Protests erupted when Italian anarchist moved to jail

• Anarchist Alfredo Cospito has been on a hunger strike for more than 100 days.
• His supporters have set cars on fire and threatened authorities.
• He has been transferred from Sardinia to a penitentiary in Milan.

Due to rising concerns that his condition is getting worse, a convicted Italian anarchist who has been on a hunger strike for weeks has been transferred to a penitentiary in Milan.

In protest of Alfredo Cospito’s 55-year-old detention conditions, his supporters have set cars on fire and threatened authorities.

For more than a hundred days, Cospito has refused to eat.

The new limitations, which are often only applied to mafia bosses, include a monthly phone call and one monitored visit from family members.

The procedures, known as 41bis after a section of the Italian criminal code, are intended to break up relationships between prisoners who are allegedly capable of ordering and directing criminal activity from behind bars.

Cospito is currently serving two sentences in prison: 20 years for planning bomb attacks against a Carabinieri police school in Fossano while he was still incarcerated and 10 years for a pistol attack on the CEO of a nuclear engineering company in Genoa in 2012.

His companion is also in prison.

He was transferred on Monday from a prison in Sardinia to the Milan Opera prison, which houses detainees who require urgent medical attention.

During his hunger strike, he lost more than 40kg (6.2 stone), yet the government won’t change the conditions of his detention.

Giorgia Meloni, the prime minister of Italy, has declared that her country’s administration will not be intimidated by threats of violence.

The new surge of violence and damage, said to Justice Minister Carlo Nordio, “would tend to justify maintaining the 41 bis” because it showed that Cospito and other anarchists still had a connection.

Attacks on Italian ambassadors in Germany, Spain, Greece, and South America were among the protests over his detention.

Bullet-filled threat letters have been delivered to officials.

The automobile of senior diplomat Susanna Schlein was wrecked by a petrol bomb in Athens in the most serious attack, which occurred in early December.

In separate instances on Monday night, several vehicles were set ablaze in Rome and Milan.

The highest court in Italy is scheduled to hear Cospito’s case in March.

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