(see related)
Jailed anarchist Alfredo Cospito, who
has been on hunger strike for over 100 days to protest against
the tough 41 bis jail regime he is being held under, has
stressed to the people he has talked to in Milan's Opera prison
that he has nothing to do with the mafia, sources said on
Friday.
The 41 bis is usually reserved for mafia bosses.
Cospito has said via his lawyer that he is staging the protest
against the jail regime itself and not just to get himself out
of it.
"I have nothing to do with the mafia," Cospito said, according
to the sources.
"I want the 41 bis cancelled for everyone because it is an
instrument that takes away fundamental freedoms.
"I have seen elderly and ill mafiosi (in 41 bis), people who are
no longer dangerous".
Giovanni Donzelli, an MP for Premier Giorgia Meloni's right-wing
Brothers of Italy (FdI), said in the Lower House this week that
the mafia were using Cospito to get the 41 bis scrapped,
revealing the anarchist had contact in jail with Neapolitan
Camorra mafia boss Francesco Di Maio, according to wiretaps.
Donzelli said that, according to wiretaps, Di Maio said "bit by
bit you get the result" on the same day last month that Cospito
met a group of lawmakers from the centre-left Democratic Party
(PD).
The PD has called for Donzelli to quit for releasing an
allegedly confidential wiretap but he has refused, and found
backing from Justice Minister Carlo Nordio, who said the
document the FdI MP read out in parliament was not sensitive.
Italian left-leaning media have disputed Nordio's statement
saying the wiretap was in fact a secret one that should have
been kept under wraps.
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