Concerns in Europe January June 2001
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Concerns in Europe: January - June 2001
Amnesty International September 2001 officers and injuring them. On 1 June it was announced that seven of the injured demonstrators - who had suffered injuries with prognoses ranging between 15 and 40 days and whose cases were presented as emblematic - had lodged criminal complaints against the Brescia police. Their complaints were reportedly supported by video and eye-witness testimony. A demonstration which took place in Naples on 17 March, on the occasion of the Third Global Forum devoted to the stated theme of Fostering Democracy and Development through e-Government, degenerated into violent clashes between certain groups of demonstrators and law enforcement officials, and resulted in injuries to both officers and demonstrators, as well as damage to property. However, at the same time, numerous reports from various sources, including witness and victim accounts and photographic evidence, presented a disturbing picture of widespread abuses and violations of international human rights standards perpetrated against non-violent demonstrators and others by members of the State Police, Carabinieri and Guardia di Finanza. In a letter addressed to the former Minister of Interior in April, AI expressed its deep concern about the allegations against law enforcement officials. These included:
non-violent protestors, including minors, trapped in a square sealed off by the police, being subjected to indiscriminate assaults by officers using rifle butts and truncheons, kicks, punches and stones, even though in many cases the protestors approached officers with their hands in the air as an indiction of peaceful intent; ·
taking photographs or videotaping scenes of use of excessive force by police and the subsequent destruction of their cameras and film; ·
failure to provide some injured detainees with prompt and adequate medical care; ·
allowed to have a member of the family or third person informed of their whereabouts; ·
police stations. Some of them were reportedly made to kneel on the floor of police stations with their faces to the wall for lengthy periods and subjected to random and deliberate beatings with truncheons, slaps, kicks, punches and verbal insults frequently of an obscene, sexual nature. Many detainees were given intimate body searches and in a number of instances the conduct of officers during body searches appeared deliberately aimed at humiliating and degrading the detainees.
AI called on the government to establish an independent commission of inquiry to investigate fully and impartially police tactics and behaviour during the Naples demonstration, and sought information on the status of the internal administrative investigation opened in connection with the March demonstration. In its call for such a commission, AI pointed out that prompt, thorough and impartial investigations, with the methods and findings made public, serve to protect the reputations of law enforcement officers who may be the subject of unfounded accusations of ill-treatment, as well as to safeguard the interests of genuine victims of ill-treatment. The organization was most disappointed, therefore, by the response of the Minister of Interior who, on 5 June confirmed that he had ordered the opening of an internal administrative investigation into alleged inappropriate use of force or any improper deployment of the police, and indicated that with regard to the individual instances of alleged human rights violations described in AI’s letter - cited only as illustrative examples - the judicial authorities would investigate those instances where individual complaints had been lodged with the courts or had otherwise come to light. In AI’s view the scope of the investigations indicated was insufficient and an inadequate response to the call for a comprehensive investigation carried out by a commission of inquiry, consisting of people of acknowledged independence and probity.
A large number of criminal proceedings were under way in connection with alleged ill-treatment, in some cases amounting to torture, by prison personnel. In February the Public Prosecutor’s office placed 10 members of the staff of Potenza District Prison, including prison officers and medical personnel, under criminal investigation in connection with the alleged ill-treatment of Tbina Ama, a Tunisian prisoner. A criminal investigation had opened in August 2000, after Tbina Ama climbed onto the prison roof to protest against a beating he alleged prison staff had inflicted on him the previous day. A forensic examination carried out at the Public Prosecutor’s request concluded that the injuries displayed by the prisoner were consistent with his allegations. The prison staff faced possible charges of causing actual and grievous bodily harm and falsifying medical certificates. The trial of three prison officers attached to Sassari Prison, Sardinia, and accused of ill-treating a Moroccan inmate, Abdelaziz Ziad, in November 1997 (see AI Index: EUR 01/03/00), opened in April. Abdelaziz Ziad was imprisoned in connection with alleged sexual offences against a Moroccan minor, a young boy. He alleged that the officers had beaten him in an isolation cell where he was being held to protect him from possible attacks by fellow inmates. A doctor who examined him a few days after the alleged assault found injuries taking an estimated 30 days to heal, including a perforated ear-drum and a damaged septum. During the April court hearings a prison officer stated that one of the accused had told him he had participated in the beating “because he was a
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