Radio Onda d’Urto – Dark Nights

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” →

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” →

Italy: Update about the health condition of Alfredo Cospito on the 78th day of hunger strike

Posted on 2023/01/12 by darknights

On January 5th, the 78th 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 second speech by the doctor who is regularly visiting anarchist comrade Alfredo Cospito, imprisoned in the Bancali prison, in Sassari. As for the update on the 71st day of the hunger strike (December 29th), we report a transcript of the speech and the recording of the broadcast (in italian language):

“[…] All in all, Alfredo’s condition is good. He is holding the hunger strike in an unexpected way, perhaps because he started from a high weight, at the beginning he weighed 115 kg, while today he is 2 kg under the last time I saw him, so we are talking about 83.5 kg. All in all, he is absolutely lucid, well oriented in time and space, he only reports some pressure drops, especially when he gets up, and this is there because he is maintaining a slightly low pressure; however, not particularly, today he had a maximum of 105, a minimum of 70, so all in all a good pressure. With regard to the haemato-chemical examinations – the last of which have not yet arrived – the situation from the penultimate ones was stationary like the previous ones, so there is a slight drop in the white blood cells, but as for the rest […] the vital parameters are good. As far as potassium is concerned, I can’t tell you anything, because, as I told you in the last interview, the potassium was a bit low, but it seems – from the electrocardiogram where you can indirectly see a possible drop in potassium – that there are no longer those typical alterations from hypo-potassiemia. He’s been taking honey from time to time, and this is also doing him good with regard to a sort of cheilosis he had on his tongue, with patina, etc.; basically, honey is a natural antibiotic. Today I brought him some curaseptic, which is a very disinfectant mouthwash […], the prison guards didn’t want to, then I managed to get him to rinse, and that made him feel good; then he used this ‘brush’ that I also brought him to remove the plaque from his tongue, and all in all he was very happy with how it felt, how his mouth felt. So basically the situation is stationary […]”.

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

Source: La Nemesi

Italy: Update about the health condition of Alfredo Cospito on the 71st day of hunger strike

Posted on 2023/01/04 by darknights

Update about the health condition of Alfredo Cospito on the 71st day of hunger strike (Italy, December 29, 2022)

On December 29th, 71st day of the hunger strike to the bitter end against 41 bis and life imprisonment without possibility of parole, the antagonist radio station Radio Onda d’Urto broadcast a speech by the doctor who is regularly visiting anarchist comrade Alfredo Cospito, imprisoned in the Bancali prison in Sassari. We report a partial transcript of the speech and, at the end of the update, the recording of the broadcast (in italian language).

“[…] So, let’s consider that Alfredo is now 70 days into his hunger strike. He started from a weight of 115 kg and today he is at 84 kg. Surely he has a strong physique, he started from a fairly high weight so he has a better chance than others of being able to sustain this hunger strike. It is clear, however, that everything has an end at some point; in the sense that currently his haemato-chemical parameters are quite good, except for the fact that it is going down a bit with the electrolytes. Today he spoke to me about reducing his agony, in the sense that he wants to make it precipitate a little in order to shift the ground a little, a little more, so that he might eventually be transferred from 41 bis. I told him, however, that as far as potassium is concerned, which is part of the electrolytes, like sodium and chlorine, it is indispensable for contraction, especially for cardiac contraction – I am a cardiologist –, in fact, with the electrocardiogram that we did today there are alterations that are found in the ventricular recovery phase, and which show particular waves that result from potassium deficiency. Obviously I got a bit angry because, a few days ago, he stopped taking the supplements [extremely mild, light, which he has been taking for some time], so this is also the cause of the lowered potassium […]. He is a little convinced [to keep taking them, for a few more days] so he promised me that today and tomorrow, while waiting for the results of the tests [which are done about every four days], he will take the supplements. Then, as for the rest, psychologically he is in high spirits, smiling; a couple of days ago they moved him from his cell to another one, so he has air time with three other inmates, and this pleases him very much, because he talks to these other three inmates during air time. As a complexion then, in fact, he is a little better because he was very, very pale, but not pale because he was deficient in red blood cells; pale precisely because he was not taking light. And obviously the calcemia that he still has good is crumbling a little bit from the bones; somewhere, if you don’t take in food, the body subtracts and tries to help in some way. Let’s say that also as reasoning, as lucidity, he is fine; nothing to say about the answers he gives, they are not at all confused. He is reading, now and then he has a bit of blurred vision, he told me a bit of visual impairment, and that goes with the vitamin deficiency, of course. Every now and then, also because he wants to be conscious, he takes a little honey, which is a bit better than sugar […], when he was hypoglycaemic, they used to give him some sugar, but now he takes honey, so he doesn’t have these glycaemic drops any more. Then, for the rest, he is quite well; obviously he has lost a lot, a lot, a lot of weight, even since the first time I saw him, but nothing disastrous from the haemato-chemical analyses […]”.

In the face of the attempted annihilation of Alfredo, it is of the utmost importance that the ideas, deeds, and contribution of the comrade not be forgotten, condemned to oblivion as desired by the repressive apparatus of the state with the Scripta Manent trial, the Sibilla operation, and the transfer to the 41 bis regime.

The recent decree of the Court of Surveillance of Rome that confirms the detention in 41 bis is placed in the same perspective – the annihilation of the comrade – and is indicative of the reprisal that the state intends to give to the anarchist movement. Repression, convictions, decades of imprisonment, however, will not be enough nor can they ever lead to surrender: inevitably, our passion for freedom is stronger than any authority.

We continue the struggle with determination, we support all anarchist and revolutionary initiatives in solidarity with Alfredo Cospito who has been on hunger strike for over 70 days, with Ivan Alocco since December 22nd again on hunger strike alongside Alfredo, and with all imprisoned anarchists and revolutionaries.

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

Source: La Nemesi