Amnesty International Report 1995 - Italy

There were numerous allegations of ill-treatment by law enforcement and prison officers. The death penalty was abolished for all offences. A bill reforming the existing system of conscientious objection to compulsory military service, approved by the Chamber of Deputies in 1993 after numerous delays (see Amnesty International Reports 1989 to 1994), was awaiting consideration by the Senate when parliament was dissolved in January to make way for general elections in March. These brought the new six-party coalition government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to power. A new bill, based largely on the 1993 text, was still under consideration by the Senate at the end of the year. In October parliament gave its final approval to a bill eliminating the death penalty from the Wartime Military Penal Code, thereby abolishing the death penalty for all offences. Officers from all law enforcement agencies were accused of ill-treating detainees and a number of court proceedings were under way into such allegations. In June, 13 officers of the Palermo Municipal Police were committed for trial in 1996 following an investigation into the alleged ill-treatment of Filippo Campanella in March. The officers were accused of forcing him out of his car and kicking and punching him until he lost consciousness, after he had asked if he could remain briefly double-parked on a Palermo street. He suffered a spinal injury resulting in neurological damage to his right leg. During the investigation the officers apparently claimed he had thrown himself to the ground, pretending to be hit. The officers were also accused of using threats and violence to take a roll of film from the camera of a bystander who had photographed their assault. Filippo Campanella was also committed for trial on a charge of refusing to give the officers details of his identity. In May, two Turin police officers were charged with deliberately inflicting injuries which led to the death of Antonio Morabito following his street arrest for robbery in December 1993. Numerous eye-witnesses had stated that, after handcuffing him, police officers kicked and punched him, hit him with the butt of a gun and fired a shot close to his head. He was taken to a central police station but died a few hours later during transfer to hospital. Autopsy and forensic reports established that he had suffered numerous head injuries and damage to the peritoneum resulting in a fatal intestinal haemorrhage. The trial opened in October. In October a carabiniere officer was charged with the manslaughter of Tarzan Sulic, an 11-year-old Rom shot through the head while detained in a carabinieri barracks near Padua in September 1993. His 13-year-old female cousin, wounded by the same shot, had alleged that both were ill-treated by carabinieri during their detention and that the accused officer had threatened the boy with a gun just before it fired. In December Padua's military authorities charged the officer with infringing regulations through illegal use of his firearm. Allegations of ill-treatment by law enforcement officers often concerned immigrants. In June Naser Hasani, a Rom from former Yugoslavia, lodged a complaint after being stopped by three police officers while driving in a car with two companions in Florence. He said they checked his identity documents and accused him of using a hammer they found in his car to carry out robberies. They asked him to follow their police car to the central police station but instead led him to a park on the outskirts of the city, where he alleged they kicked him, struck him with the hammer and racially insulted him. After the police left the scene his companions took him to a local hospital which issued a medical certificate recording multiple cuts and bruises. In August doctors attached to a Milan hospital drew the attention of police and judicial authorities to the allegations made by a drug addict who claimed that the injuries which had necessitated an emergency operation to remove his spleen had been inflicted by a carabiniere officer some hours earlier. Khaled Kablouti, a Moroccan immigrant, said that he had been on the point of injecting himself in a Milan underpass when the officer ordered him to throw away his needle. He said that he complied but that the officer then kicked him in the stomach, knocking him down, and kicked him again in the same place when he tried to stand. The officer then left the scene. A judicial investigation was apparently opened. A mass demonstration held in Milan in September against the closure of a social centre led to violent clashes between demonstrators and law enforcement officers. In a subsequent complaint to the Milan Chief of Police and to the Minister of the Interior, journalists and press photographers claimed they were kicked and beaten by police while reporting on the demonstration and that officers assaulted some photographers while they were taking pictures of police armed with truncheons beating demonstrators. The Milan Chief of Police apologized to the journalists and photographers injured by the police, but apparently no disciplinary investigation was announced. Journalists claimed that they also saw bystanders, including passengers on a stationary bus, being beaten by the police. Some members of the public lodged formal complaints of ill-treatment. Enrica Personé alleged that she and her daughter were standing at a bus stop when they saw police officers beating a youth with their truncheons. She said that when they called on them to stop the police officers beat her daughter. A local hospital later issued a certificate recording that Enrica Personé was in a state of shock and that her daughter had extensive bruising on her legs. There were further allegations of ill-treatment by prison officers. In January inmates of Sulmona prison claimed that officers had beaten them in reprisal for a protest they had carried out in December 1993, apparently over the alleged medical neglect of a fellow prisoner. By the end of the month inmates had reportedly lodged 13 complaints accusing prison officers of inflicting severe beatings, issuing death threats, abusing their authority and committing acts of deliberate humiliation and extortion. In an open letter published by the press in early February inmates of Secondigliano prison expressed concern about the isolation of a fellow prisoner, Giacomo De Simone, since a court appearance on 12 January when he had complained of ill-treatment by prison officers. They claimed he had been repeatedly beaten by prison officers over a two-day period immediately preceding the court hearing and threatened with further ill-treatment if he reported the beatings to the judges. In February it was also reported that five prison officers and their commandant had been committed for trial on various charges, including abuse of authority, aggravated fraud, calumny, perjury and instigating others to commit offences, as a result of the judicial investigation opened in early 1993 into the alleged systematic ill-treatment of some 300 inmates of Secondigliano prison (see Amnesty International Report 1994). A further 108 officers were apparently under judicial investigation during the year in connection with the alleged ill-treatment. In July the UN Human Rights Committee considered Italy's periodic report on its compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Its principal concerns included cases of ill-treatment by law enforcement agencies and the "increasing number of cases of ill-treatment in prisons", noting that they were not always investigated "thoroughly". The Committee recommended that torture be made a criminal offence and that effective steps be taken to protect detainees from ill-treatment. Some authorities responded to Amnesty International's inquiries about allegations of ill-treatment, giving information about the status of court proceedings.