Release Alfredo Now—It’s a Question of Justice
This is a country where there is a lot of talk about human rights when it comes to others’ governments, without having the courage to cast a glance in the domestic jails, without having the conscience to denounce the many oppressions that take place here. Right now, Alfredo Cospito is suffering a very serious abuse. Who is responsible? And who will have to answer for it in the future? The current minister, Carlo Nordio, who, although he could revoke this measure, does nothing? The Meloni government? Or, by any chance, would some cowardly person wish to place the blame on the detainee who was compelled to this extreme act? The transfer to the Opera prison hospital is in no way sufficient, because it is only a temporary palliative.
It is clear by now that the Cospito affair has taken on a symbolic and political value that cannot be underestimated. The culpable inaction of this government—the first post-fascist government in Mussolini’s country (much to be forgiven!)—has the terrible taste of repugnant revenge. Cospito’s body taken hostage, captured, to demonstrate farcical firmness. Despite all the interpretations of the homegrown liberals, ready to give them credit, government officials have no qualms about showing themselves to be petty fascist gendarmes.
Forget the hard line! Forget the blackmail! It is peculiar that there are even magistrates who use these terms. In whose hands are we? Here the terms are completely reversed. We call for Cospito to be released from 41bis first and foremost as a matter of justice, well before as a matter of humanity. It is not just about saving a life—although this politics of death, this necropolitics, is making us completely forget the value of human life. But the point here is: why on earth is Cospito in 41bis? What is he doing there? This question concerns everyone.
Let me briefly recapitulate. For injuring an Ansaldo executive in Genoa, Cospito was sentenced in 2013 to ten years and eight months. When he was already in prison, he was accused of placing two explosive devices in front of the Carabinieri cadet school in Fossano on the night of June 2-3, 2006, devices that caused neither deaths nor injuries. After his conviction, he was placed in the high-security prison circuit, where inmates are subject to close supervision and severe restrictions. From time to time, Cospito sent some writings to publications in the anarchist milieu.
The shift thereafter is what is being debated: the crime is reinterpreted and goes from common massacre to political massacre. Why? On what basis? A singular choice, since there were no new facts. The crime of political massacre was not applied even for Capaci [a mafia bombing in 1992 that killed a magistrate, his wife, and three police officers] or Piazza Fontana [a far-right bombing in Milan in 1969 that killed 17 people and wounded 88]. Here Cospito—with the endorsement of former Minister [Marta] Cartabia—is assigned to 41bis.
He ends up in a kind of sepulcher, a tomb: one meter and 52 centimeters wide and two meters and 52 centimeters long. Darkness, need for electric light, glimmers only at the top, at the surrounding wall. The cell is below sea level in Sassari prison. Hours of air only in a walled cubicle where the grating allows glimpses of the sky. Isolation, separation, elimination of even memories and of photos of family members. A kind of burial alive, of exclusion from the human community.
This happens in Italy in 2023. Honestly, it becomes almost grotesque to recount the anguish of the inquisition. We know very well that torture, a black phoenix, a practice that never ended, has taken on new forms in the democracies of the 21st century. Should we accept a state that tortures? That uses violence on a detainee’s body? Because there are many ways to exercise violence, even without leaving a trace. Italy has a recent past littered with victims of police abuse. It would hardly be appropriate, not even in the interests of the Republic, to witness an announced suicide.
Finally, I would like to touch on two issues that I feel have been overlooked. I will set aside 41 bis: I am against it always and for everyone (but I would need another article to say that). The first issue concerns the concept of terrorism, which is dangerous and slippery. Who is a terrorist? And who decides that? We know how all the emergency legislation, created in the American context, and that of other European countries, has revealed the violent face of democracy by producing abuses of all sorts, preventive torture, illegitimate administrative detentions. A risky path that undermines the right of every citizen. Does dissent constitute subversion? Does publishing in an anarchist magazine make one look like a terrorist?
The second issue concerns the very idea of anarchy. Much more than other countries, Italy has an ambivalent relationship with it. On the one hand, Sacco and Vanzetti [the Italian anarchists
Nicola Sacco and
Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed in the United States 1927 in what was widely considered a travesty of justice], almost fathers of the free and anti-Mussolinian Italy, exponents of the great Italian anarchist tradition, without whom it would be difficult to even imagine the culture of this country; on the other hand, Valpreda and the bombs, the temptation to demonize anarchists [the Italian anarchist and novelist Pietro Valpreda was charged with the Piazza Fontana bombing and sentenced to prison; in 1987, he was acquitted when the fact that he had nothing to do with it became inescapably evident]. Here, too, Italy has much to answer for. In these hours, attempts are being made to portray anarchists as either monsters or demons, terrorists threatening “our headquarters abroad” (!), at best people fallen prey to a “blind faith out of time.” Grotesque visions, which would be somewhat laughable, if they did not then have the anti-democratic implications we see. Anarchist thought, which in recent years has appeared philosophically the most interesting and the most productive, is part of today’s cultural and political context. And, certainly, there is no comparing it with fascism and post-fascism, which should have been excluded from our cultural and political context instead.
In short: is Cospito in 41bis because he is an anarchist?
Let us hope that on behalf of Italian citizens, Minister Nordio will intervene by February 12 to remove 41bis. It is already too late. Cospito’s life, the rights of all of us, and this democracy depend on it.
theintercept.com
netpol.org
crimethinc.com
www.crowdfunder.co.uk
www.reuters.com
bristolabc.org
www.palestineaction.org
