Italy denounces attacks on its diplomats and suggests the anarchist path

Italy’s far-right government on Sunday condemned a series of acts of vandalism against its diplomatic missions in Europe, suggesting they were committed by anarchists protesting the solitary confinement of one of their own in Italy.

The government said in a statement that it was “following with concern and attention new cases of violence against (its) officials and diplomatic representations” as well as “urban violence” in Rome and Trento, a cartoon mailed to the editor. of a Tuscan newspaper, and the launching of a Molotov cocktail at a police station in the capital.

“Such acts will not intimidate the institutions,” the government said. “Particularly if it is intended to soften the detention conditions of those responsible for terrorist acts,” he added, without explicitly citing the anarchist movement.

On Friday the windows of the Italian consulate in Barcelona were broken and a wall was damaged. In Berlin, the car of an Italian diplomat was set on fire, according to the Foreign Ministry. In December, Greek anarchists claimed responsibility for burning two Italian diplomatic cars in Athens, claiming to have acted in support of Alfredo Cospito.

A link with Alfredo Cospito?

At the center of the conflict is Alfredo Cospito, whom Italian justice considers the leader of the Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI). He is on a hunger strike to denounce his detention in a high security prison in Sardinia, under the “41-bis” regime, generally applied to members of the mafia.

Alfredo Cospito, 55, was sentenced in 2014 to nearly 11 years in prison for shooting and wounding the director of a nuclear power company two years earlier. He is also serving a separate 20-year sentence for planting explosive devices in 2006 at police facilities, with no casualties.

He has been on a hunger strike since October to protest his detention conditions under the “41-bis” high security regime, which the judges decided to apply to him last April after discovering that he continued to correspond with the anarchist movement.

The deterioration of his health, according to his doctor, has revived the debate in Italy about this regime of solitary confinement in a high-security unit.

The anarchist movement has mobilized in the country in recent weeks, prompting authorities to go on high alert in Turin and Trento last week, and scuffles broke out on Saturday night in Rome.