#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #ITALY #SICILIA #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) #Italy, #Sicilia Libertaria: Prison. 41 bis is torture! (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The courageous struggle of comrade Alfredo Cospito against being assigned to the

41 bis, with his long hunger strike, which began last October 20, and the
numerous support initiatives activated in Italy by anarchists, such as the
occupation of the headquarters of Amnesty International in Rome, the procession
in Sassari (city to whose prison Alfredo was transferred), or the banner on the
crane of the construction site of the Teatro alla Scala in Milan on 6 November,
to name just a few, have opened up a hitherto fugitive debate on the state of
justice in Italy and the judicial fury against anarchists, including those
detained for many years.
It was the letter from the 20 defense lawyers of various comrades and comrades
(published by Sicilia Libertaria in the last issue) and signed by dozens and
dozens of other lawyers from every part of Italy, that pierced the veil of
silence and silence on what is happening. Among the many pronouncements, belated
but of a certain weight, the articles by Luigi Manconi in the Repubblica of 15
November and by Massimo Cacciari in the Stampa of the same day should be
mentioned here. Articles that represent not only a stance, but also a
denunciation of what happens in prisons in Italy and of how the government and
judicial institutions are trying to massacre anarchists not so much for what they
have done, but because they are considered dangerous in themselves.

Alfredo Cospito, Juan Sorroche, Anna Beniamino and many, many others are guilty
of having carried out demonstrative attacks from which there are no victims; yet
the crime for them has become that of massacre against the security of the State;
stuff that not even the massacre bombers of Piazza Fontana was applied. Juan's 28
years for a bowler hat at a door; the 41 bis regime to Alfredo, as if he were a
mafia assassin, represent a turning point in Italian jurisdiction and in the
policy of the Ministry of the Interior, which began even before the advent of the
fascists in government, but which now, given the signs (decree "anti rave"
docet), could undergo a tragic acceleration.

In addition to the 41 bis for Alfredo (already sentenced to 20 years in the
framework of the Scripta Manent operation), life imprisonment is envisaged, i.e.
without any possibility of being able to take advantage of benefits in the
future. Both the 41 bis regime and the life imprisonment (which we have dealt
with in these pages by raising the issue of its abolition, and pointing to the
case of life imprisoned Antonino Faro as an example) represent a form of torture
that should be - on paper - prohibited. Quite a few European bodies, and even the
Supreme Court have expressed their views on the matter. The recent "anti-rave"
decree has instead given a further restriction to the possibilities of
alternative measures for all impedimental crimes. Prison as revenge, as judicial
obstinacy, proves to be even more violent and cruel than any act the prisoner in
question could have committed. But in the case of the anarchists we are faced
with a different matter, even if not new in Italian history. Anarchists have been
singled out as the enemy within; they are - all, without exception, even if only
some are now in the crosshairs - arrestable and condemnable only for what they
express in terms of ideas and methods of political intervention, and the
potential for antagonism to the system.

We are experiencing a new climate in relations between the state and its
opponents; a climate that manifests itself in many episodes, starting, to remain
with the Sicilian situation, from the expulsion order to a comrade from Catania
because he is an irreducible anti-racist militant; or from the proposal of three
years of special surveillance for the anarchist Claudio Risitano of Messina; or
again by the two-year sentence of 17 NO MUOS activists each for having disobeyed
the prescriptions of the Police Headquarters on the occasion of a march on 1
March 2014. If this is the external picture, the internal one is even worse: in
prisons conditions of the detainees have worsened, suicides are on the rise,
overcrowding is growing; many prisoners are in prison for minor crimes that could
be served with alternative measures; care and sociability have suffered a sharp
deterioration; with the excuse of the pandemic, the prison regime has become
tougher, and those who have dared to rebel have paid for their act with death,
isolation, transfer. Prison continues to remain a world apart, unknown to most
people, a place of harassment and abuse, denounced even by priests and members of
the voluntary sector, as well as by lawyers and family members of the prisoners.
Its educational principle not only does not exist, but if anything, it is applied
with the force of the baton, the punishment, the blackmail, the extension of the
sentence.

As has always happened in history, even in recent history, when anarchists are
hit in such a ferocious way, it is because they want to hit the whole world of
the real social opposition, the one that contests the criminal operations of
power with its struggles, from big works to police management of the pandemic,
from the starvation of the weakest sections of the population, to war policies,
and so on. Anarchists have always represented the spearhead of anti-state and
anti-capitalist camps. To think that what is happening is only their problem
would be a tragic mistake. Under the iron heel of the State there is every
movement and every person who does not surrender to the logic of exploitation and
devastation, and there is also the system of democratic guarantees which has
always played the role of a decoy whose system used to secure class privileges.
Mirror they would now like to do without.

Anna Archias

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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