Alfredo Cospito: the Court of Cassation has once again rejected the application to revoke the 41-bis measure
Appeal against the Ministry of Justice’s decision to extend the special scheme for a further two years has been dismissed
Key points
Another ‘no’ to the revocation of Article 41 bis for the anarchistAlfredo Cospito. The Court of Cassation has upheld the maximum-security regime, rejecting the appeal lodged by the defence lawyer, Flavio Rossi Albertini, against the ruling by which the Rome Supervisory Court had upheld the decision of the Ministry of Justice, endorsed by the Court of Rome, to renew for two years the strict prison regime for Cospito, who is being held in Sassari and has been subject to the special regime since 2022, to prevent him from establishing links with external anarchist circles. From October 2022 to April 2023, Alfredo Cospito had been on a hunger strike in protest against the imposition of the strict prison regime on him.
The convictions
The anarchist is believed to be responsible for two separate incidents carried out and claimed by the FAI. The first is the explosion, which took place on 2 June 2006, of two devices planted in front of the former cadet barracks of the Carabinieri in Fossano (Cuneo). For these offences, Cospito was sentenced to 23 years in prison; the second is the shooting in the leg in Genoa on 7 May 2012 of the chief executive of Ansaldo Nucleare Roberto Adinolfi, for which he was sentenced to nine years and five months’ imprisonment.
His lawyers believe that the conditions for keeping him in a cell are not met under the ‘hard prison’ regime and a life sentence without parole. The ‘high-security’ regime had never been applied to an anarchist before Cospito. It is a special regime reserved for top-ranking mafia figures and terrorists. The decision to apply it was based primarily on the existence and circulation of a series of some of his writings and pamphlets which, by urging anarchists not to renounce violence, led the judges to believe he had links to active militancy outside prison. The Cospito case also led to the conviction of the Under-Secretary of State for Justice Andrea Delmastro (Fdi) fordisclosure of official secrets linked to the circulation of confidential documents.
