Alfredo Cospito

Alfredo Cospito (born 1967) is an Italian anarchist. In his twenties, he refused conscription to military service and was convicted of desertion, then pardoned after going on hunger strike for one month. In 2012, he was sentenced to 10 years for kneecapping the head of the Italian nuclear power company Ansaldo Nucleare. Whilst imprisoned, he was convicted of the 2006 bombing of a Carabinieri barracks in which nobody was harmed. The Supreme Court of Cassation later increased the sentence to life without parole. In 2022, Cospito was placed into the 41-bis prison regime, which involves solitary confinement for 22 hours every day. In protest, he began a hunger strike in October 2022. Groups supporting Cospito have made demonstrations in Italy and symbolic attacks on Italian diplomatic offices globally; the Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani blamed an international anarchist network. The Supreme Court rejected the appeal against his placement in the 41-bis system in March 2023, then the following month the Constitutional Court ruled in favour of allowing the reduction of Cospito's sentence. In response to the latter, he stopped his hunger strike after 180 days on 19 April 2023; he had lost 50 kg. Cospito was born in Pescara in 1967. He refused to continue military service after being conscripted in his twenties and was convicted of desertion, then pardoned by Francesco Cossiga, President of Italy, after going on hunger strike for one month. In the early 1990s, he was involved in squatting actions in Bologna, Pescara and Lake Maggiore, being arrested for the attempt to make a self-managed social centre in the Ex Aurum in Pescara. He moved to Turin and met his wife Anna Beniamino; together they ran a tattoo shop. He is an anarchist. Informal Anarchist Federation#Adinolfi shooting On 7 May 2012, Cospito and his accomplice, Nicola Gai, rode on a motorbike to the house of Roberto Adinolfi, executive of the Italian nuclear power company Ansaldo Nucleare. The pair shot Adinolfi in the leg three times, fracturing his knee in an action known as kneecapping.