Italy: Big increase in army bullying
01 March 2000
Six soldiers from Pisa's Gamerra parachute regiment barracks have been charged by Emanuele Scieri's parents in connection with their son's suspicious death in August 1999 (see Statewatch vol 9 no 5). Evidence has emerged from Mario Ciancarella, a pilot and officer in Italy's airforce who resigned in 1983, who claims to have received an anonymous phone call from someone who had been serving with Scieri. He revealed what he was told to investigating prosecutors, and later to a Rai news television programme on 30 March, which included a reconstruction of events on the night of Scieri's death.
Ciancarella's account suggests that a group of "elders" (long-serving officers) forced Scieri to climb a tower, and that the leader of the group stepped on his hand when he threatened to report them. Scieri's father, Corrado, reiterated his intention to discover the truth, accusing the military of hindering investigations: "The military have been ordered to keep quiet about this story. But it is clearly a homicide." Pisa public prosecutor Enzo Iannelli announced that the persons found guilty of Scieri's death will face charges of premeditated murder. Four soldiers who served in the Gamerra barracks at the time of the murder are officially under investigation. These include General Calogeno Cirneco, former barracks commander, who is charged with not fulfilling his duties as commander, and soldiers who failed to report that Scieri was missing until the morning after his death.
The military general prosecutor, Vindicio Bonagura, announced that magistrates serving under him have had to deal with 861 instances of nonnismo (the bullying of conscripts), of which 411 took place in Rome and 235 in Turin. He stressed that victims of bullying should be allowed to denounce their attackers, and that the military code should be changed to include nonnismo as a defined crime. Specific definitions which he argued should be included in the changes stress the fact that the bully uses the intimidatory force derived from his longer service to threaten or use violence against another member of the armed forces; that the act occurs repeatedly, or that more than one soldier takes part in the abuse.
There was a new suspicious death in the armed forces on 18 January, when Nicola Farfuglia, a sailor, shot himself while he was posted as a guard at the Altare della Patria (Altar to the Fatherland) in central Rome. His brother Giovanni contradicted early reports relating Nicola's suicide to love problems, explaining that Nicola was being given a hard time by longer-serving soldiers for refusing to carry out an order. Giovanni claimed that his brother told him of his concern about his posting, as he would be in company of older soldiers. He wanted to take a screwdriver with him, and allegedly said "If they touch me I'll stick it in their stomach".
Bonagura, the military general prosecutor, described the problem of nonnismo as a "widespread and worrying phenomenon which must be fought with every effort", while soldiers' parents associations argued that the number of cases would be far higher if it was possible to count the victims of nonnismo who failed to report intimidation. Green MP Athos De Luca says that the military general prosecutor's figures contradict lower estimates provided by the defence military sources , and accused former Defence Minister Carlo Scognamiglio of failing to act in any way to prevent violence in army barracks. This is surprising in view of the criticism received and assurances given by Scognamiglio following Emanuele Scieri's death that measures would be taken to protect the victims of nonnismo in the armed forces.
Corriere della Sera 24.2.00, 31.3.00; Il Manifesto 12.2.00; La Repubblica, 28.1.00, 14.2.00, 31.3.00, 12.5.00.