Cospito, the Court of Assizes of Appeal of Turin recalculates the sentence of 23 years

Cospito, the Court of Assizes of Appeal of Turin recalculates the sentence of 23 years

The Court of Assizes considered the mitigating circumstance of "slight severity" for the anarchist militant: the prosecutor's office had requested a life sentence.
The Court of Assizes of Appeal of Turin has the sentence for Alfredo Cospito was recalculated at 23 years in prison, insurrectionist anarchist militant already judged responsible for a attack dating back 17 years ago which caused no deaths or injuries. For the attack on the Carabinieri student school in Fossano, in the province of Cuneo, Cospito had been sentenced to 20 years in prison, but the prosecutor had asked to re-determine the crime he was accused of and to sentence him to life imprisonment.

The Court of Assizes of Appeal of Turin presided over by Alessandra Bassi instead recognized the generic mitigating circumstances and that of small amount for Cospito and his ex-partner Anna Beniamino.

The sentence was rather expected because in recent months this case has been the subject of extensive debate and many discussions involving Italian politics regarding the proportionality of the sentence to which Cospito was sentenced.

In 2022 the Ministry of Justice decided to subject him to the 41-bis regime which provides for a series of extremely restrictive measures, including isolation from other prisoners, the limitation of free time (only two hours and also in isolation), the limitation of interviews (only with family members, with a dividing glass and without the possibility of physical contact), the checking of incoming and outgoing mail, the deprivation of newspapers and books.

From October 20 to April 19, for 182 days, Cospito conducted a hunger strike which had the aim of bringing attention back to how extreme detention regimes, such as 41-bis, are applied in Italy, theoretically reserved for very dangerous people.

The facts date back to 2006: between 2 and 3 June of that year two parcel bombs were placed in front of the Carabinieri student school in Fossano. The bombs had been made with a pressure cooker and a metal tube containing 800 grams of gunpowder. They exploded half an hour apart. There were no deaths or injuries.
Alfredo Cospito and his partner, Anna Beniamino, were sentenced respectively to 20 and 16 years in prison according to article 422 of the penal code, i.e. "massacre" (there is no crime of attempted massacre).

In May last year the prosecution asked the Court of Cassation to recognize the crime committed by Cospito not as a "massacre", but as a "political massacre" on the basis of article 285 of the penal code: «Whoever, with the aim of attacking the security of the State, commits an act aimed at causing devastation, looting or massacre in the territory of the State or in a part of it is punished with life imprisonment». The crime of political massacre carries a life sentence even if the attack caused no victims. The Court of Cassation accepted the prosecution's request.

After the reclassification of the crime, the Court of Cassation sent the documents back to the Court of Assizes of Appeal of Turin requesting that Cospito's previous sentence be redefined. At this stage the attorney general, i.e. the prosecution, had requested a life sentence with 12 months of daytime isolation for Alfredo Cospito and 27 years and one month in prison for Anna Beniamino. For the latter, however, the Assize Court of Appeal decided on Monday a sentence of 17 years and 9 months.
A few hours after the verdict, Alfredo Cospito asked to be able to make spontaneous statements and said: «There is no proof that we planted the bombs in Fossano. This is a trial of ideas. Anarchists do not carry out indiscriminate massacres, because anarchists are not the State." He described the trial as characterized by "obvious fury" and "oddities".