Violence, vandalism at anarchist demonstration in Turin

(ANSA) - ROME, DEC 5 - There was violence and vandalism in Turin on Monday when around 250 anarchists took to the streets in protest out of solidarity for a jailed member of their group.
    The protestors, many wearing helmets, let off flares and firecrackers and sprayed graffiti on the walls of banks and, when a barman went out to complain about the vandalism, he was roughed up.
    The protest was being staged on the day of a hearing at the city's court of a appeal regarding the cases of Alfredo Cospito and Anna Beniamino, jailed members of Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI).
    Cospito and Beniamino are both on hunger strike to protest against the tough 41 bis jail regime for terrorists and mafiosi that the former is being held under in Sassari prison.
    FAI is an insurrectionary anarchist organization that has carried out terrorist attacks it calls acts of "revolutionary armed action" in Italy and abroad over the last few years.
    It is opposed to capitalism, nationalism, and Marxism.
    FAI is accused of carrying out some 60 subversive attacks in almost 20 years of activity, with the stated aim of bringing about the "destruction of the State and capital" by targeting the structures of "domination".
    It is suspected that anarchists were behind the firebombing last week of a car belonging to Susanna Schlein, a senior official at the Italian embassy in Athens.
    Before the attack slogans were daubed on the embassy expressing support for Cospito.
    One of the protest slogans read: "the 41 bis regime in Italy is torture". (ANSA).