Jailed anarchist leader 'has lost 35kg' during hunger strike

(ANSA) - ROME, DEC 30 - An Italian anarchist leader who has been on hunger strike for two months against his unprecedented mafia-style prison treatment is very ill and has now lost some 35 kg, his lawyer said Friday.
    Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI) leader Alfredo Cospito, 55, the first anarchist to be so treated, has been serving two sentences totalling 30 years for terror attacks and earlier this week appealed to the supreme court against his '41-bis' regime.
    Normally only jailed mafiosi are subjected to the tough 41-bis regime that mandates almost complete isolation from the outside world.
    Lawyer Flavio Rossi Albertini said Cospito, who is in a Sassari jail and has been put under the 41 bis for four years, "has currently lost 35 kg and has had a worrying drop in his potassium levels, necessary for the correct working of involuntary muscles including the heart".
    Albertini said "the doctors, alarmed by his deterioration, have given him specific supplements".
    There have been several recent FAI attacks in support of Cospito, who has been on a hunger strike since mid-October.
    Judges recently ruled that Cospito should stay under the 41 bis conditions because otherwise there was a risk of his running FAI operations from inside jail.
    On Tuesday his lawyers filed an appeal to the supreme Court of Cassation against that ruling from the Milan surveillance tribunal.
    On December 9 Greek anarchists linked to FAI claimed responsibility for the firebombing of two cars belonging to an Italian diplomat in the Greek capital a week previously.
    The Greek group, which calls itself after a protester killed by a Carabiniere in self-defence at the 2001 Genoa G8 riots, said they were acting in solidarity with Cospito.
    The group, Carlo Giuliani Vendetta Nucleus, said it was supporting the hunger strike of Cospito, who is serving 20 years for a bomb attack on a Carabinieri training academy at Fossano near Cuneo in Piedmont in 2006 and a further 10 years and eight months for wounding Ansaldo Nucleare Managing Director Roberto Adinolfi in Genoa in 2012.
    The carbomb attacks against Athens embassy counsellor Susanna Schlein, sister of centre-left Democratic Party (PD) leadership candidate Elly Schlein, took place at dawn on Friday December 2 and were soon attributed to anarchists like the FAI, who had shouted threatening slogans during Cospito's recent appeals trial.
    Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said Schlein survived the attacks "by a miracle".
    Both Schlein sisters have now been assigned police protection.
    After the firebombings, FAI militants issued the mocking message "Susanna Schlein should learn to park".
    Rome prosecutors said last week they were opening a probe into arson attacks on ATMs and rubbish containers in two parts of the Italian capital on a recent Saturday night by Cospito supporters. (ANSA).