Concerns in Europe: January - June 2001
43
Amnesty International September 2001
AI Index: EUR 01/003/2001
isolation may have serious effects on
the physical and
mental health of fit prisoners, and is therefore likely to
aggravate the condition of persons who are already
suffering from mental illness and who should be
receiving medical/psychological treatment. Prolonged
isolation may constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading
treatment. AI believes that the allegations described
above regarding the placement of some people with
mental illness in solitary confinement for prolonged
periods in Irish prisons, and the conditions of the
isolation cells, may violate Ireland’s obligations under
international human rights treaties, including those
enshrined in Articles 7 and 10 of the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
I T A L Y
Alleged human rights violations by law
enforcement officers
There were numerous further allegations of gratuitous
and deliberate violence inflicted on detainees by law
enforcement officers.
In February five youths - two Italian nationals and
three Albanian immigrants - lodged a criminal
complaint against Pistoia police officers and a
discotheque bouncer, accusing them of assaulting
them on 23 February. They alleged that, after a verbal
argument with the bouncer outside a discotheque in
the early hours of the morning, they proceeded by car
to a bar where four police officers subsequently
detained them, after asking one of them - an Albanian
national - to show his identity papers. The police
apparently assumed that all five were immigrants and
escorted them to the police station. There they alleged
they were assaulted by at least five officers, while
others looked on without intervening, as well as by the
bouncer who had apparently been called in to identify
them. He had contacted the police, complaining that
the youths had insulted him and passed on their car
registration number. The youths alleged that they were
slapped, punched and kicked until they were bleeding,
that their heads were knocked together and banged
against a wall, that they were thrown to the floor - one
of them landing against a glass door which shattered,
injuring him, but that he was kicked as he lay on the
floor groaning. He eventually required hospitalization
for treatment to a broken nose, a burst ear-drum and a
damaged testicle.
They alleged that during the assault one of the
officers shouted phrases such as: “Here, I am the law,
there is no democracy, this is a dictatorship”. In an
attempt to stop the assault, one of the youths, Marco
Chiti, who was not carrying his identity card but
whose father was at that time an Under-Secretary of
State in the office of the Prime Minister of the day,
told the officers his father’s name. It appears that a
doctor was then called to examine the most seriously
injured detainee but the youths remained in detention
for around two further hours: none of them were
allowed to call their relatives or have them informed
of their whereabouts.
The police officers claimed to have detained the
youths inside the discotheque and to have later tried to
stop a brawl between the youths and the bouncer
inside the police station. Within two days of the
incidents, the police had lodged a complaint accusing
the youths of causing bodily harm and insulting them.
In March the five officers were suspended from
duty and on 21 March, while the criminal
investigation continued, the judicial authorities placed
three of them under house arrest on suspicion of
causing grievous bodily harm, falsifying evidence and
calumny. The other two officers, who had apparently
by then largely confirmed the youths’ version of
events, remained suspended from duty and a criminal
investigation was under way against the bouncer.
Following the discovery on 15 March of the
corpse of a Tunisian national, Edine Imed Bouabid,
near the motorway running between Rome and
Civitavecchia, two carabinieri officers from the
nearby coastal town of Ladispoli were placed under
investigation for possible failure to provide assistance
and for abandoning an incapacitated person. Edine
Imed Bouabid was living in Italy illegally and was
known to local law enforcement officers because of
alleged involvement in drug-dealing and pimping. On
the evening of his death he had been seen visibly
drunk in the centre of Ladispoli, annoying passers-by,
some of whom called in the carabinieri. At around
10pm eye-witnesses saw him getting into a carabinieri
vehicle and he was not seen again until his body was
discovered some 30 minutes later. It was initially
thought that the carabinieri had abandoned him near
the motorway and that he had then been knocked over
by a car. However, autopsy and forensic examinations
apparently established that he had died after receiving
three blows inflicted by a heavy object which
fractured his skull. In April the Civitavecchia Public
Prosecutor’s office placed three carabinieri officers
under criminal investigation in connection with a
possible murder charge.
On 2 March an anti-racism demonstration took
place in Brescia protesting, among other things,
against certain statements made the previous month by
Umberto Bossi, leader of the federalist parliamentary
party, the Lega Nord (Northern League) and since
June a minister in the new coalition government. The
statements included a call for the construction of a 260
kilometre wall along Italy’s Slovenian border in order
to keep out illegal immigrants. The demonstration was
timed to coincide with a demonstration against illegal
immigration, among other things, which the Lega
Nord was holding in Brescia.
Demonstrators accused police and carabinieri
officers of subjecting peaceful demonstrators to
gratuitous violence, assaulting them with truncheons
and rifle butts, applied in particular to their backs, and
continuing to beat people who were lying on the
ground bleeding. Dozens of people were reportedly
injured, around eight of them so badly that they
required urgent hospital treatment. Some 15 youths
were arrested and put under investigation in
connection with possible offences of resisting state