathy, in January 2024. The transhumanist dream that becomes reality, the utopia of the suppression of the “defective” components of humanity through human-machine integration, the creation of those efficient gears that technocratic capitalism has and will always badly need.

OpenAI, a company founded by Musk as an artificial intelligence research laboratory, has produced the first famous chatbot in history: ChatGPT. After abandoning its leadership due to a potential conflict of interest with its role in the development of AI for self-driving Teslas in 2023, he founded a rival startup, xAI, which has the stated purpose of training a generative artificial intelligence chatbot (Grok) that automatically learns to respond racistly, against the woke culture of which ChatGPT would be an expression.
In turn, through xAI Musk has recently purchased the X platform himself, the former instant messaging service called Twitter, well exemplifying the use of social media as a tool for algorithmic manipulation of public opinion for the most vulgar political purposes, as well as revealing in a now indisputable way the use of social media as an inexhaustible source of data for the use and consumption of AI BigTechs. Continue reading “Rome, Italy: Claim of responsibility for the incendiary attack on 17 cars at the Tesla dealership” →

Narni, Italy: Claim of the placement of an incendiary device inside the faculty of “Science of Investigation and Security” by Action Group “Kyriakos Xymitiris” (March 30, 2025)

Posted on 2025/04/01 - 2025/04/01 by darknights

On Sunday, March 30 we broke into the faculty of “Science of Investigation and Security” in Narni ,in Umbria, and placed an incendiary device in the room “Crime Scene Laboratory”.With this action we wanted to strike a training center of the future intelligence of the Italian state. Genocidal state as its cooperation with the Zionist state of ‘Israel in the massacre of the Palestinian people shows us. Torturer state as shown to us by the existence of the 41bis prison regime in which comrade anarchist Alfredo Cospito is also imprisoned. slaughtering state as the massacre of migrants in the Mediterranean Sea and the murders of detainees in prisons show us.

SOLITARY WITH ALL ANARCHISTS,WITH ALL REVOLUTIONARIES LOCKED UP AND INCARCERATED IN PRISONS ALL OVER THE WORLD.

Action group “Kyriakos Xymitiris”

Source: La Nemesi

ITALY: GATHERING IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE ANARCHISTS ACCUSED IN SCRIPTA SCELERA OPERATION – MASSA, APRIL 1, 2025

Posted on 2025/03/28 by darknights

[Update] Gathering in solidarity with the anarchists accused in Scripta Scelera operation postponed to April 1, 2025 (Massa, Italy)

Posted on 2025/02/17 by darknights

[UPDATE] We inform that during the hearing of February 14th, it was decided by the judge to postpone that one scheduled for the following 28th, for which a solidarity gathering had been called. The new hearing has been set for Tuesday, April 1st, the times remain unchanged.

GATHERING IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE ANARCHISTS ACCUSED IN SCRIPTA SCELERA OPERATION – MASSA, APRIL 1, 2025

August 8th, 2023. Following a request for ten arrests in prison, Scripta Scelera operation leads to nine precautionary measures against as many anarchists accused for the publication and distribution of the internationalist anarchist fortnightly ‘Bezmotivny’. A proceeding with which the State intended to ‘normalise’ the precautionary measures for charges concerning revolutionary publications. Scripta Scelera represents another ‘chapter’ in the war policies of the Italian state, in continuity among other things with recent repressive manoeuvres aimed at removing political practicability from ever wider social sectors.

April 1st, 2025. After just over a year, the trial against four accused comrades is coming to an end. Public prosecutor Manotti of the DDAA (“Anti-Mafia and Anti-Terrorism District Directorate”) of Genoa will deliver his indictment, with the requests for sentencing. Regardless of the prosecutor’s inquisitorial hypotheses on alleged instigatory and terrorist capabilities, the reasons that the State intends to strike are the ones of those who opposed the war also by denouncing the Italian industries involved in the production of armaments, as well as those who supported the 2022-’23 mobilisation against 41 bis prison regime and life imprisonment without the possibility of parole developed with Alfredo Cospito’s hunger strike.

WE WILL MEET ON TUESDAY, APRIL 1st, IN MASSA:
12:00 h. – SOLIDARITY GATHERING IN PIAZZA FELICE PALMA
15:00 h. – PRESENCE IN FRONT OF THE COURT IN PIAZZA DE GASPERI

* * *

We remind the account details for the solidarity fund and the e-mail address for organising benefit initiatives or receiving copies of the texts about Scripta Scelera operation:

Postepay card number: 5333 1711 9250 1035 – IBAN: IT12R3608105138290233690253 – Account holder: Ilaria Ferrario – For contacts: solidaliscriptascelera[at]paranoici[dot]org

Anna Beniamino: Pathophysiology of the prison monster: poisons and antidotes (October 2024)

Posted on 2025/02/07 - 2025/02/07 by darknights

Anna Beniamino: Pathophysiology of the prison monster: poisons and antidotes (October 2024)

Article translated and published in Spanish in “Tinta de Fuga,” periódico anárquico contra las prisiones y la sociedad carcelaria, no. 7, segundo semestre 2024.

PHYSIOPATHOLOGY OF THE PRISON MONSTER:
POISONS AND ANTIDOTES

Stories of mice and men

In pharmacology laboratories, antidepressants are tested with an experiment of exquisitely human cruelty: a mouse, drugged or “nature,” is submerged in a glass cylinder half-filled with water and the time of desperate swimming before immobility overtakes is calculated.
Usually the rodent without psychotropic support tries to climb along the cylinder and jump for 5 minutes before giving up; antidepressants lengthen desperate swimming attempts by a few minutes before resignation overtakes.
Stripped of the cynicism it conveys, the Porsolt or “desperate swimming” test is a useful allegory to illustrate the current situation in Italic jails and this summer’s trickle of suicides and riots in the overcrowded, dilapidated communal sections1, a charcoal of forced cohabitation in cramped spaces, in a word humiliating human dignity: drug-induced apathy and depression, the ubiquitous “therapy,” desperate attempts at reaction that often take self-harming forms, backyard hegemonies, desolidarization, childish brawls, where there is a constant pouring of suggestions and models from TV dramas, which is then the lobotomizing diversion that overcomes “therapy” in the pervasive echoing from cell to cell.
To the pathological infantilization of the individual, the prison works methodically, depriving him not only of freedom of movement, but also of that of minimal choice in the course of the day: the idiotic and incomprehensible regulations, the extreme bureaucratization of every minutia of daily survival. Depersonalizing mechanisms that deprive one’s humanity, the application of which essentially serves to establish the pressure of the repressive structure (and the individual’s capacity for resistance or adaptation), are handled aseptically, feeding a meat grinder where reactions can cover the entire range between anesthetized apathy and revolt as an assertion of subsistence in life rather than claim.
This Dantesque bedlam is overlaid and counterbalanced by the fragmentation and consequent isolation of differentiated sections and circuits. In most compas one finds oneself as well as in small numbers, divided from the rest of humanity in chains, locked between high-security sections and, even more isolated, in 41bis2 circuits.
High-security sections have an additional internal separation to avoid contact between those accused of “terrorism,” domestic and international (AS2) and those of “mafia-style criminal conspiracy” (AS3) and related offenses, to avert, in the eyes of the legislature, monstrous criminal chimeras due to cross-species interbreeding3. Or, more prosaically, even if only to prevent the spread of a basic knowledge of one’s rights as a prisoner, a subject on which political prisoners are normally better versed, as they come from more literate backgrounds on the subject and are more prone to the consequent dialectic.
In AS, with the rubber stamp of the “mafia” or “terrorism” formula, an opposite strategy is applied to the overcrowded common sections: separation between prisoners, removal from the place of residence to make contact with family members more difficult, reduced contact with the outside world (fewer interviews, 4 hours monthly, and fewer phone calls, 2 monthly of 10 minutes each), heavier sentences, with less if any possibility of alternative sentences under the aegis of 4bis o.p. 4.
Then there is 41bis, the bottom of the well, the bottleneck of the repressive funnel where it is easier to get in than to get out, in the highest degree5, with a further exacerbation of solitary confinement, intracarceral and extracarceral: a one-hour interview per month with partitioned glass and audio-video recording; almost total postal censorship; limitation of items allowed in the cell, including books and music CDs, the purchase of which is in any case made very difficult, if not impossible; one hour of air time per day in cramped, netted yards and with socializing with up to three other prisoners (in fixed groups selected by management).
This prologue, unpleasant, is to explain a minimum the difficulties and contradictions experienced, as antiauthoritarians, in facing and fighting prison these days in these shores.
The strategy of isolation, sterilization of human contacts and rescission of solidarity networks is obviously not an Italian prerogative but, as our Chilean comrades are well understanding, a practice that is spreading and being perfected there as well, as in the aggravation of Francisco’s conditions of isolation and the restructuring of the Alta Seguridad. Just as everywhere the restructuring of detention facilities combines punitive logics toward the individual refractor with those of a “Fordist” efficiency of preventive repression aimed at creating compartmentalized and incommunicative levels to more effectively and aseptically manage control, inside as well as outside. Continue reading “Anna Beniamino: Pathophysiology of the prison monster: poisons and antidotes (October 2024)” →