Alfredo Cospito is in prison in Italy for the last ten years. The 55-year-old anarchist has been on hunger strike since 20.10.2022, more than 160 days, and has lost more than 55 kg of weight since then. With his hunger strike he wants to achieve better prison conditions under the isolation regime under the Italian article “41bis”.
Article 41bis imposes extremely strict rules and was actually created for imprisoned mafia bosses to prevent them from communicating with the outside world. All of life, including conversations and every moment, are monitored and everything is recorded on video. Life takes place in a 3.75 square meter cell. Prisoners spend 22 hours a day there in isolation. There is nothing to read and they can only choose between 3 different radio programs, which the prisoners are allowed to listen to. In addition, the prisoners are only allowed one monthly visit from a family member and one phone call. Alfredo Cospito was even forbidden to have a photo of his parents in his cell!
Currently Alfredo is in Milano Opera prison in Milan. He has been in solitary confinement under Ariktel 41bis since May 2022. The Cassation Court in Rome ruled at the end of February 2023 that his detention under Article 41bis should remain in place and that he should continue to remain in solitary confinement. This decision was made despite Alfredo’s hunger strike and his increasingly deteriorated condition. Alfredo is in jail for shooting Roberto Adinolfi, the head of the nuclear company Ansaldo Nucleare, in the knee in 2012. He was therefore sentenced to ten years and eight months in prison. He is also accused of detonating two parcel bombs outside a Carabinieri (Italian police) recruit school in Fossano at 3:00 a.m. in 2006, causing only property damage and injuring no people. He denied this act and it could not be clearly proven against him. Nevertheless, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison for it.
Unfortunately, you cannot write letters to Alfredo, because the complete isolation by 41bis allows no contact. Nevertheless, we call for solidarity with Alfredo Cospito and the worldwide struggle against imprisonment, isolation and jail!
On 1.3.2023 the last letter from Alfredo was published, which can be found in translated version below:
My struggle against 41bis is waged as an individualist anarchist. I will not make nor accept any blackmail. I simply cannot live under an inhuman regime like that of 41bis, where I cannot freely read what I want, e.g. books, newspapers, anarchist periodicals, art, science, literature and history magazines.
The path I have to get out of here requires me to deny my anarchism, and would only ensure that someone else is put in my place. In this prison regime I am not allowed any human contact, I can’t see or caress a blade of grass, or kiss a loved one. A regime where the pictures of your parents are confiscated. I am buried alive in a tomb, a place of death. I will continue my struggle to its most extreme consequences, not as a form of “blackmail,” but because this is not a life. If the objective of the Italian State is to make me “dissociate” from the actions of the anarchist women and men outside, let it be known that I will not respond to blackmail. As a good anarchist, I believe that everyone is responsible for his own actions, and moreover, since I belong to its anti-organizational current, I have not “associated” myself with anyone and therefore I cannot “dissociate” myself from anyone. Affinity is something else.
A coherent anarchist does not distance himself from other anarchists because of opportunism or because it suits him. I have always proudly claimed my actions (including in the courts, which is why I am here) and I have never criticized those of my comrades, much less in the situation I now find myself in.
The greatest insult for an anarchist is the accusation of giving or receiving orders. When I was under the high surveillance regime, I was subject to censorship and so I never sent “pizzini” bills containing orders1, but rather articles for anarchist newspapers and magazines. And above all, I was free to receive books and magazines and to write books, to read what I wanted, in short I was allowed to evolve, to live.
Today, I am ready to die to let the world know what 41bis really is; 750 people suffer it in silence, people who are continuously presented as monsters by the mass media.
Now it’s my turn: first you turned me into a monster in the guise of a bloodthirsty terrorist; then you sanctified me in the guise of a martyred anarchist who sacrifices himself for others; and now you have transformed me into a monster again, by presenting me as the leader of some ghastly “SPECTER.” I have no doubt that when everything is said and done, I will be carried back to the altars of martyrdom. No thanks, I won’t buy into your disgusting little political games.
In reality, the true problem of the Italian State is the one that remains unknown, namely, all the human rights that are violated in this regime, the 41bis, in the name of a “security” to which everything is sacrificed. Well! You should have thought about that before you put an anarchist in here. I don’t know the real motives or political maneuvers behind the decision to use me as a “poison dumpling” in this regime. It was not very difficult to foresee what my reactions would have been to this “non-life.” The Italian state is a worthy representative of the hypocrisy of a West that continually gives sermons on “morality” to the rest of the world. The 41bis has offered lessons that were well received by so-called “democratic” states like that of the Turkish State (the Kurdish companions know something about it) or the Polish State.
I am convinced that my death will put a stop to this regime, and that the 750 people who have been subjected to it for decades will be able to live a life worth living, whatever else they have done.
I love life, I am a happy man, I would not trade my life for anyone else’s. And it is precisely because I love it, that I cannot accept this hopeless non-life.
Thank you comrades, for all your love.
Always for anarchy.
Never bend.
Alfredo Cospito