Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance & Other Ill Treatment In the early years of the 21st Century, 2000 TO
2025 gvnet.com/torture/Italy.htm
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CAUTION: The following links
have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in Italy. Some of these links may lead to websites
that present allegations that are unsubstantiated or even false. No
attempt has been made to validate their authenticity or to verify their content. HOW TO USE THIS WEBPAGE Students If you are looking
for material to use in a term-paper, you are advised to scan the postings on
this page and others to see which aspects of Torture by Authorities are of
particular interest to you. You might
be interested in exploring the moral justification for inflicting pain or
inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment in order to obtain critical
information that may save countless lives, or to elicit a confession for a
criminal act, or to punish someone to teach him a lesson outside of the courtroom. Perhaps your paper might focus on some of
the methods of torture, like fear, extreme temperatures, starvation, thirst,
sleep deprivation, suffocation, or immersion in freezing water. On the other hand, you might choose to
write about the people acting in an official capacity who perpetrate such
cruelty. There is a lot to the subject
of Torture by Authorities. Scan other
countries as well as this one. Draw
comparisons between activity in adjacent countries and/or regions. Meanwhile, check out some of the Term-Paper resources
that are available on-line. ***
ARCHIVES *** Freedom House
Country Report 2018 Edition freedomhouse.org/country/italy/freedom-world/2018 [accessed 17 May
2020] F3. IS THERE
PROTECTION FROM THE ILLEGITIMATE USE OF PHYSICAL FORCE AND FREEDOM FROM WAR
AND INSURGENCIES? There have been reports
of excessive use of force by police, particularly against people in the
country illegally. Refugees and undocumented migrants have been held in
overcrowded and unhygienic conditions. In July 2017, the
parliament approved a law criminalizing torture, though rights groups
criticized it for defining torture narrowly and mandating a relatively short
statute of limitations, which they identified as problematic in light of
delays that plague the justice system. Council of Europe
anti-torture Committee publishes report on Italy Executive Summary,
21 January 2020 [accessed 31 May
2020] Turning to the various forms
of isolation and
segregation of prisoners,
the CPT considers that the accessory punishment of
court-imposed solitary confinement pursuant to Article 72 of the Criminal
Code (“isolamento diurno”)
is anachronistic and should be abolished. Such an additional punishment of
prolonged solitary confinement can have
harmful effects and
is contrary to
the principle of re-socialisation
of prisoners, particularly as it is usually imposed several years after the
commencement of imprisonment. As regards the regime of special surveillance
(“sorveglianza particolare”)
pursuant to Article 14-bis of the Prison Law, the Committee found that
prisoners subjected to this regime were de facto held in
conditions of solitary
confinement for prolonged
periods. Given the potentially harmful effects of
subjecting inmates to prolonged solitary confinement, the Committee calls
upon the authorities to
provide such prisoners
with an appropriate
regime (i.e. at least two
hours of meaningful human
contact per day). 2020 Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices: Italy U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, 30 March 2021 www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/italy/
[accessed 25 July
2021] TORTURE AND OTHER
CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT In a report on its
March 2019 visit, the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of
Torture (CPT) stated that at Viterbo Prison it
heard a considerable number of allegations of physical mistreatment of
prisoners by staff, mainly with slaps, punches, and kicks. There was a
specific allegation of blows with metal cell keys on an inmate’s head. At Saluzzo Prison the CPT delegation heard additional
allegations of physical mistreatment of inmates by staff consisting of
punches and kicks. At Biella and Milan Opera Prisons, it received a few
allegations of physical mistreatment, consisting mainly of excessive use of
force by staff on inmates. On July 22,
authorities closed a police station in Piacenza and arrested 11 Carabinieri officers suspected of involvement in a
criminal gang that made illegitimate arrests, tortured arrestees, trafficked
narcotics, and carried out extortion from 2017 to 2020. On July 20,
prosecutors in Turin opened an investigation into the director and chief of
prison guards of the Turin prison for abetting the mistreatment of detainees
in at least 10 cases in 2018 and 2019 and for failing to report those guards
responsible to authorities. According to the
daily Domani, on April 6, approximately 300
corrections officers rounded up and beat a group of prisoners in the Santa
Maria Capua Vetere prison who had protested for
more masks, gloves, and sanitizer to protect against the COVID-19. According
to testimony given to the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Associazione Antigone, several of the inmates were stripped
naked, insulted, and beaten. Prosecutors reportedly opened investigations
into 57 corrections officers for torture and abuse of power. Legal torture in
Italy condemned by Human Rights Court Italian Insider, 26
October 2017 www.italianinsider.it/?q=node/6020 [accessed 27 October
2017] The orginal case was brought against 5 prison guards who,
between 2004 and 2005, had beaten and left the inmates naked in solitary
confinement for days in the winter months. The Court ruled that the guards
had abused authority yet, because Italy only passed laws that made torture
illegal in July 2017, the physical abuse was not against the law. Torture law aims to
reinforce democracy Redazione ANSA, Rome, 19 July
2016 [accessed 2 August
2016] The court condemned
Italy not only for what happened to the demonstrators during the infamous
raid on the Diaz school, but also because it said the country lacks
appropriate legislation to punish the crime of torture even though it
ratified a UN convention on torture in 1989. Conclusions and
recommendations of the Committee against Torture U.N. Convention
against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
-- Doc. A/54/44, paras. 163-169 (1999) www1.umn.edu/humanrts/cat/observations/italy1999.html [accessed 1 March
2013] 4. Subjects of
concern 167. Despite the efforts
of the authorities, the prison system remains overcrowded and lacking in
facilities which makes the overall conditions of detention not conducive to
the efforts of preventing inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. In
this regard, the Committee notes with concern, that reports of cases of illtreatment
in prison continued and that many of them involved foreigners. 168. The Committee
is also concerned over the lack of training in the field of human rights, in
particular, the prohibition against torture to the troops participating in
peacekeeping operations and the inadequate number of military police
accompanying them, which was responsible in part for the unfortunate
incidents that occurred in Somalia. AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL From an old article -- URL not available Article was
published sometime prior to 2015 TORTURE AND OTHER
ILL-TREATMENT
- In October, Parliament approved the ratification of the Optional Protocol
to the UN Convention against Torture, but failed to introduce the crime of
torture into the criminal code, as the Convention requires. No systemic
measures were taken to prevent human rights violations by police, or to
ensure accountability for them. Conditions of detention and the treatment of
detainees in many prisons and other detention centres
were inhumane and violated detainees’ rights, including to health. In April,
the Senate published a report on the state of prisons and migrants’ detention
centres, documenting grave overcrowding and
failures to uphold respect for human dignity and other international
obligations. GENOA G8 TRIALS - On 5 July, the
Supreme Court confirmed all 25 convictions issued on appeal against
high-ranking officials and police officers responsible for the torture and
other ill-treatment of demonstrators on 21 July 2001. Senior officials were
convicted for falsifying arrest documents, and sentences ranged from five
years to three years and eight months of imprisonment. However, due to a law
designed to cut inmate numbers, which allows for a three-year reduction in
sentences, nobody was imprisoned, although all were suspended from duty for
five years. Convictions issued on appeal for grievous bodily harm against
nine officers lapsed, as the statute of limitation came into effect prior to
the conclusion of the appeal to the Supreme Court, which also meant they
would not be suspended from duty. All the convicted officers, including those
whose crimes were covered by the statute of limitations, were due to undergo
disciplinary proceedings. Search … AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL For current
articles:: Search Amnesty
International Website www.amnesty.org/en/search/?q=italy+torture&ref=&year=&lang=en&adv=1&sort=relevance [accessed 5 January 2019] Scroll
Down ***
EARLIER EDITIONS OF SOME OF THE ABOVE *** Human Rights
Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61655.htm [accessed 31 January
2013] 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61655.htm [accessed 4 July
2019] TORTURE
AND OTHER CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT – The law
prohibits such practices; however, there were reports that police
occasionally used excessive force against persons detained in connection with
common criminal offenses or in the course of identity checks. While this
behavior affected both citizens and foreigners, Roma and immigrants were at
particular risk (see section 5). In 2003 a Nigerian
immigrant accused two policemen in Rome of abuse involving burns to his abdomen
while in custody; the incident occurred after the immigrant had attempted to
escape. The case was still under investigation at the end of the year. All
material used herein reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107
for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use. PLEASE RESPECT COPYRIGHTS OF COMPONENT
ARTICLES. Cite this
webpage as: Patt, Prof. Martin, " Torture by Police, Forced
Disappearance & Other Ill Treatment in the early years of the 21st
Century- Italy", http://gvnet.com/torture/Italy.htm, [accessed
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