Justice Minister Carlo Nordio on
Thursday rejected an appeal by jailed anarchist leader Alfredo
Cospito to lift his tough 41 bis jail regime over which he has
staged a hunger strike for 111 days and lost almost 50kg,
spurring fears for his health.
Nordio said that Cospito, 55, whose protest has sparked attacks
by anarchists in Italy and abroad, should stay under the 41 bis
regime, normally reserved for mafia bosses, to stop him running
activities from prison.
Nordio has judged that Cospito still constitutes a high social
danger, sources said.
The minister rejected the request for revocation made by the
prisoner's lawyer Flavio Rossi Albertini, who has now been
informed of Nordio's decision.
The 41 bis had been ordered on 4 May last year by the then
justice minister, Marta Cartabia, for four years.
Rossi Albertini said earlier Thursday that Cospito is down from
120 kg to nearly 70 kg on his hunger strike and his health is
concerning, particular after recently refusing supplements.
Justice Undersecretary Andrea Delmastro Delle Vedove said
Tuesday that it was the State's duty to ensure that Cospito gets
the best possible medical treatment.
The 41 bis is normally reserved just for mafia bosses and
Cospito is campaigning to get the regime lifted for all inmates,
including mobsters.
Anarchists have staged protests and acts of vandalism in Italy
and abroad in support of Cospito and there were big rallies in
Rome and Milan at the weekend in which demonstrators clashed
with police and some were arrested.
The case is also at the centre of a huge political row in which
Delmastro is a lead player.
This row broke out when Giovanni Donzelli, Delmastro's flat mate
and fellow lawmaker for Premier Giorgia Meloni's right-wing
Brothers of Italy (FdI) party, revealed in the Lower House last
week that Cospito had talked to mafia bosses about getting the
41 bis abolished and that four lawmakers for the centre-left
Democratic Party (PD) had visited him in jail, where they also
spoke briefly with mafia boss cellmates..
Delmastro was the source of the information.
The PD has demanded Delmastro and Donzelli, a member of the
Copasir parliamentary committee that oversees Italy's
intelligence services, quit for, among other things, revealing
allegedly secret information.
Justice Minister Nordio, however, has said that the
information was sensitive but not classified.
Delmastro fuelled the row on Friday by saying that the PD
lawmakers had given in to Cospito's demand that they meet other
people being held under the 41 bis, including two mafia bosses,
as a condition for the encounter with him.
"The PD will have to explain that bow to the mafiosi to the
public," Delmastro said in an interview with local daily
newspaper 'Il Biellese', based in his home town of Biella in
Piedmont.
The PD has said it would take legal action against Delmastro and
Donzelli.
Meloni has dismissed the Delmastro and Donzelli quit calls and
defended her MPs while calling for everyone to "tone things
down" in the row.
Judicial sources said Tuesday that Cospito will be examined
Saturday by a doctor named by his defence.
They also said that the head of the Italian penitentiary
department, Giovanni Russo, was quizzed Tuesday by Rome
prosecutors along with two other officials in relation to a suit
filed against Donzelli for his statements to the House.
Cospito, meanwhile, has said he would not be force fed if his
conditions worsens to the extent he becomes unconscious, and
has also refused a psychiatric assessment.
Nordio and Premier Meloni have repeatedly said 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 case.
Cospito, who was recently moved from Sardinia to a Milan prison
where medical facilities are better, 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.
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