“Thanks, I expected it. They decided to bury me in this reinforced concrete sarcophagus.” A few words from Alfredo Cospito on the news that Minister of Justice Carlo Nordio had rejected the defense’s request for him to remain in 41 bis. His reaction is almost resigned, “with aplomb”, says his lawyer, lawyer Flavio Rossi Albertini who, alongside Luigi Manconi, met with the press in the Chamber of Deputies to explain the current situation 24 hours after the ministry’s no . Cospito has refused another psychiatric visit and, from the Opera prison, continues his hunger strike, surviving on water, salt and sugar. «He is tried, tired, has lost 47 kilos. I am not a doctor», but «by the looks of it, he is a person well beyond the critical stage», repeats the lawyer who does not hide his concern. “The result is almost obvious. I have been thinking for weeks that collapse is imminent ». The reason will be told shortly. Cospito is on the 114th day of a hunger strike and not to get out of the 41bis regime, but to its total abolition. His, explained the same lawyer several times, is an ideal battle, which goes beyond the personal situation in that “I would not accept a suspension or a temporary installment”. This is, explains the lawyer, the reason why «we are not going to resort to Mattarella. Likewise, we will not address Pope Francis. My client is an individualist anarchist». On the defense level, therefore, Nordio’s decision on the 41 bis is entirely political, since, according to the lawyer, there would be no requirement to be part of an association for the harsh prison regime. But it is precisely Cospito’s leadership ability, able to make his body “a weapon” through the hunger strike, which led the minister to reject his request.
In his provision, the minister puts it on paper, underlining how even today, locked in a cell, «the prisoner’s ability to direct the struggle initiatives of the anarcho-insurrectionist galaxy towards increasingly relevant strategies and objectives remains unchanged» , so much so that his appeals “turned into a shock wave that swept across the country and abroad”. The lost kilos (47 since the start of the strike on October 20) did not affect the anarchist’s criminal profile at all, on the contrary. For Nordio, it is clear that he is “a sane and lucid subject who voluntarily seeks a precarious state of health for ideological purposes” and his conditions “are not such as to significantly affect his relevant social dangerousness”. Meanwhile, from Via Arenula we are moving in view of worsening health conditions, trying to understand how to move based on Cospito’s decision to refuse life-saving treatments or any tso. For this reason, inform ministerial sources, on the 6th of February, the National Bioethics Commission was asked for an opinion on “the dispositions of early treatment, if they come from an inmate who has voluntarily decided to put himself in a situation of risk to his health and that indicates the refusal or waiver of medical interventions, even those that save lives”.
Source: IL Tempo
Emma Fitzgerald is an accomplished political journalist and author at The Nation View. With a background in political science and international relations, she has a deep understanding of the political landscape and the forces that shape it.