Detainee kills cellmate in Salerno

(ANSA) - ROME, JUL 19 - A detainee in the prison of the Campania city of Salerno on Friday slashed his cellmate's throat and killed him.
    The attacker and victim, both from Maghreb, were in the prison section for "common detainees".
    The attack was due to "futile reasons", prison sources said.
    The murdered inmate, who lived near Perugia, in Umbria, was serving a sentence for drug trafficking and robbery and was set for release in 2026.
    "This is the umpteenth, extremely serious episode of violence in an institution in Campania", said the regional secretary of the Sappe union of penitentiary police, Tiziana Guacci, denouncing the "state of abandonment" of prisons in the southern region.
    Overall, overcrowding, low prospects of release and poor conditions have been denounced in prisons nationwide as factors causing the high number of suicides reported in Italy's prisons - 60 so far this year, according to the Secretary of the Prison Police Union (SPP) Aldo Di Giacomo.
    Five prison officers have also taken their own lives in the first half of 2024, SSP said. (ANSA).