Cospito, Supreme Court confirms 23-year sentence

The sentences of 23 years and 17 years and 9 months in prison for the anarchists Alfredo Cospito and Anna Beniamino are definitive. This is what the Court of Cassation decided in the trial for the bombing of the former Carabinieri cadet barracks in Fossano in 2006. The judges of the sixth section rejected the appeals by the Turin Public Prosecutor's Office - which was asking for life imprisonment with day solitary confinement for Cospito and 27 years for Beniamino - and the anarchist's defence. Cospito is currently detained under the 41 bis regime in Sassari prison.

The decision is therefore in line with the conclusions of the Cassation Prosecutor's Office, which this morning had asked to reject the appeals of the General Prosecutor's Office of the Turin Court of Appeal and declare inadmissible those of the defence. In essence, therefore, confirm the appeal decision. These were the requests put forward by the Deputy Attorney General of the Court of Cassation, Perla Lori, to whose examination ended the appeals lodged against the sentence of the Turin Court of Appeal, which remodelled the sentence for the anarchist to 23 years;Alfredo Cospito and to 17 years and 9 months that for his former companion Annamaria Beniamino, as part of the affair concerning the attack on the Fossano Carabinieri barracks in 2006.

According to Deputy Prosecutor General Lori, the sentences determined in the appealed sentence 'appear correct'. In the morning, in Piazza Cavour, anarchists had gathered in front of the Supreme Court with banners calling for the suspension of the 41-bis. In June last year, the Turin Court of Appeal had remodelled the total sentence imposed on the anarchist in the maxi trial 'Scripa Manent' for the activities of the Fi Fri terrorist organisation to 23 years imprisonment, three years more. In the first year and on appeal Cospito had been sentenced to 20 years. The public prosecutor's office had asked for life imprisonment. For the attack of 2 June 2006 at the Carabinieri cadet school in Fossano (Cuneo), classified by the Court of Cassation as a 'political massacre', the judges had applied the mitigating factor of 'slight fact'. "There were no deaths and the damage was also minimal," the two lawyers had stressed in court.

While in February 2023, the Supreme Court had rejected the request to revoke the 41-bis, made by the anarchist who, at the time, had been on hunger strike for five months against the special regime. A no motivated by the fact that, according to the judges of legitimacy, Alfredo Cospito's links with Fai (Informal Anarchist Federation), the criminal association to which he belongs, are current and dangerous. The Supreme Court had specified that the actuality of the links and the danger were made 'evident by the declarations of membership to Fai, coming from the same, renewed during the trial scripta manent and also in the phases of merit of these proceedings, as well as by the documents written by him while in detention and intended for anarchist comrades at large'.

Now it will be necessary to wait for the grounds of today's Cassation decision that makes Alfredo Cospito's conviction final.