Of Laura Martellini
The hearing in the Cassation which will deal with the appeal presented by the defender has been postponed to 7 March. The sociologist to the Pope: “A word from him so as not to let the matter fall into oblivion”
The hearing in the Supreme Court has been brought forward to March 7, which will address the appeal presented by the defender of Alfredo Cospito – the anarchist in the 41 bis and on hunger strike for three months in the Sassari prison – against the decision of the Surveillance Court of Rome to dismiss a complaint against the harsh prison sentence imposed on him for four years. To announce the change of date defense attorney Flavio Rossi Albertiniwhich had filed a request, linked to the prisoner’s health conditions, after the supreme judges had set the hearing for April 20th.
The conditions of the prisoner, on hunger strike for a hundred days to protest against the 41 bis regime to which he is subjected in the Sassari prison of Bancali and against the impediment to life imprisonment – are getting worse day by day. He fell in the shower, and the broken nose and heavy bleeding made him weak and now unable to react, denounce the doctor and defender.
And to the appeal made to the head of state Sergio Mattarella by the Radicals and by the group leaders of the House and Senate of the Verdi and Left Alliance Luana Zanella and Peppe De Cristofaro, according to whom Cospito “is in very serious danger of life”, adds today a letter from Luigi Manconi to the Pope. «Dear Pope Francis, I would like to talk to you about a man who suffers. For the conventional parameters, which are fatally mine too, he is not innocent – writes the sociologist who has always been involved in the fight for the rights of prisoners -. He committed serious crimes and received severe sentences for them. Now this man is dying, because he has decided to react to what he considers an unprecedented injustice, putting his life at risk and subjecting his body to a very harsh fast. I too consider the fate to which he seems destined to be an intolerable iniquity, even if he himself embarked on a hunger strike. Cospito is on the hundredth day of his protest.’
If he dies, Manconi warns “in addition to taking a human life, this would mean confirming a conception of the penal system that contradicts the main foundations of our juridical civilization. And which denies what has been, in recent decades, the most intelligent elaboration on the categories of punishment and prison, for which the contribution of the Magisterium, by him and by his predecessor, has been decisive ».
Luigi Manconi borrows phrases from the Pope, pertinent to the current condition of the prisoner, at risk of life: «Dear Francesco, among your reflections, I find the following: “With the reason of offering greater security to society or a special treatment for certain categories of prisoners”, the differentiated prison regime has external isolation as its main characteristic. Again, “the lack of sensory stimulation, the complete impossibility of communication and the lack of contact with other human beings cause psychic and physical suffering such as paranoia, anxiety, depression and weight loss and significantly increase the tendency to suicide”. And he concludes: “Here, I think that what has just been described is not too different from the current clinical picture by Alfredo Cospito. This is why I believe that a word from him could be useful so that the story of this man, now reduced to “bare life”, does not fall into oblivion. With trust and hope».
Even the National guarantor of the rights of persons deprived of their liberty decides to break the silence to ask, this time publicly, that Alfredo Cospito be transferred urgently to a facility capable of guaranteeing immediate medical intervention and hopes a “quick fix” e “in full respect of the institutions that are dealing with the matter”.
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