Justice Minister Carlo Nordio said
Tuesday that the State will cut no deals with anarchist groups
who have embarked on a wave of violent protests and acts of
vandalism against public institutions over the tough 41 bis
prison regime that jailed Italian anarchist leader Alfredo
Cospito is being held under.
"You don't negotiate when faced with violence," Nordio told a
news conference.
Cospito, whose health is deteriorating after spending over 100
days on hunger strike against the prison treatment usually
reserved for mafia convicts, was moved Monday to a Milan jail
where medical facilities are better than the Sardinian one he
has been in for the last few years.
But he is still being held under the 41 bis regime.
Nordio said a decision on whether he would stay on it would be
made after the judicial authorities were consulted.
But the minister added that the fact the 55-year-old Informal
Anarchists Federation (FAI) leader was on hunger strike would
have no effect on the type of jail regime he is held under.
"The wave of acts of vandalism shows that the link between the
inmate and his companions remains and that would tend to justify
maintaining the 41 bis," Nordio said.
He added that the fact Cospito had been moved to Milan was
purely linked to medical factors and was not sign that the State
had "yielded".
Cospito, who has lost over 40kg during his hunger strike and has
lately taken to a wheelchair, slipped and fell in the shower and
broke his nose last week.
He is serving 20 years for a bomb attack on a Carabinieri police
training academy at Fossano near Cuneo in Piedmont in 2006 and a
further 10 years and eight months for kneecapping Ansaldo
Nucleare Managing Director Roberto Adinolfi in Genoa in 2012.
Italian diplomatic offices in Berlin and Barcelona were
subjected to vandalism last week and anarchist groups were
engaged in violent clashes with police in the Trastevere
district of Rome on Saturday night.
A policeman was injured in those clashes and 41 people have been
cited over them.
Anarchists are also thought to have been behind a Molotov
cocktail attack on a Rome police station at the weekend, the
torching of five cars belonging to telecoms giant TIM in the
capital and of two local police cars in Milan.
These are only the latest in a series of such acts in Italy and
abroad linked to anarchists in recent months.
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