Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi
said Saturday that a video allegedly showing an inmate at Reggio
Emilia being beaten by guards is "unacceptable".
The video, showing the violence inflicted on a 43-year-old
Tunisian detainee on 3 April in a corridor of the jail, was
presented among the evidence filed by prosecutors after they
concluded a criminal probe into 10 prison guards. Eight of the
guards are accused of the crime of torture.
The footage, taken by cameras inside the prison, shows the man,
hooded with a pillowcase, tripped over, punched in the face and
on the side, stamped on with boots and held down for minutes by
his arms and legs by prison officers.
He was then stripped naked and, still hooded, dragged into his
cell.
"While everything has to be established in the competent fora,
and so making very clear judgments in advance is always
something that has to be done with care, it is obvious that such
things are not acceptable," Piantedosi said during a visit to
Imola.
"Whenever a person is confined, under the supervision of State
bodies, the dignity of that person must be ensured twice as much
as with respect to normal conditions".
Ilaria Cucchi, a Senator for the Green/Left Alliance, said she
visited the prison last spring and "found inmates in inhuman
conditions: some with their own excrement in the same cell.
"The problem generally concerns new arrivals, those who are also
more exposed to the risk of suicide," added Cucchi, who came to
national prominence during her campaign for justice for her
brother Stefano, who died in custody in 2009 after being the
victim of police brutality.
The prisoner who suffered the beating in Reggio Emilia told
investigators that he feared "that it will happen again",
sources said.
"I can't sleep because I think back to how afraid I was to die
and to all that force and violence that was used against me
while I was on the ground and handcuffed," the inmate said.
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