Refugee rights were threatened by implementation of a new immigration law, the failure to legislate specifically to protect those seeking asylum, and reports of plans by Italy to build detention centres for migrants in Libya. The expulsion of more than 1,425 migrants to Libya throughout the year took place in defiance of international refugee law. Officials and civilian personnel convicted of physical assault and racial abuse at a detention centre for migrants received suspended prison sentences. The trials proceeded of police officers charged with assault and other offences in 2001 at the time of mass demonstrations in Naples and during the G8 Summit in Genoa. Italy failed to take action to address the impunity enjoyed by law enforcement officials, including by setting up an independent police complaints and accountability body, making torture a specific crime under the penal code, or requiring police officers to display prominently some form of identification.

Refugee rights under threat

Italy still lacked a specific and comprehensive law on asylum, despite being a party to the UN Refugee Convention. In practice, asylum was regulated under the 1990 immigration law, as amended in 2002 by the Bossi-Fini law, the implementing rules of which came into force on 21 April 2005. The law established Identification Centres to detain asylum-seekers and an accelerated asylum determination procedure for detainees, raising concerns about access to asylum procedures, the detention of asylum-seekers in violation of international refugee law standards, and violation of the principle of non-refoulement – that those seeking asylum should not be forcibly returned to countries where they risked serious human rights abuses.

There were fears that many of the thousands of migrants and asylum-seekers arriving in Italy by boat, mainly from Libya, were forcibly returned to countries where they were at risk of human right violations. At least 1,425 people were deported to Libya between January and October.

  • Between 13 and 21 March, 1,235 foreign nationals arrived at the Italian island of Lampedusa. A request on 14 March by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for access to the detention centre on Lampedusa was refused on security grounds. On 16 March the Minister of the Interior informed parliament that Libyan officials had been allowed into the centre to identify people traffickers. The following day, 180 people were allegedly expelled, escorted on the flight by Italian law enforcement officers, to the Libyan capital, Tripoli. On 18 March, UNHCR expressed concern that, if any Libyan asylum-seekers had been in the centre during the visits by Libyan officials, such visits would have contravened basic refugee protection principles. On 14 April, the European Parliament expressed concern at the expulsion of migrants from Lampedusa between October 2004 and March 2005. On 10 May the European Court of Human Rights ordered the Italian authorities to suspend the planned expulsion of 11 migrants who arrived in Lampedusa in March.

Thousands of foreign nationals without residence rights were detained in Temporary Stay and Assistance Centres (CPTA), amid reports from some of these centres that law enforcement officers and supervisory staff assaulted inmates. There were also reports of overcrowded and unhygienic living conditions; inadequate medical care and the excessive and abusive administration of sedatives; and difficulties for inmates in accessing legal advice and asylum procedures. Similar conditions were reported in the newly established Identification Centres where hundreds of asylum-seekers were held.

Updates

In July, a court in Lecce convicted 16 people charged in connection with the physical assault and racial abuse of inmates of the Regina Pacis CPTA in the Puglia region in November 2002. The director of the centre, a Roman Catholic priest, and two of the carabinieri (military police) who provided security at the centre were given suspended sentences of 16 months' imprisonment. The other accused, six members of the administrative staff, two doctors and five other carabinieri, also received suspended sentences, of between nine and 16 months.

Detention by proxy

Italy's decision to build three detention facilities in Libya – one in Gharyan, close to Tripoli, a second in Sheba, in the desert, and a third in Kufra, close to Libya's borders with Egypt, Sudan and Chad – was unofficially reported during the year. There were fears that the human rights of migrants could be at serious risk. Libya had not ratified the UN Refugee Convention or its Protocol, and did not acknowledge the presence of refugees and asylum-seekers in the country or recognize the official status of the UNHCR.

Police brutality

Italy still failed to make torture, as defined in the UN Convention against Torture, a specific crime within its penal code. It also took no steps to establish an independent national human rights institution, or an independent police complaints and accountability body. Policing operations were not brought in line with the European Code of Police Ethics, for example by requiring officers to display prominently some form of identification, such as a service number, to ensure they could be held accountable.

Updates: policing of 2001 demonstrations

Trials of police officers continued in relation to policing operations around the mass demonstrations in Naples in March 2001 and during the G8 Summit in Genoa in July 2001.

  • The trial of 31 police officers on charges ranging from abduction to bodily harm and coercion in connection with the Naples demonstration, which began in December 2004, continued in 2005.
  • In March public prosecutors in Genoa set out evidence of verbal and physical abuse of detainees in the Bolzaneto temporary detention facility through which over 200 detainees passed during the G8 summit. Detainees were reportedly slapped, kicked, punched and spat on; subjected to threats, including of rape, and to verbal abuse, including of an obscene sexual nature; and deprived of food, water and sleep for lengthy periods. On 16 April, a total of 45 police officers, carabinieri, prison guards and medical personnel were committed for trial on various charges. The trial began on 11 October.
  • On 6 April the trial began of 28 police officers, including several senior officers, involved in an overnight police raid on a school in Genoa during the demonstrations in 2001. During the raid, nearly 100 people were injured and three were left in a coma. The officers were charged with various offences, including assault and battery, falsifying and planting evidence, and abusing their powers as officers of the state. None had been suspended from duty. Scores of other law enforcement officers believed to have participated in assaults could apparently not be identified.

Ill-treatment in prisons

Chronic overcrowding and understaffing persisted in prisons, along with high rates of suicide and self-harm. There were many reports of poor sanitary conditions and inadequate medical assistance. Infectious diseases and mental health problems persisted.

Criminal proceedings, involving large numbers of prison staff, were under way into alleged ill-treatment of individual prisoners and sometimes large groups of prisoners. Some trials were marked by excessive delays. Charges related to the alleged psychological and physical abuse of prisoners, in some cases said to have been carried out systematically and at times amounting to torture.

International scrutiny

In January the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women found the measures taken by Italy to address the low participation of women in public life to be inadequate. It recommended that a definition of discrimination against women be included in relevant legislation, to bring Italy in line with the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

On 28 October the UN Human Rights Committee, in its response to a report by Italy on its implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, recommended the establishment of an independent national human rights institution. It pressed for increased efforts to ensure that reported ill-treatment by state agents was subject to prompt and impartial investigation, and to eliminate domestic violence. The Committee raised concerns about the right to apply for asylum, and requested detailed information regarding re-admission agreements concluded with other countries, including Libya. It urged Italy to ensure the judiciary remained independent of the executive power, and highlighted concerns about overcrowding in prisons.

International Criminal Court

Despite Italy's major role in drafting the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and its ratification of the Statute in 1999, by the end of 2005 the authorities had still not enacted implementing legislation that would allow investigation and prosecution of crimes under international law in national courts or co-operation with the International Criminal Court in its investigations.

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