The following is a letter of support for Alfredo Cospito, an imprisoned Italian anarchist on hunger strike for more than 100 days against the brutal "41 bis" prison regime.
The translation is contributed by two American students of Italian.
The original writer is Italian political philosopher Donatella di Cesare. She is not anarchist; indeed, her framework of reference — democracy, citizenship, the Republic, rights or freedoms as bestowals of the state — is opposed to anarchy. That said, Di Cesare's letter of support is a contextually interesting document demonstrating how the mainstream Italian left perceives Cospito's case, the issues surrounding it and anarchists in general.
At this moment people are consumed by the very grave abuse of Alfredo Cospito. Who is responsible? Who will have to answer that question in the future? Will Minister of Justice Carlo Nordio, who can revoke this measure, remain inert? What about the Meloni government? Or by chance, induced by his extreme gesture, would they contemptibly pour the blame on the prisoner? His transfer into the Opera prison hospital, a temporary palliative, is in no way enough.
It is clear by now that the Cospito affair has assumed a symbolic and political value that cannot be underestimated. The guilty inertia of this government – the first post-fascist government in the country of Mussolini (itself much to answer for) – has the terrible taste of a repugnant vendetta. Cospito captured, kept hostage, to demonstrate an absurd harshness. Despite all the interpretations of the local liberals, ready to give the government credit, the exponents of the government have no hesitation demonstrating for the petty fascist police.
Another hard line! Another blackmail! It is surprising that there are still magistrates who use these terms. Whose hands are we in? Here the terms are completely inverted. We ask that Cospito be freed from 41-bis, in the name of justice first of all, well before as a matter of humanity. It’s not only about saving a life – even if these politics of death, these necro-politics, are making us forget about the value of human life. But here is the point: why was Cospito ever under 41-bis? What deed put him there? That question concerns all of us.
I would like to briefly recap. For having wounded an executive of Ansaldo in Genoa, Cospito was sentenced in 2013 to 10 years and 8 months. While he was already in prison, he was accused of having put two explosive devices, at night between June 2nd and 3rd, 2006, in front of the Fossano police training academy, devices which caused neither death nor wounds. Afterwards, the sentence was transferred to the high security section of the penitentiary system, in which the prisoners were subjected to strict surveillance and harsh limitations. Every so often Cospito still sent writings to anarchist publications.
The transfer that occurred subsequently is what we refer to: his crime was reinterpreted and changes from "common massacre" to "political massacre." Why? On what basis? A remarkable choice, given that there are no new facts. The offence of political massacre was not even applied in the Capaci or the Piazza Fontana bombings. The result is that Cospito – with the endorsement of ex-Minister Cartabia – is destined for 41-bis.
He ends up in a sort of sepulcher, a space for a tombstone: 1 meter and 52 centimeters width and 2 meters, 52 centimeters length. Darkness, no electric light. Glimmers up high, corresponding to the surrounding wall, the only light. The cell is below sea level in the prison of Sassari. Hours alone in a walled cube where the grating permits only a glimpse of the sky. Isolation, separation, the elimination even of memories, of photographs of the familiar. A form of living burial, of exclusion from humanity.
This is happening in Italy in 2023. It becomes almost grotesque to speak of the outrages of the Inquisition. We know very well that torture, a dark phoenix, a practice never discontinued, has assumed new forms in the democracies of the 21st century. Will we have to accept a State torturer who uses violence on the body of a prisoner? Why are there so many ways to exercise violence, and without leaving a trace? Italy’s recent past has bred police abuse of victims. It would not be proper, nor even in the interests of the Republic, to assist at an announced suicide.
Finally, I would like to touch on 2 questions that it seems to me have not been addressed. I am leaving out 41-bis: I am against it, always and for everyone (but I would need another article to say that).
The first question concerns the concept of terrorism, dangerous and slippery. Who is a terrorist? And who decides that? We know how all the emergency legislation created in the American context, and in which other European countries participate, has revealed the violent desire of democracy, producing abuses of every sort: preventive torture, illegitimate administrative detentions. A dangerous road which provokes discussion of the rights of every citizen. Is dissent subversion? Does publishing in an anarchist magazine make people terrorists?
The second question concerns the subject of anarchism itself. Much more than other countries, Italy has an ambivalent relationship with anarchism. On the one hand we have Sacco and Vanzetti, like fathers of our free and anti-Mussolini country. Exponents of the great Italian, anarchistic tradition, without whom it would be difficult even to imagine the culture of this country, on the other hand Valpreda and the bombs, the temptation to demonize anarchists. Here also Italy has much to answer for. In these times there are attempts to call the anarchists either monsters or demons, terrorists who threaten “our overseas installations, offices, etc.”! At best they are people who fall prey to “an antiquated blind faith.” Grotesque visions, which would be laughable if there were not anti-democratic implications. Anarchist thought, which in these last years was clearly philosophically the most interesting and the most productive, becomes part of the current cultural and political context. In short: Is Cospito under 41-bis because he is an anarchist?
We hope that in the name of all Italian citizens Minister Nordio intervenes by the 12th of February to proscribe 41-bis. It is already too late, and with that goes the life of Cospito, the rights of all of us and of this democracy.
Donatella Di Cesare