This is another piece I ought to have cast to the ether months ago. From now on, I'm going to use the journal as a place to put up articles that aren't quite complete but which could bear external scrutiny.

Interview with Horst Fanatazzini, a life in prison: sentence completion date 2022

What is currently your legal situation and when do you foressee yourself being able to get out of jail, at least into semiliberty?

At the moment, my release should occur, more or less, in 2022. In terms of typologocalical classification, I think I've been filed in the category "dinosaurs and tortoises". I think that beyond the freedom committees of the anarchist milieu, the World Wildlife Fund section on 'endangered species' should also take an interest in me..... This absurd situation came about by means of the application, in a restrictive manner, of the so-called 'consecutive judgment', which functions as follows: all the convictions are calculated and added together and if the result exceeds 30 years, which is considered to be the maximal punishment, the overall sentence is set at 30 years. In my case, already starting from preceding consecuitives, the thirty years came to have effect from the date of the last crime committed. This was the case also for my last consecutive, occurring after my last arrest in 1991. The thirty years started to elapse from 1990 and my release set for 2020. The repeated application of "continuation of crimes', asked for by my lawyer, will marginally improve the sitaution. Then, some other trials have become final (for robbery, possession of weapons, false documents etc.) and the siutation, today, should be exactly that of a hypothesized release around 2022-2024. As soon as the trial in Rome against the 'bad anarchists' has concluded, in which I appear as a defendant (soon there will be the last hearings), the lawyer plans to ask for the application of an overall redefinition of the continuation of all my sentences. The result will depend on the humour of the judge, on his good or bad digestion, on the behaviour of his mother, on the astral conjunction and other uncontrollable factors. Rationality and good sense are peremptorily excluded from the places where the guard-weasels (trans. in the italian the word is ermellini da guardia, which also refers to the fabric of the judicial office) congregate to decide upon the life and future of mine. As regards semiliberty or other 'benefits', theoretically I could take advantage of them from April 3rd this year, that is when my final period of 'treatment observation' will conclude.

Many comrades have asked us if you thought of yourself as an anarchist prior to your arrest?

That's a fine querstion. You were a friend of Libero, my father, and you met me about eleven years ago. There is no doubt that I have always defined myself as anarchist and claim and have claimed myself as such in judicial process. But this is not enough. The anarchist being entails the capacity of reconciling one's ideal with one's own life, and this has not always been so in my case, especially when I was very young. I define myself an individualist anarchist, a conscious rebel that has often acted unconsciously. At the age of fourteen years of age I was already signed up to the USI (trans. an anarchist organisation), which I don't know still exists (trans. yes, it does!). In 1965, I was present at the preparatory meeting of the Congress which unrolled in Bologna and amongst the participants was Armando Borghi who was expelled from the board of 'Umanita Nova' after tiring polemics. In thyis period, with other youngsters, I was bringing to life an Anarchist Youth Federation, but then my life became almost entirely caught up in prison. In approximately thirty years of jail, I believe to have always conducted myself coherently with a way of being and to feel myself existentially anarchist. My firendships and my loves have anarchist DNA. My correspondents are almsot entirely anarchists and range from a near mythic 80 year old Mantuan to an eighteen year old anarchist6 skinhead girl from bergamo (that I treat with fratenal affection). I am irremediably and proudly anarchist.

Could you talk about your struggles during this long imprisonment. In the film this aspect is eluded.

To speak of struggles in prison today is like digging up sweet memories from a sarcophagus, so much is the change confirmed, in the last fifteen years in the place and its desperate inhapitants. From the sarcophagus emerge portraits of men who were alive and proud but who have been bent, broken and dispersed. Men who claimed with passion their dignity and sought without mediation their freedom. Men who died on the roof-tops during revolts and who nobody remembers any more. Men that in meeting with the first jailed comrades had discovered that life and struggle can have meanings higher than their little desires and selfishness. The end of the '60s and the whole of the '70s were seasons of struggle that will never repeat themselves again. Prisons destroyed tunnels to freedom. Personally I participated in scores of struggles, big and small. I saw the destruction of the special section of Asinara, that of Nuoro and that of Trani and these struggles cost me a 'bonus' of more than twenty further years. Today the prison is 'pacified' and the air which one breatehes is that of heavy resignation. The 'population' has changed radically and almsot the entirety made up of drug addicts and samll and medium level drug dealers. Their primordial promblem is that of continuing to obtain or continuing to deal their daily dose. There are hardly any comrades at all. In Alessandria I left three. Here there is no-one. The mafiosi are under the rubric of 41/bis, a rewriting of that which for us, years ago, was article 90, that is an restrictive interanl regulation inside a system of rules which are in themselves already strict. Today they are almost all young or really young and the prison is nothing other than an enormous container of a social unrest that no-one knows or wants to resolve. I have never felt myself such a 'stranger' in jail. I resist by seeking to extract myself from all that surrounds me, taking refuge in my books and speaking with my computer. My relations with the outside and the love I draw from them give me strength....... said dear Eduardo. There it is, dear comrades, I cannot do anything other than try to resist, waiting fro Godot to decide to arrive.

During these struggles you have had to clash not only with the prison administration but also with the 'counterpower'. Do tyou want tot tell us how that happened?

Between the end of the '70s and the middle of the '80s, the jails were full of comrades. There were ten special prisons: Cuneo, Novara, Fossombrone, Trani, Termini Imerese, Favignana, Pianosa, 'l'Asinara and Nuoro. Then there were specials ections in almost all of the other jails. For a decade, we 'differentiated' deatinees did not have contact with the other inmates. It was normal procedure to hold us in prisons as far away from our homes as possible, so as to make visits extremely difficult, which took place in any case behind glass partitions and through intercoms. Correspondence was subjected to censorship. We weren't allowed to receive packets of food supplies from outside, only books and clothing were allowed. not all the prisons were 'specialized' in the same manner: some, like Fossombrone and Cuneo, were softer than Asinara or Novara. I believe that at that time we were treated like guinea pigs, upon which was studied behaviour and reaction with respect to the gradualness of the 'tratment', which ranged from the hours of sociality (space and activities to share during several hours of the day) to the pure hard isolation of Asinara (two or three to a cell, always the same ones, with periodic rotation at the discretion of the monarch of the period, director Cardullo). Obviously, fictitous 'comrades' and rebel 'sell-outs' were living amongst us, for more effective control, a fact about which we became certain later. belushi said that when the game gets tough, the tough start to play. And it's true. It's incredible the creativity that man manages to unleash in difficult moments. The hard treatment cemented the group and expanded solidarity. We were all united against 'them' end we invented incredible channels of communication to break the physical isolation. In Asinara, for moths, the occupants of one cell did not managae to see the the occupants of adjacent cells, but every cell communicated with the others. you could write a book on all tricks invented by us to overcome the isolation to which we were subjected, but the argument, now, is another. To prepare struggles and eventual escapes it was necessary to have a rigid compartmentalization, and thus were born the CUC (Unified Camp Committees). in Asinara, the brigatisti (trans. from the Red Brigades) were in a majority, and thus the committees, initially an expression of necessity and the situation of us all, would become a political organism stamped with 'democratic centralism' , that lexical pun so dear to uncle lenin. I said the brigatisti that I had nothing against compartmentalized and restricted organizational forms provided that they were purely provisional and functional to the obtaining of a rersult, but if these CUCs became permanent political organisms , I didn't want to have any part of them. I had participated in every struggle but not to their political management. The first fight (destruction of the intercoms at visits and refusal of all the prisoners to return to their cells) finished with the massacre of seventy of us. I ended up in a coma and was brought by helicopter to the hospital in Sassari. My recovery was kept secret and after two days I was brought back to Asinara. My partner at that time managed to find out and revealed the news and the third day bounced through the whole media. A delegation of parliamentarians came who could verify the massacre. An inquiry was opened and the management of Asinara found itself in great difficulty. A week later we destroyed the two special wings without the guards even daring to interfene. The wings rendered unusable, we were provisionally posted in varios 'normal' sections of the island, awaiting transfer elsewhere. A few days after this struggle, I managed to pass to my partner an account that was opportunely published in a pamphlet by "Anarchismo" editions. This sent the brigatitis into a raging fury end the most pissed off amused themselves by reminding us anarchists of Kronstadt and Barcelona. My "Open Letter to Comrades on the Outside" was published in all the movement's journals, which then, in 1978, were still alive and thriving. The polemic ricocheted theroughout all the special prisons where, overall, the brigatisti were in a minority and the majority of the prisoners took my side. This polemic, amounted to an otherwise obvious political weakness of the brigatisti (do you remember the slogan of the movement "With Neither the Red Brigades Nor the State!"?) and ratified the end of the CUC in whose place was born the CUB (United Committees of the Base) an 'open' organization which for a bit represented all prisoners. Also " A Anarchist review" published my letter together with an naswer from Curcio under the title "Anarchists and Stalinists". I was contacted by various political parties and also by state organs because, derived from the polemic in which I had been involved, some intended to use me to create further divisions between the prisoners. I did not lend myself to this game. Asinara had hardly been rebuilt, and I alone amongst those who had participated in the revolt, was sent back there from Palmi. Then, after some bust ups with the guards there, I finished up at Nuoro, participating in the revolt that destroyed the special wings there as well. But this was an epilogue. The external weakness of the comrades was reflected inside the prisons. The time of the 'penitents' (trans. informers) and mass 'disassociation' began. The intellectuals who had played at war, new prodigal sons, woul;d return to their elite Habitat. Always distrust professional intellectuals! They weave webs heavy as chains on the dreams of free men. And since the times of the ancient egyptian scribe, from deflowering to deflowering, they always succeed in rebuilding their virginity. Fifteen years ago, I wrote this epitaph for them:

These peoople, by repenting or through disassociation or therough 'benefits' fromj the state that they meant to fight 'without respite!', now are almost all out. A handful remain in jail. Less than ten of these, in jail for decades, have closed themselves off in a dignified silence. They ask for nothing, they reject 'benefits' from the state that if asked, would bring about their immediate release. Others, refugees abroad, await an 'amnesty' or a 'political solution' to come back. And the jails, now governed with the carrot and the baton are more thriving than ever and are bursting with the desperate. Well, I think that's enough.

While not wanting to be invasive; it has been noticed several times the transparency and serenity in recounting what was your relationship before and after your arrest. Would you like to talk about it?

With the last question you throw me into crisis. A few days ago a journalist interviewed me on behalf of the progam 'Frontier' on Rai 2 (trans. Italian state broadcaster). Amongst other questions, at a certain point he asked me if I felt regret. Focussing on the word 'regret', I answered him that I didn't feel contrite for the banks robbed nor the rest, but that if I had the chance to relive my life I wouldn't do the same things. Not because I consider them immoral in this society to rob a bank, but because I think it stupide to throw away one's life like that. Then I told him that my current situation for better of worse, is the fruit of an initial choice, this finished by involving other people as well that didn't share this choice, but who have gotten suffering from it for sole reason of their goodwill towards me.My parents, my wife, my children and comrades who wished and still wish me well. This is a weight that I carry and it is the heaviest of all. Anna is the person that I have loved most in my life. Even today, when I think of her, I feel myself invaded by an infinite tenderness and sadness. And the person who has given me the most, received in exchange only pain and humiliation. She was close to me in the most difficult moments, then in the special prisons the situiation became heaviest, and we decided by common agreement to leave one another. Rationally, without resentment nor rancour, remaining friends.Today, after a life given to others, she is a serene woman. I hope one day to be able to see her again, to together caress Jacopo, the newest Fantazzini who has recently made us both grandparents.

interview by tiziana Originally published in Umanita Nova No.3, 2000."