Italy: Anarchist journal “Vetriolo” — Solidarity with imprisoned anarchist comrade Alfredo Cospito on hunger strike (05/05/2017)
On May 3th, the anarchist Alfredo Cospito — prisoner in high security regime AS2 of Ferrara prison for the kneecapping of Adinolfi, CEO of Ansaldo Nucleare, and recently recipient of another arrest warrant for the operation “scripta manent” — started a ten-days hunger strike against the censorship that blocks most of his incoming and outgoing correspondence. Alfredo is asking comrades to send lot of books, magazines, letters to support his hunger strike and break the isolation dictated by prison censorship.
The prosecutor Sparagna from Turin is imposing the censor against the comrades imprisoned for operation “scripta manent”. In the last few months the censorship has become more stringent, and a lot of correspondence is systematically censored and blocked; books, magazines and any kind of stuff sent him almost never reach the destination. The censor struck also a text that Alfredo sent us in December, to be published in “Vetriolo”. In the same way an Anna’s text, for another publication, was seized in January. At the same time, not one single copy of our journal reached Alfredo and other prisoners: seized by guards, or frequently simply disappeared.
It is clear that if isolation against comrades becomes more intense and so pressing is also, and above all, because of the censorship and the blocking of correspondence. It is clear that the power can not tolerate that comrades contribute to the discussion between rebellious and enemies of authority. The miserable work of spying and the censorship are systematically intensified because the power presumes and imagines that it can annihilates and silences the anarchists in its prisons.
It is necessary therefore make a brief analysis of this odious tool of dominion. The stamp of censorship is a order, by prosecutor, which requires that each letter, incoming and outgoing, has to be read by the prison guard in charge of this infamous job, scanned and sent to prosecutor’s office. The most tasty fruits of this spying should then be used at the trial. A further increase of this tool is the blocking of correspondence: in this case the prison guard, obviously following the guidelines set out by the magistracy, decides not only that a particular letter — as any other — will be photocopied and sent a copy to prosecutor’s office, but also that it cannot even reach the hands of addressee. The qualitative leap applied against the comrades arrested in September in operation “Scripta Manent” is the systematic use of this block. Over the last few months there’s been a progressive intensification in blocking of correspondence, deteriorating every communication and preventing the prisoners from receiving any kind of revolutionary publication.
An objective dynamic that, without victimization, has to be observed and denounced. In the same way, we can not fail to notice that such intensification affects not just one prison (therefore, it is not about the security paranoia of that single guard, or that single prison administration): it is clear that there is a direction by the the Turin Prosecutor’s Office. The solidarians must say clearly and bravely that prosecutor Sparagna is responsible for this liberticidal behaviour. Sparagna is not the usual silly prosecutor of many anti-anarchist investigations. He is a “hero” of anti-mafia. He is a big-shot of the State, appreciated by the good bourgeoisie, as is evidenced by the solidarity expressed to him by the association “Libera” [major antimafia ONG], which went as far as to compare the anarchist with ‘ndrangheta [Calabrian mafia]. How the dominion chooses the figures to whom entrust its repressive operation, for their skills or for their symbolic suggestion, is another non insignificant element that cannot be ignored for an analysis and an revolutionary practice of solidarity.
With the awareness that — immediately, non in a bright future — only solidarity in revolutionary action can break this isolation and destroy the prisons, we express our solidarity to Alfredo on hunger strike ando to imprisoned anarchists.
Anarchists editors of anarchist journal “Vetriolo”
(translated by anarhija.info)
