Italy: Drug addict dies in custody after beating
01 November 2008
Stefano Brunetti, a drug addict who was allegedly beaten after an incident in Anzio (Lazio) in which he was caught during an attempted theft and arrested for resisting public officers and taken to Anzio police station, died in hospital the next day, on 8 September 2008. His condition had worsened while he was in prison in Velletri, where his case was due to be heard the next day. The man, who suffered from cirrhosis, is alleged to have acted violently and damaged the security cell where he was held in Anzio, leading to him being sedated before being taken to Velletri prison. However, shortly before dying, and after being asked by a doctor how he had ended up in the state he was in (with bruising on his face and thorax, and a swollen thorax, possibly a result of internal injuries), he replied that “the guards” had been responsible.
Angiolo Marroni, the regional ombudsman for the rights of detainees, said:
It is unacceptable to die in this way, even after committing crimes...In Italy, the death sentence has not yet been introduced. It is now up to the magistrates to shed light [on the matter] to identify responsibilities and punish those who have given in to behaviour that discredits all law enforcement agencies.
Luigi Nieri, the regional council official responsible for the budget, spoke of the incident as “incredibly serious... if true”, particularly as:
the victim does not seem to be a dangerous criminal, but rather, a person towards whom social support was the priority.
Patrizio Gonnella, the president of
Associazione Antigone, an organisation that monitors the implementation of rights in prisons, called for authorities to intervene to establish what had happened, and claimed that they would inform international bodies dealing with torture about the case.
On 6 October 2008, ombudsman Marroni expressed his concern after
Ristretti Orizzonti had reported that there had been 13 deaths (including a prison officer who committed suicide) in prisons in the Lazio region in the first nine months of 2008 – six suicides, four as a result of diseases and three for which the causes had not been ascertained, eight of them in Rome’s
Regina Coeli (5) and
Rebibbia (3) prisons. He noted that this indicated an increase in fatalities in the region, as 11 people had died in the whole of 2007, and 10 in 2006, adding that the presence of psychiatrists working in prisons was decreasing as a result of funding cuts and that overcrowding was also a relevant factor.
The figures published by
Ristretti Orizzonti, a prisoners’ organisation that publishes information about the prison system, details the death of 90 inmates (33 of whom committed suicide) between 1 January and 17 September 2008. From the data it has gathered, it has also published a chart that includes the names, ages, cause of death and the prisons where they died, in an effort to “give back a human dimension, a story and a name, to the inmates who die, often in the midst of indifference from the media and society”. Their statistics on deaths in custody between 2000 and 2008 indicates an overall decrease, albeit not progressive, from 160 in 2000 to 123 in 2007, with peaks of 177 and 172 reached in 2001 and 2005 respectively.
Garante per i diritti dei detenuti della Regione Lazio, 12.9.08, http://www.garantedetenutilazio.it/notizie/news/index.html_elem_0075.html and 6.10.08,
http://www.garantedetenutilazio.it/notizie/news/index.html_elem_0086.html; Ristretti Orizzonti, “Morire di carcere: dossier 2008” and “Morire di carcere: dossier 2000-2008”, available at: http://www.ristretti.it Corriere della Sera, 13.9.08; Il Messaggero, 12.9.08; L’Unità, 12-13.9.08.