Cesare Battisti transferred to a common law prison on the 23rd day of his hunger strike

On Friday 25 June, on the 23rd day of his hunger strike, Cesare Battisti was transferred from the prison for terrorists in Rossano (Calabria) to that of Ferrara (Emilia-Romagna), a mixed establishment where common prisoners are also held. . The high surveillance regime “AS2” attributed to this former activist of the PAC (Proletarians Armed for Communism, an Italian extreme left group active from 1976 to 1979) is maintained, at least for the moment.

But his seclusion, alone in a few square meters, described by his relatives as “ psychic torture Could end. Prison inmates ” ordinary Are allowed to come into contact with each other – which is not the case in Rossano, which specializes in monitoring jihadists 24 hours a day.

This transfer is of course explained by the declining state of health of the prisoner in this place which he described as a real ” grave », But also by the precise work of Mauro Palma, the guarantor of the rights of detainees, who has never ceased to recall that human dignity, far from being “Decorum”, is ” the right to have rights For any prisoner, innocent of the guilty, and even for Cesare Battisti whatever one thinks of it. Added to this is the Italian and French press, which is increasingly pointing to the peninsula as a failing democracy indulging in real state revenge.

Sentenced to imprisonment but not to the high security regime

“By putting his life in the balance, Cesare has already obtained, in addition to a probable improvement in his lot, that the unanimity surrounding the project elegantly formulated by Salvini (former Minister of the Interior affiliated to the far right, Editor’s note) : leave it “rot in prison until the end of his days” », his friend and translator Serge Quadruppani explained on Monday.am, the site of “mondimatin”.

The Milan Court of Appeal has in fact sentenced Cesare Battisti to imprisonment, but in no case to the high security regime. This is the reason why the prisoner and his counsels ask for the lifting of this statute and the possibility of finally having access to the documents where the reasons for so many precautions are set out in his regard.

Cesare Battisti’s organization has been disbanded for almost forty years and he himself broke with the armed activism of his young years to become the author of about fifteen novels, including “The Red Shadow” (Gallimard , 1994) and “Indio” (Threshold, 2020). He will be 67 years old.