Stiffer sentences needed for brutalising inmates - judges

(ANSA) - ROME, JUN 13 - Turin judges on Tuesday called for stiffer sentences for prison officer brutality against inmates after a string of cases stretching back to Roman surveyor Stefano Cucchi who died after a beating in 2009 and including more recent cases at Santa Maria Capua Vetere near Naples, Biella and Ivrea near Turin, and earlier this month at a police station in Verona near Venice where officers allegedly brutalised migrants and street people, on some occasions using them as human mops after preventing them from going to the toilet and forcing them to urinate on the floor.
    Harsher punishments are needed for abuses committed in prison by prison police on detainees, said the Court of Re-examination of Turin in an order issued in a case concerning the Biella prison.
    The judges revoked arrest warrants against 23 agents, because they did not find the crime of torture but only those of injury and abuse of authority, which do not mandate pretrial detention.
    Justice Minister Carlo Nordio in March vowed to ease prison overcrowding in Italy after the Council of Europe's anti-torture committee said Italy's prisons are "violent" and "overcrowded" following a periodic visit carried out in March/April 2022.
    In its report the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) recorded violence and intimidation among inmates and overcrowding in all penal institutions.
    Ilaria Cucchi, a member of the opposition Italian Left-Green Alliance who lost her brother Stefano to police brutality in 2009, recently appealed to President Sergio Mattarella to not sign into law a bill presented by the ruling rightwing Brothers of Italy (FdI) party that would allegedly eliminate the crime of torture from the Italian penal code.
    Senator Cucchi, who was elected to parliament for the first time in September and whose surveyor brother Stefano died after a police beating upon being picked on a minor drugs charge, cited the suspension of the 23 Biella Prison officers for 'torturing' three inmates as the latest episode militating in favour of keeping the crime on the books.
    The 23 Italian prison officers were suspended on suspicion of 'torturing' three inmates in a jail at the northern city's jail, in the latest case of severe mistreatment of prisoners in Italy.
    They stand accused of using "cruel methods" which caused "undue physical suffering" to the three prisoners.
    There have been several recent cases of mistreatment of prisoners in Italian jails.
    Some 45 people including prison officers, doctors, officials and interim wardens of Ivrea Prison in northwestern Italy have been placed under investigation on suspicion of beating and 'torturing' inmates at the jail north of Turin.
    They may face charges of torture with physical and psychological violence against numerous prisoners, making false public statements and correlated crimes.
    The alleged cases of violence against inmates took place on 10 occasions between 2015 and 2016, Ivrea's prisoner guarantor said.
    Prisoners were frequently beaten with kicks, punches and truncheons, he said. When the inmates ended up in the infirmary, complicit doctors allegedly drew up false reports that they had sustained their injuries after slipping in their cells or the showers, the guarantor said.
    Warders also allegedly claimed the prisoners were self-harming and their bruises proved it.
    Biella and Ivrea iare not the first Italian prisons where inmates have been allegedly brutalised.
    In July all 105 prison officers, penitentiary officials and local health agency officials were sent to trial over a brutal punitive raid on inmates at a prison at Santa Maria Capua Vetere near Caserta north of Naples on 6 April 2020.
    The trial into the violence, which was meted out as punishment for a riot, began on November 7.
    Guards allegedly went on a rampage of violence to punish inmates for rioting.
    Overcrowding and COVID fears sparked riots in several prisons at the height of the first lockdown in spring 2020, when many inmates were hurt, and some died, mainly from overdoses of drugs pillaged from jail infirmaries.
    The defendants are accused of crimes include torture, abuse of authority, making false declarations and cooperation in the culpable homicide of an Algerian prisoner.
    A preliminary investigations judge (GIP) said prisoners were made to strip and kneel and beaten with guards wearing their helmets so as not to be identified in what he called "a horrible massacre".
    Some 15 men were also put into solitary without any justification, the GIP said.
    Police reportedly found chats on the suspects' phones including, before the alleged violence, saying "We'll kill them like veal calves" and "tame the beasts", and afterwards, saying "four hours of hell for them", "no one got away", and "(we used) the Poggioreale system", referring to a tough Naples prison. Some of the alleged rioters had their hair cut and beards shaved off.
    Former Justice Minister Marta Cartabia has said that CCTV footage of the violence showed that the officers had betrayed the Italian Constitution.
    Then, last November, six Italian prison officers including the head warder at Reggio Calabria Prison were arrested for 'torturing' an inmate at the southern Italian jail.
    Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said Wednesday that suspected brutality at a Verona police station that has led to the arrest of five officers and the investigation of 17 others was "of enormous gravity".
    The case, in which homeless people and migrants in custody were allegedly tortured, including by being used as 'mops' to clean up their own urine, has gained headlines in Italy and redirected the spotlight on the FdI move to rescind the crime of torture from the criminal code.
    Footage of the alleged brutality shocked Italy.
    Justice Minister Carlo Nordio recently said Italy could build new prisons to ease chronic overcrowding using the cash from rental proceeds from historic ones which are no longer used, starting with disuse barracks. (ANSA).