On the 20th of October 2022, the anarchist Alfredo Cospito began a limitless hunger strike.
Alfredo, a revolutionary prisoner since 2012, was transferred to the Bancali prison in Sardinia on the 5th of May and is currently subjected to the 41 bis prison regime, a situation repeatedly denounced as a form of torture based on sensory deprivation. We remember that this particular prison regime is also applied to three comrades of the BR.PCC, to whom it has been renewed for the past 17 years.
This hunger strike, as an extreme form of struggle, serves to support the following demands: Abolition of the “41 bis” detention regime for all prisoners, and the abolition of another form of life imprisonment (“ergastolo ostativo”) which is based on the collaboration with the repressive forces as the only way to obtain benefits.
Other anarchist prisoners have joined this strike: from the 25th of October, Juan Sorroche detained in the Terni prison; since 27th of October, Ivan Alocco from the Villepinte prison (France); since the 7th of november, Anna Beniamino in the Rebibbia prison (Rome); and from the 9th of November, Toby Shone, detained in England, has been solidarising with an intermittent hunger strike. A sign of solidarity had also arrived by Giannis Michailidis, a prisoner already on hunger strike in support of the eleven Turkish revolutionaries also on hunger strike in the Greek prisons.
After a month of battle, the prisoners’ initiative and the international mobilisation that is supporting them have achieved their goal of breaking the wall of silence with which the authorities and the media have tried to conceal this situation.
Despite this, no concrete step has been taken by the Italian state, which is responsible for Alfredo Cospito’s detention and health conditions, to remove the prisoner from the prison regime of torture.
After more than a month of hunger strike, the worries for his health and those of his fellow prisoners are growing stronger, their lives are in danger. We hold the Italian State authorities responsible for this situation and for any damage that the strikers’ health will suffer.
On 1 December, the surveillance court that has the power to remove Alfredo from 41 bis will meet in Rome.
On the 5th of December, in Turin, Anna and Alfredo will be tried for the crime of ‘political slaughter’, under an article of the fascist penal code that was never repealed. They risk being sentenced to life imprisonment for the explosive attack on the Carabinieri cadet school in Fossano in 2006, an attack that caused neither deaths nor injuries.
The period between the first and fifth of December is therefore of utmost importance for this mobilisation and requires maximum commitment from everyone.
The imprisonment of Alfedo Cospito in a regime of physical and psychological political annihilation represents a danger for all anarchists, revolutionaries and social fighters in Europe, as it indicates the tendency to escalate repression in the current context of economic and social crisis: a right of war for times of war.
From inside the jails, comrades on hunger strike set an example by responding to the onslaught of domination. We, on the outside, are called to fight up for their commitment.
In order to make the voice of the international anarchist movement heard, we are launching a week of action in solidarity with the anarchist prisoners’ strike against the 41 bis regime and hostile life imprisonment, from the 28th November to the 5th of December.
November 23rd, 2022
Comrades
From: Athens Indymedia