
TAKE ALFREDO OUT OF THE 41 BIS
24th FEBRUARY: FROM 11 A.M. IN FRONT OF THE COURT OF CASSATION, PIAZZA CAVOUR, ROME
Alfredo Cospito has been on hunger strike since 20 October against 41 bis, the detention regime of annihilation and torture to which he was transferred on 5 May, and the hostile life sentence, which is likely to be the sentence for his companion at the end of the Scripta Manent trial. The strike has almost reached 130 days: long months in which Alfredo has opposed his tenacity as a conscious revolutionary to the will of annihilation of the State and its apparatuses, first and foremost the repressive and juridical ones which, if in the first weeks they did everything possible to censor his strike, in the recent weeks they have literally done everything possible to slander his ideas, coherence, and determination.
The transfer to 41 bis has been imposed in an attempt to undermine the unrepentant character with which Alfredo has lived these ten years of imprisonment, thus to prevent him from contributing to the debate between inside and outside prisons, in which he has intervened without the pretence of ‘orienting’ or ‘inspiring’ (these are the words of ministers and magistrates, amplified by the mass media) anything. A truth, this, that no sentence or repressive operation will ever be able to erase: because the comrade is an anarchist and as such refuses any delegation and hierarchy. Alfredo is a revolutionary who attacked one of the greatest perpetrators of the nuclear catastrophe in Europe and who subsequently, in prison, defended his convictions. In these ten years, against resignation, passivity, inaction, he has opposed the impulse towards a life dedicated to a revolutionary idea and practice aimed at integral freedom for all the oppressed and proletarians. An unspeakable idea for the state, which, ever since it emerged among the exploited masses, has tried in every way to contain it, instead increasing its capacity to re-emerge unexpectedly. An inadmissible revolutionary practice in a society-prison where it is inconceivable to challenge the monopoly of violence maintained by the state with systematic subjugation, coercion, threat and blackmail.
Alfredo Cospito was effectively sentenced to death by the state, which ratified its will to annihilate him with the hearing of the surveillance court in Rome on 1st December, which confirmed the order of detention in 41 bis. If he is alive today, it is due solely to his great capacity for resistance: for the state he should have been dead already. This is an observation from which we have a duty not to evade, because almost 130 days after the start of the strike, his life is on the brink of an abyss. Among those responsible – along with the supervisory court in Rome, Justice Minister Nordio, former Minister Cartabia, the current executive, the Turin Public Prosecutor’s Office and the National Anti-Mafia and Anti-Terrorism Directorate – is the Court of Cassation. A court that on 6th July requalified as ‘political massacre’ one of the charges in the Scripta Manent trial, in which the comrade had already been sentenced to 20 years. It is because of this requalification that Anna Beniamino risks a 27-year sentence and Alfredo a life sentence, a measure that exemplifies a judicial system that no longer even hides behind the screen of punishment as a form of rehabilitation, but affirms – ever more brazenly – its intention to remove all forms of life that are enemies of the State. This same court that, finally, on 24 February is called to rule on Alfredo’s 41 bis detention order.
In these years of military and economic warfare, as well as ecological and social catastrophe, the increase in repression corresponds to a vital need for capital. The repressive offensive developed at all levels, up to 41 bis for Alfredo Cospito as well as for Nadia Lioce, Roberto Morandi and Marco Mezzasalma, militants of the BR-PCC imprisoned in 41 bis for over 17 years.
For our part, we will continue to fight against the differentiated regimes in which our comrades are imprisoned, in the knowledge that these serve both to isolate them from outside movements (as in the case of the 41 bis) and to separate them from the potentially more conscious element of the detainees (as in the case of the AS2).
Resistance movements everywhere are confronted with this social reality, and in recent years there have been many demonstrations of active solidarity in the movements in Italy, but solidarity with Alfredo transcends borders, expressing the prospect of an internationalism capable of articulating in practice a vision of social liberation that recognises all states and the organisms of international capital as enemies. Same enemy, same struggle.
In recent months the wall of silence around the 41 bis has been broken, the role assumed by the DNAA as an instrument of political oppression has been clarified, revolutionary ideas and practices of struggle have been expressed, and international solidarity with imprisoned anarchists, communists and revolutionaries has been developed. Today, the struggle is to save Alfredo’s life by definitively breaking the 41 bis solitary confinement regime. Today, without any confidence in state justice, we support Alfredo again and as always.
SOLIDARITY WITH ALL ANARCHIST, COMMUNIST AND REVOLUTIONARY PRISONERS
Assembly in Solidarity with Alfredo Cospito and the Revolutionary Prisoners
(Anti-Imperialist Front is also in this Assembly)
Rome, February 2023
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