Jailed anarchist leader supporters scale Palazzo Vecchio

(ANSA) - ROME, JAN 10 - Two supporters of jailed Italian anarchist leader Alfredo Cospito scaled Florence's iconic Palazzo Vecchio Tuesday and unfurled a banner accusing the Italian State of being an "assassin" due to the tough mafia-like prison conditions over which he has been on hunger strike for two and a half months.
    The protesters managed to reach the roof over the Salone dei 500 and let down the banner saying "the 41 bis kills, the State an assassin".
    Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI) leader Cospito, 55, the first anarchist to be so treated in prison, has been serving two sentences totalling 30 years for terror attacks and last month 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.
    His lawyer said ten days ago that he is very ill and has now lost some 35 kg.
    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.
    His lawyers have 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 recently 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).