Italy: Detention centres: Hunger strikes, arrests and escapes
01 March 2005
Between March and May 2005, there were a number of protests and actions against Italian detention centres, both inside and outside of these centres, which have been accompanied by disturbances, revolts and escape attempts within the centres.
On 8 February 2005, parish priests issued an appeal criticising the “inhuman management of immigration policy” and government plans to expand the network of CPTs (
Centri di permanenza temporanea, Italy’s immigrant detention centres) to every Italian region. It rejected the repressive anti-immigrant discourse that “augments racism and xenophobia” and the denial of human rights to people who have not committed any crime, as well as criticising the “preemptive censorship” that applies to these centres. Another of the criticisms involves the failure to remove the priest don Cesare Lodeserto from the post as director of the detention centre in San Foca di Medelugno (Lecce, Apulia). The priest, alongside 18 members of the staff of the centre (including medical staff, social workers and carabinieri), is on trial for the violent beating of a group of 17 Maghreb country nationals after an escape attempt in November 2002 (see
Statewatch, vol.14 no.1). The priest resigned from his post after he was arrested on 11 March 2005, accused of the kidnapping a group of Moldovan women, and of misusing correctional facilities to ill-treat them. He is currently under house arrest, and has also been found guilty of “fabricating a crime” (threats against him) to ensure he had an escort, and faces charges of misusing funds related to the CPT.
In spite of the lack of information concerning conditions in detention centres, testimonies occasionally surface, as was the case when an interview with Michele Pellegrino, a police officer who coordinates public order in the CPT in Borgo Mezzanone (Foggia), was published on 8 March, in which he expressed his surprise when he arrived in the centre: “Nobody knew they had won a competition to be a guard in a lager”. He stressed that the caravans where the migrants are detained are boiling in the summer and freezing in the winter, adding that there is a lack of medical care, that when a fire broke out there was no fire-fighting equipment, as well as referring to a case in which a police vehicle ran over three people in the centre on 31 August 1999, killing one of them, Kamber Dourmishi, who was born in Pristina.
On 27 April 2005, the acquittal of the former Trapani (Sicily)
prefetto (police chief), Leonardo Cerenzia, in relation to the fire in the city’s
Serraino Vulpitta CPT in which six migrants died in December 1999 (see
Statewatch, vol 10 no 1), was confirmed on appeal. He had been charged with failing to adequately exercise his duties, of responsibility in relation to the fire and to a multiple manslaughter, crimes for which he was first acquitted on 15 April 2004. Thus, no one has been held responsible for the tragedy.
On 11 May, following a series of protests against the CPT (its status is set to change to that of an identification centre for refugees) in Lecce, 5 “insurrectionalist anarchists” were arrested under Italy’s antiterrorist legislation, accused of having “instigated” revolts by detained migrants, of threatening its personnel, and of other actions such as vandalism against the Benetton clothes firm (accused of unethical policies in South America), AMTs of Banca Intesa (where the funds of Lecce’s CPT are deposited) and Esso petrol stations (for providing fuel to the military coalition in Iraq). The charges they may face are of “promoting, constituting, organising, directing and taking part in an association aimed at carrying out violent acts” and other criminal acts aimed at “subverting the democratic order”.
On 29 March, there was a mass escape attempt by 400 detainees in the CPA (
centro di prima accoglienza, centre for early reception) in Isola Capo Rizzuto in the province of Crotone (Calabri