‘political massacre’

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)” →

Italy: Juan Sorroche – ‘Reflection on the General Context of the Causes of the Struggle’

Posted on 2024/05/03 by darknights

Regarding my convictions and trial charges and the nexus of non-systemic revolutionary struggle action practices and “my” meaning of the anarchist vision

“(…) The reality is precisely this complex thing that cannot be traced back to the results of a judicial proceeding. This will always be arbitrary and will be based not on evidence but on force, not on logic but on domination. Difficult reasoning? Maybe so, but reasoning that once done can never be forgotten” [Published with the title “Noterelle su Sacco e Vanzetti. In margine a un convegno di studi”, in “Anarchismo”, n. 63, July 1989, pp. 36-40].
Alfredo Maria Bonanno, A mano armata, Pensiero e azione, Edizioni Anarchismo

In remembrance, and a warm greeting and see you soon comrade Alfredo!

Note:

To facilitate the writing of the text, I chose to use mainly the masculine as a gender ending. Aware of the importance of rejecting and countering gender abuses (as of any kind), I trust in the reader’s understanding so that no one feels discriminated against.

Premise:

Hello to all, compañeras and to all, compañeros

I am Juan Sorroche, an anarchist prisoner arrested on May 22, 2019 and I write from the AS2 section of the Terni prison where I have been locked up for 5 years.

After my heavy sentence on January 26, 2024 in Rome in the Court of Cassation trial for the action against the Lega Nord, a party that was and is part of the government of the Italian State, a strongly racist, misogynistic and xenophobic party.

As an anarchist prisoner I would like to make clear to comrades, revolutionaries, outcasts and oppressed the connection of the causes of the struggle for which I am here in prison today as an anarchist prisoner.

In the first instance, even though the prosecutor had removed the charge of “political massacre” (285), I was sentenced to 28 years in prison plus 3 years of probation. On appeal, almost half of the sentence, I was sentenced to 14 years and 7 months. A few days ago, the Court of Cassation definitively sentenced me to 14 years and 7 months, a significant and exemplary sentence for the attack.

In the first instance, I want to say that I entered prison already having spent a cumulative period of about 8 years behind bars for my struggles in Italy, which is why I escaped into hiding in 2016 to continue living-fighting. Of these 8 years, 4 years are for the “NO TAV trial”. Subsequently, the other 4 years were different trials related to anti-prison and anti-CPR struggles, anti-fascist and anti-democratic struggles, struggles against technologies, GMOs, “environmentalists”, in which I took part, always trying to include the anti-state and anti-capitalist aspect of anarchism in Trentino as well as in different Italian situations. Including the Susa Valley, a path that I had taken in the past years in the NO TAV struggle against one of the projects of capital and the State and the devastating tentacle of the high-speed train. I was arrested, among many others, for the days of struggle and violent clashes of July 3, 2011. During the trial and during my imprisonment at the time, I claimed with a personal statement those days of struggle and the paths of opposition to the TAV and more generally the anti-state and anti-capitalist aspect. I refused the defense in the “NOTAV Trial”, positioning myself anti-juridically even trying to fight in court by refusing the trial, believing that I should not “defend” myself in that judicial theater, and for this I was sentenced to 4 years and 6 months. And I take those decisions with my head held high.

In May 2019, after 2 and a half years on the run, I was arrested together with another comrade accused of having supported my being on the run, and then the comrade was sentenced for aiding and abetting to a year and a half, a sentence that was significant and exemplary as we had not seen each other for years, and it gave us a hint of the new tenor of the trials to come.

When I was arrested, little by little, I became aware of a series of investigations and trials that see me accused of several attacks (with terrorist aims) in Italy:

– the bombs at the headquarters of the Lega Nord in Treviso for the attack of 12/08/2018, regarding the two explosive devices, one exploded and another full of nails discovered by the bomb squad in the form of a trap to carry out the components of the building and the police; these were placed in the headquarters of the Lega Nord in Treviso and were claimed with the claim:

“Let’s hit them at home!!!: (…) to specifically attack racism and exploitation. To strike at the state, capital and its perpetrators. Direct action makes it clear to us why and how. For an internationalist, rebellious, and anarchist solidarity! Solidarity with all prisoners (…). And to all the rebels locked up in the homeland prisons of the world!”
Haris Hatzimihelakis Cell/Black International 1881/2018

– the bomb at the Surveillance Court of Trento 2014. Sentenced in the first instance to 3 years and 2 months, then acquitted on appeal, I must soon go to the Supreme Court. Claimed anonymously: in solidarity and to give voice to the prisoners who struggle with dignity in all prisons and to the anarchist comrades who were in prison isolated in AS2 in Italy and other anarchist prisoners in the world.

– the bomb against the POL GAI (police academy) claimed by cell H, I report some sketches of the published claim:

“(…) as a cell H (C.A.A.) akin to the Black International and we join the call to action for a BLACK DECEMBER. We attacked one of the armed arms of the state. In this “school” cops from all over Italy and other countries are educated. This is a small signal against war. We stand in solidarity with all the people who are fighting against all states and capital. Our thoughts go out to the many comrades who have been repressed, locked up, tortured, or killed in the present and in the past. In solidarity with all the detainees who are struggling.”

This is in the context of the campaign launched by anarchist prisoners in Greece for a Black December, called international in the context of anarchist action in 2015.

A trial that I will begin shortly.

To date, I have accumulated 23 years in prison.

Actions that I agree with because for me they are part of the history of our movement of struggle in non-systemic revolutionary anarchism of action and of the struggle for freedom of all the oppressed in the world. Regardless of whether or not I am responsible for these facts. And I am determined to move forward in my anarchist life in order to live-fight within my limited possibilities as a prisoner. Continue reading “Italy: Juan Sorroche – ‘Reflection on the General Context of the Causes of the Struggle’” →

Italy: Alfredo Cospito and Anna Beniamino sentenced to 23 and 17 years in prison

Posted on 2024/04/30 by darknights

From: No 41 bis- international mobilisation

“The sentences of 23 years and 17 years and 9 months of imprisonment to the anarchists Alfredo Cospito and Anna Beniamino are final. The Court of Cassation confirms the sentence bis of the Court of Appeal of Turin. The requests of the defense and of the prosecution of Turin were rejected, and they insisted to the end on obtaining life imprisonment. Rage and love for our comrades! With the practices of which they are accused! Alfredo out since 41 bis!”

Thus communicated the comrades from Italy the final sentences imposed on Alfredo Cospito and Anna Beniamino in what was the trial of the Scripta Manent case, which sought to blame both comrades for “political massacre”, based on the action against the Carabinieri school of Fossano.

During the trial at the Court of Cassation in Rome, an appeal regarding the mitigating factors in the conviction for “political massacre” was reviewed, finally reconfirming the sentences already established in June 2023, after the long hunger strike of Alfredo Cospito against 41 bis, which lasted 182 days. In this way, both comrades remain in prison and under the same isolation measures.

It should be noted that during the early morning of April 22 the DIGOS of Turin “carried out 19 precautionary measures (3 house arrests, 1 prohibition of residence and 15 obligations of residence and daily signature) in the framework of the so-called Operation City related to the events of the march of March 4, 2023 in solidarity with Alfredo Cospito”, this as part of a series of repressive intimidation against those who mobilized in support of the comrade.

Despite the persecution and the continued imprisonment of Anna and Alfredo, the signs of solidarity continue, strengthening them from the other side of the wall.

Source: La Zarzamora

Via: Informativo Anarquista

Italy: ‘The carousel of repression’ – Anna Beniamino

Posted on 2024/04/23 - 2024/04/23 by darknights

THE CAROUSEL OF REPRESSION

Almost eight years after the arrests for Scripta Manent, for the second time the Court of Cassation, on 24th April 2024, will pronounce judgement on the crime of “political massacre”, pursuant to art. 285 c.p., against Alfredo and myself, the last remaining fragment pending in the process (i), after a whirlwind of delays, recalculations, and repressive-jurisprudential manipulations (ii).

Although the repetition of error numbs the horror, and we are living in times of multiple horrors flaunted and total anaesthetisations, I believe there are still some words to be said about the ongoing annihilation attempt, about reactions, successful and attempted. Not so much because I believe this may be useful for our personal fates, but out of a kind of stubborn “romanticism” that considers silence and resignation always and even more lethal in a political process.

Having no inclination to resign silently to the administration of “justice” (as it happens daily in the prisons) and nor to be restricted by the logic of damage limitation (another cornerstone of survival between prison and courts), but shifting the focus to the repressive policies underlying this and the actual capacity to react, to create moments of struggle and rupture, to build barriers, individual and collective, against the arrogance of repression.

I have spoken of error and horror because that is what repressive policies are at their core, errors and horrors that blend together in completely distorting the theoretical and practical significance of the enemy, burying them alive and/or forcing them into defensive entrenchment and the Indian reserves of “counterculture” and the pursuit of “democratic indignation” (which by now is little more than an Indian reserve, with a threshold of sensitivity that more often than not is an impenetrable callousness in most), a strategy that weakens the reactivity of comrades in the short term, more than they may believe, in a sense of inevitability of events and the impossibility of constructing reactions.

Seven years ago, I thought it was possible to manage the Scripta Manent process as ordinary repression, countering from a technical perspective, point by point, both individual events and the entire associative framework, given the clear fragility of the accusatory structure. There was an excess of optimism about the ongoing political will and strategies and an unforgivable shortsightedness in not immediately highlighting with greater force what was happening. It took the threat of 41bis and life imprisonment looming to focus eyes and attention.

Far from wanting to fall back into the rhetoric of “judicial error,” of excess, because from a jurisprudential and probative standpoint, that was precisely the fact that some mainstream media had to reluctantly admit (while others held firm on their sensationalism) in order to justify the anarchist under 41bis. They had to contextualise the events and the character with a certain embarrassment, and also place the heart of the State, its security – endangered precisely what characterises political massacre – within a couple of exploded bins at 3 a.m. on the perimeter walls of a barracks, while having to awkwardly sidestep the other script holes offered by DNAA and the Turin prosecutor’s office.

Far from a “judicial error” because this is a deliberate intent, with convergences between paper castles of the police headquarters and cages of cement over cement: the episodic component (the career of individual cops or magistrates, the media always ready to hype up the new danger, the crassest propaganda) is there, but it converges into a well-oiled machine that always needs new heads to be cut off and displayed on the ramparts of law and order. Sometimes the machine stalls… and it is the duty and pride of every anti-authoritarian to make it stall.

In these years of prison time and trials, I have had the opportunity to experience firsthand a series of logical and legal manipulations that I didn’t think could be possible to concentrate in a single operation, making me equally aware that it is the modus operandi in practice between public prosecutors and courts in the extension of “special” legislation, from “emergency” to “daily”, in the fields of anti-mafia and anti-terrorism: no longer an exception, but the usual management that the National Anti-Mafia Directorate applies and has been applying to cases involving organised crime extended to anarchists, and that the justice system in general applies to those segments of social opposition and non-conforming elements that are isolated and easily attackable, which still express, albeit in a rudimentary form, the need to reclaim the streets, the word, and the dignity of a non-negotiated opposition. A synergistic attack – fuelled by a political climate not just of a simple right-wing government but equivalent in the last “political” or “technical” governments that wanted to define themselves – against the irredeemable components for electoral purposes: in a general lowering of the bar for criminally punishable acts and the parallel increase in what can be sensationalised in the media, one can discern the strategies at work and the resistance to be opposed.

In this sense, I believe Juan’s (iii) writings in capturing the positive aspects, if not the need to put a stop to them, in addition to the necessary critical and self-critical questions of the movement, are clear. Continue reading “Italy: ‘The carousel of repression’ – Anna Beniamino” →

Italy: Juan Sorroche and Marco Marino – Words of solidarity of anarchist prisoners in AS2 in Terni prison in response to the words of anarchist prisoners, subversives, fighting from Chilean prisons (August 21, 2023)

Posted on 2023/09/01 - 2023/09/01 by darknights

WORDS OF SOLIDARITY FROM ANARCHIST PRISONERS OF AS2 TERNI IN RESPONSE TO THE WORDS OF ANARCHIST PRISONERS, SUBVERSIVES, IN STRUGGLE FROM CHILEAN PRISONS

“Your struggle is ours, every gesture against this world has your imprint… because we are one pack that never forgets its own and its own, regardless, of where we are” – Public letter by Marcelo Villarroel, September 14, 2019

– Internationalist solidarity for the end of the sentence and freedom of comrade Marcelo Villarroel Sepúlveda, arrested in Argentina in 2008 after nearly 16 years in prison. Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of Pinochet’s military “coup” in Chile, wanted and created by North American imperialism as in Ukraine today, the comrade is sentenced by Pinochet’s legacy military justice. Today this legal aberration is applied, which coexists comfortably with the consensus democracy of the Chilean state, now ruled by the Boric left. Democracy and reactionary fascism are two sides of the same coin, tools of the Imperialist-State.

– Solidarity in the face of the beginning of the trial against comrades Mónica Caballero and Francisco Solar [the judicial hearing, the main trial phase, began on July 18], the vengeance of state rule does not stop against those who go on the offensive by attacking its untouchability and impunity.

– Solidarity with Comrade Juan Aliste Vega, also convicted by Pinochet’s military justice, and Comrade Joaquin Garcia Chancks.

– Solidarity for the downgrading of anarchist Alfredo Cospito from 41 bis. Against 41 bis, out everyone, and for the abolition of life imprisonment.

– Solidarity with comrade Anna Beniamino and Alfredo Cospito convicted in a political trial on the abnormal charge of Article 285 c. p. p., massacre against the security of the state, or commonly called political massacre, this is the first time a massacre without massacre against the internal enemy has been used in this way in Italy. Article 285 c. p. c., massacre against the security of the state, has not been applied to the massacres that have been perpetrated in this country, Piazza Fontana, the Bologna station, Piazza della Loggia, since the 1970s of the so-called strategy of tension, massacres carried out by the Italian state, but, like Pinochet’s “coup”, wanted and created by North American imperialism in its struggle to keep the world under its control. Continue reading “Italy: Juan Sorroche and Marco Marino – Words of solidarity of anarchist prisoners in AS2 in Terni prison in response to the words of anarchist prisoners, subversives, fighting from Chilean prisons (August 21, 2023)” →

Italy: Alfredo Cospito and Anna Beniamino were sentenced to 23 years and to 17 years and 9 months

Posted on 2023/07/04 by darknights

While waiting for a more detailed text about the hearing, we inform that on June 26th, the Turin court of assizes of appeal established the extent of the convictions against anarchists Anna Beniamino and Alfredo Cospito in the Scripta Manent trial, sentencing them to 17 years and 9 months and 23 years respectively. Therefore, the possibility of a life sentence for Alfredo (and 27 years and 1 month for Anna), requested by the Turin public prosecutor’s office during the appeal hearing of December 5th, 2022, and later on June 19th and 26th, was definitively ruled out.

We remind that during the Scripta Manent trial — in addition to accusations of subversive association with the purpose of terrorism and subversion of the democratic order, attack with terrorist purposes, incitement to commit crimes aggravated by the purpose of terrorism, etc. — several accusations and convictions for massacre followed against Anna and Alfredo, first for the action in the bourgeois district of Crocetta (Turin, 2007) and later for the action against Caserma Allievi Carabinieri (Cadets of Carabinieri Barracks, Fossano, 2006). With the requalification by the court of cassation (July 6th, 2022) of the conviction for massacre against public safety (art. 422 of the Italian penal code) into massacre against State security (art. 285 of the penal code), the comrade risked a life sentence due to the prevalence of repeated recidivism over mitigating circumstances. The legislation that established the mandatory life sentence was subsequently amended by the constitutional court with the hearing on April 18th: not a “victory” for the rule of law or a “return” to the principles of the constitution, but a result achieved by the hunger strike against 41 bis prison regime and life imprisonment without possibility of parole and the international solidarity movement that developed between May 2022 and April 2023.

DEATH TO THE STATE AND CAPITAL! SOLIDARITY WITH ANNA BENIAMINO, ALFREDO COSPITO AND ALL IMPRISONED ANARCHISTS AND REVOLUTIONARIES!

[Translated into english and published by https://lanemesi.noblogs.org/post/2023/07/02/alfredo-cospito-and-anna-beniamino-were-sentenced-to-23-years-and-17-years-and-9-months-italy/ | Originally published in italian, on June 27th, at https://lanemesi.noblogs.org/post/2023/06/27/alfredo-cospito-e-anna-beniamino-sono-stati-condannati-a-23-anni-e-a-17-anni-e-9-mesi/]

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(IT) Alfredo Cospito e Anna Beniamino sono stati condannati a 23 anni e a 17 anni e 9 mesi
(EN) Alfredo Cospito and Anna Beniamino were sentenced to 23 years and to 17 years and 9 months (Italy)
(FR) Alfredo Cospito et Anna Beniamino condamnés à 23 ans et à 17 ans et 9 mois (Italie)

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” →

Rome, Italy: About the constitutional court hearing on the convictions for anarchists Alfredo Cospito and Anna Beniamino in the Scripta Manent trial + Anarchist Alfredo Cospito ‘interrupted’ his hunger strike undertaken since Oct. 20 [Corrected]

Posted on 2023/04/20 - 2023/04/28 by darknights

DN Note: We have been informed by comrades in Italy that comrade Alfredo has only interrupted his hunger strike, that the isolation that is 41 bis prevents us knowing what his real motivations are at present.

About the constitutional court hearing on the convictions for anarchists Alfredo Cospito and Anna Beniamino in the Scripta Manent trial (Rome, April 18, 2023)

A hearing was held today in the constitutional court on the case of Alfredo Cospito and Anna Beniamino on charges of political massacre (art. 285 c. p.) within the Scripta Manent trial.

The current Cirielli law (year 2005, Berlusconi government) prevents mitigating factors from outweighing aggravating factors in the case of recidivism. In Alfredo Cospito’s case, in particular, this would have resulted in a certain sentence of hostile life imprisonment despite the fact that the action he and Anna are accused of did not cause any victims.

The court therefore found this provision unconstitutional. More, reading the terse press release that came out of the building, the court seems to have raised constitutionality doubts in general with respect to all those cases in which the fixed penalty is configured solely as life imprisonment.

Recall that Alfredo Cospito has been on hunger strike for almost 6 months precisely against 41 bis and hostile life imprisonment. A struggle for which his comrade is risking his life and during which he may already have suffered permanent neurological damage. A struggle that Alfredo has always reiterated is not just for himself, but for everyone, particularly in solidarity with anarchist, communist and revolutionary prisoners. Today’s decision will have consequences not only for the fate of our comrade, but is a blow, however circumscribed, to the institution of life imprisonment in this country. Continue reading “Rome, Italy: About the constitutional court hearing on the convictions for anarchists Alfredo Cospito and Anna Beniamino in the Scripta Manent trial + Anarchist Alfredo Cospito ‘interrupted’ his hunger strike undertaken since Oct. 20 [Corrected]” →

Greece: Hunger Strike of Anarchists and Fighting Prisoners in Solidarity with Alfredo Cospito

Posted on 2023/02/16 - 2023/02/16 by darknights

Hunger Strike of Anarchists and Fighting Prisoners in Solidarity with Alfredo Cospito

The 41-bis prison regime is the completion of the prison structure into a masqueraded death sentence. The execution, in this case, does not end in one moment, like with a gunshot, the tightening of the noose, the application of electrical current or the injection of poison into the body, rather it lasts a lifetime in a state of social coma, in a state of non-world. And so, spread through time. Out of this world, the death sentence has evaded history, just like the state pursues oblivion for all the prisoners of the social war who are buried alive in the state of 41-bis. The 41-bis regime has already murdered one fighter, Diana Blefari Melazzi.

The 41-bis regime and the law about “massacre” are the legacy of the european counter-revolution from the time of Piazza Fontana (Strage di piazza Fontana). This civil war never ended. The states, and particularly the Italian one, carry on the counter-revolution so that the flame may never flare up again. All the systems follow, step by step, the examples first introduced as special warfare, e.g. the white cells of West Germany, the F-type prisons in Turkey and the FIES prisons in Spain to the Type-C prisons in Greece or the new high security prison system A.A.; the still active Hitler-inspired law about indefinite extension of one’s sentence on “preventative” grounds, by which comrade Thomas Meyer Falk is being held for another 10 years (25 in total) in Freiburg prison in Germany, to the different methods of extorting declarations of repentance, and from Asinara to Imrali.

Anarchist Alfredo Cospito is fighting for the flame to flare up again. Let’s reassert the fight of the comrade.

It is our duty to defend in deed the battle that Alfredo Cospito is fighting. A struggle for and against time itself. This particular hunger strike does not concern only the comrades in the italian territory, but it is internationalist, and so the star of internationalist solidarity must shine on the side of Alfredo Cospito and all those who are fighting from within a special prison regime. From Greece to every point in the planet – for all those fighting for freedom.

Because defeat is not captivity, but losing one’s faith in the possibility of wining. So, we are collectively going on a hunger strike, according to each one’s capacity, so that we may stand by the side of anarchist revolutionary Alfredo Cospito, but also, against the death regime of 41-bis.

At the same time the struggle against the new prison code in greek prisons is continuing.

Anarchist and Fighting Prisoners

Yiannis Michailedis

(1 day hunger strike)

Dimitris Chatzivasileiadis

(3 day hunger strike)

Thanos Chatziaggelou

(1 day hunger strike)

Iasonas Rodopoulos

(1 day hunger strike)

Kostas Dimalexis

(3 day hunger strike)

Labros Vougiouklakis

(1 day hunger strike)

Panagiotis Vougiouklakis

(1 day hunger strike)

Stathis Nikolouzos

(1 day hunger strike)

Stergios Kalaitzidis

(1 day hunger strike)

Fotis Daskalas

(1 day hunger strike)

Bolzano, Italy: Statement at the appeal trial for the Brenner demonstration

Posted on 2023/02/08 by darknights

Today, Feb. 3, the last hearing prior to sentencing in the appeal trial for the anti-border march (Brenner, May 2016) was held at the Bolzano court. This is the statement read in the courtroom, signed by some 20 defendants:

Statement at the appeal trial for the Brenner demonstration

If there is a place where words do not express mere opinions without consequences, this is certainly the court. In a few days, in this courtroom, it will be decided whether and for how long our future will consist of bars and prison.

This is no reason to keep silent.

In the repressive doggedness that the various public prosecutors’ offices in this country have long reserved for the anarchist movement – of which the 130 years in prison dispensed in the first-degree verdict in this trial is a good example -, in these days it is reaching its zenith. The state seems determined to condemn to death fellow anarchist Alfredo Cospito, now on his 107th day of an all-out hunger strike against the torture of 41 bis and against hostile life imprisonment. Alfredo’s determination, on the one hand, and institutional ferocity, on the other, decisively overshadow for us the outcome of this trial and our individual fates.

In a country marked by a long trail of real massacres carried out by state apparatuses with the manpower of neo-fascists-this is not only a historical truth, but even a judicial one-, to be convicted of “political massacre” are … two anarchists (Alfredo Cospito and Anna Beniamino), for “a massacre without massacre attributed without evidence.” The most odious falsification of the anarchist idea and practice, taking Alfredo to the grave for living of 41 bis.

If this is the logic, then 130 years in prison can be doled out for a demonstration that caused, according to the same prosecution, 8,000 euros in damages. Consistency, as they say, is in the whole.

While there is talk of the Constitution, the rule of law and peace, reality tells us that the democratic governments of the West are leading us straight toward conflict with Russia, that is, on an inclined plane at the bottom of which is World War III, with the accompanying annihilation of terrestrial life.

The fury against dissent in general and against anarchists in particular is the home front of that war. The 41 bis is prison of war.

That is why Alfredo’s great courage and the solidarity he was able to muster are so frightening. They are part of that humanity that will never side with NATO bombs, just as our comrades in Russia do not side with Putin’s bombs.

While it is up to you to choose whether to join the chorus of repression that is nowadays more disproportionate, our thoughts and hearts are with Alfredo.

Bolzano, February 3, 2023

Giulia Perlotto, Carlo Casucci, Kamilla Bezerra, Massimo Passamani, Manuel Oxoli, Luca Rassu, Roberto Bottamedi, Marco Degosus, Arianna Viola, Mattia Magagna, Roberto Bonadeo, Agnese Trentin, Andrea Parolari, Stefano Diani, Benedetta Antonucci, Matteo Nascimben, Sirio Mafrini

Source: Il Rovescio & oltre il Ponte

Via: La Nemesi