Bancali prison

Italy: Update on Alfredo Cospito’s situation and call for solidarity

Posted on 2023/08/22 by darknights

The latest news we’ve got about Alfredo, still in prison in Bancali
(Sassari) under the 41bis regime, are that his health is stable, he is
physically sound and has regained weight after his six-month hunger
strike. Unfortunately, he receives very little mail, almost none. Also,
when the prison withholds letters, postcards or telegrams, often he’s
not informed by prison staff. He thus finds himself subjected to an even
higher and more arbitrary censorship than the already harsh one of 41
bis. Let’s not let him lack our solidarity! We urge all to write letters
or postcards using registered mail with return receipt requested, to
increase the chances that, if they are withheld from him, he will be at
least notified.
Against all prisons!

Cassa Antirepressione Alpi Occidentali

Alfredo Cospito
Casa Circondariale di Sassari, località Bancali, 07100 Sassari SS,
Italia

Source: Il Rovescio

Italy: Statements of Alfredo Cospito & Anna Beniamino at the hearing on June 19, 2023 at the Turin Court of Appeals

Posted on 2023/06/25 by darknights

We are circulating Alfredo Cospito’s statement at the June 19 hearing in the court of appeals in Turin on the calculation of sentences against Alfredo himself and Anna Beniamino as part of the Scripta Manent trial. The comrade was connected via video-conference from the Bancali prison in Sassari (as known, the regulations do not require in-person presence). Replications and sentencing against the comrades are postponed to a later hearing scheduled for Monday, June 26, at 12 noon, also at the Turin court.

Alfredo Cospito: Statement at the June 19, 2023 hearing at the Turin Court of Appeal

This statement of mine is closely related to the trial because it goes into the merits of the sanctioning treatment you imposed on me. Sanctioning treatment that is unconstitutional and contradicts your own laws. Sanctioning treatment, 41 bis, that distorts the very meaning of my imprisonment, imposing on me a senseless censure that limits my right to defense.

It is obvious to all how my trial affair has been used as a sort of cudgel by one political party, “the government,” against another political party, the so-called “opposition.” My last-minute transfer from one section to another in anticipation of the arrival of PD parliamentarians is a striking example. Which shows how the DAP and 41 bis have been exploited for political purposes.

These facts are closely related to this trial because they are the product of past political dynamics that led to our disproportionate prosecution and conviction for political slaughter. To shut my mouth now, at the only time I can defend myself would mean endorsing this dangerous and totalitarian drift. Before talking about Fossano and the so-called “massacre” (although there is little to say, it would be enough to look at the images of the damage of the tremendous explosion) for just two minutes I will have to mention three deaths, two of which I am somehow responsible for, the third death that of Cosimo occurred at the clinical center of Opera, ward 41 bis. Continue reading “Italy: Statements of Alfredo Cospito & Anna Beniamino at the hearing on June 19, 2023 at the Turin Court of Appeals” →

Italy: Anarchist comrade Alfredo Cospito, on the 103rd day of hunger strike, was transferred to the Opera prison in Milan (January 30, 2023)

Posted on 2023/01/31 by darknights

Alfredo Cospito was transferred from the prison of Bancali to the SAI (Intensified Assistance Service) inside the lager of Opera, in Milan. In this prison there is a hospital section for prisoners in 41 bis prison regime. The new address is:

Alfredo Cospito
Casa di Reclusione di Milano Opera
via Camporgnago 40
20141 Milano
Italy

Source: La Nemesi

Turin, Italy: Incendiary attack on a telecommunications repeater in solidarity with Alfredo Cospito on hunger strike to the bitter end

Posted on 2023/01/31 by darknights

We learn from the media that on the night of January 28, a telecommunications repeater located in Turin on Via Revigliasco (in a hilly area close to the city) was set on fire. According to various media reports, the fire – which occurred around 4:30 a.m. – resulted in the damage of about 2,000 meters of cables, interrupting service not only for some telephone companies but also for other companies, such as Iren (electricity and gas provider), and for some security systems that use the facility.

The inscription ” Out Alfredo Cospito from 41 bis” was left at the site, in reference to the anarchist comrade imprisoned in the Bancali prison, who has been on hunger strike for more than 100 days against the 41 bis regime (in which he has been imprisoned since May 5) and the hostile life sentence (which is likely to be the final sentence for the comrade at the end of the Scripta Manent trial, which has reached its last trial hearings). Currently, other than the writing found by the repressive forces, no claim or communication regarding the attack appears to have been released.

[Images taken from regime media].

Source: La Nemesi

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)” →

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/Abya Yala: Communique from different territories of Abya Yala for Alfredo Cospito almost 90 days into his hunger strike against the 41 bis punishment and isolation regime

Posted on 2023/01/19 - 2023/01/19 by darknights

Public communiqué of anarchist, subversive anti-authoritarian, nihilist anti-speciesist and anarcho-feminist affinities in the face of the current situation of comrade Alfredo Cospito in the Italian fascist prisons almost 90 days after the beginning of his hunger strike.

As comrades who support the anarchic struggle against prisons, prison society and the system of domination, we express through these words our unwavering support for comrade Alfredo Cospito, kidnapped by the Italian state in the prison of Bancali, Sassari, Sardinia; a center of extermination in which the nefarious regime of 41 bis has been applied to him, with the aim of destroying him as a subject and preventing him from maintaining any kind of contact with all his comrades inside and outside of the prisons.

Alfredo has been on hunger strike for almost 90 days demanding the end of the application of the damned regime, which extorts our comrades through the torture of isolation to induce them to give information or die, only in these two situations 41 bis ceases to be applied.

As like-minded comrades we repudiate the torture applied to Alfredo and other comrades, we know that they fear us because of our unrestricted commitment to end the system of domination, a commitment that does not end with torture, nor with prison, nor with death itself, and for this reason today Alfredo is risking his life firmly and without hesitation.

From the territory occupied by the Chilean colonialist state and from different territories of Abya Yala we tell you that the struggle of our comrade is also ours and that the consequences of a bad end to it will be seen and felt everywhere. Continue reading “$hile/Abya Yala: Communique from different territories of Abya Yala for Alfredo Cospito almost 90 days into his hunger strike against the 41 bis punishment and isolation regime” →

Italy: Update about the health condition of Alfredo Cospito on the 85th day of hunger strike

Posted on 2023/01/14 by darknights

Update about the health condition of Alfredo Cospito on the 85th day of hunger strike (Italy, January 12, 2023)

On January 12th, the 85th day of the hunger strike to the bitter end against 41 bis prison regime and life imprisonment without possibility of parole, the antagonist radio station Radio Onda d’Urto broadcast a third speech by the doctor who is regularly visiting anarchist comrade Alfredo Cospito, imprisoned in the Bancali prison, in Sassari. As for the updates on the 71st (December 29th) and 78th day (January 5th) of hunger strike, we report a transcript of the speech and the recording of the broadcast (in italian language):

“He has lost even more weight, and significantly more than last week: he lost another 4.50 kg, so he weighed 80 kg today. So for his height of about 1.93 cm, he is about 10 kg below his target weight. The musculature is getting progressively smaller […]. He was a bit angry because today four members of parliament from Partito Democratico [Democratic Party, PD] went to visit him [in Italy parliamentarians can, by their own decision, visit prisons at any time] and he reiterated that his struggle is not just for him, but is for all those who are imprisoned in 41 bis. So he does not represent the ‘good one’ to be saved, but it is a struggle extended to all the people who are in 41 bis […]. [His health conditions] are still quite good, the fact that he has further lost weight… and this time he is losing weight in an important way, week by week, clearly having already consumed what were his fat deposits, now he is slowly moving towards a muscular catabolism, so, this obviously entails – and will entail (because he is still standing well) – an important reduction in physical strength […]. In my opinion, yes [we must expect a worsening of his health], even if he always mentions these Kurdish comrades who have also gone a year without eating – so he tells me – but on multivitamins, on supplements, which he does not want to take at the moment, because he tells me that they make him feel hungry, so he feels very sick with this feeling hungry, while without taking them he does not feel hungry. But without these supplements, of course, the situation gets much worse […]”.

The recording of the Radio Onda d’Urto broadcast (in italian language):

Continue reading “Italy: Update about the health condition of Alfredo Cospito on the 85th day of hunger strike” →