ITALY: Suicides and protest in Marassi
01 May 2002
On the evening of 7 May 2002 there was a protest by detainees in Marassi prison (Genoa) after two suicides within three days in the prison's medical centre. In the afternoon 38-year-old FB hanged himself in the centre's toilet using a belt. He had been arrested in February following a violent argument with his parents, and was reported to be in a psychologically fragile condition.
On the night of Friday 4 May, AG, a 30-year-old man serving a 15-year sentence for murder, hanged himself using bedsheets in a toilet at the same medical centre. A protest by prisoners involved shouting, banging on cell gates and the hurling of missiles, including gasfires from windows, which ignited a prison van in the street below. Inmates protested against the deaths, prison conditions and the 70 transfers ordered on 3 May by justice minister Roberto Castelli, at a prison that is overcrowded and chronically understaffed.
The problem of overcrowding is not limited to Marassi. According to figures from Gruppo Abele, an NGO dealing with issues of social exclusion, the Italian penal system has a normal capacity of 41,983 persons, a tolerable capacity of 47,919, and an actual population of 53,798. Il Messaggero reported that a flyer found in the prison after the protest accused the prison management: "they hanged him after imprisoning his mind with pharmaceuticals and his body in a cell". The flyer also criticised the use of fire hydrants to quell the protest, which re-started on 11 May and reportedly spread to other jails in Liguria (north-west Italy).
While the first protest was led by prisoners in sick bay (including AIDS sufferers) and immigrants, it later spread to all the inmates in Marassi prison, according to prison sources. Prison guard unions criticised the understaffing and poor conditions under which they work, threatening protests. SAPPE (Sindacato Autonomo di Polizia Penitenziaria) regional secretary Michele Lorenzo asked for a team from GOM (Gruppo Operativo Mobile, the prison flying squad), to help with the transfers. The GOM were singled out by police officers as the main perpetrators of abuses suffered by detainees in the makeshift detention area in Bolzaneto carabinieri barracks in Genoa during the G8 summit in July 2001 (see Statewatch vol 11 no 3/4).
Judicial investigations have been opened into the two suicides and the protests, with 10 detainees charged with causing damage. Speaking of the medical centre, lawyers acting for the prisoners said "you only leave that place dead, and the sick have no rights", adding that "the supervisory court does not grant transfers to other institutions, nor the release of AIDS sufferers and prisoners awaiting trial". Gruppo Abele published government figures in its yearbook indicating that in 1999 there were 53 suicides in Italian prisons, and that in June 2000 1,548 inmates were HIV positive, 511 of whom had AIDS symptoms, or were recognised as having AIDS.
www.ilnuovo.it 8.5.02; Repubblica (Genova) 8, 9, 14.5.02; AGI 14.5.02; Il Secolo XIX 8.5, 14.5.02; Il Messaggero 12.5.02; for prison statistics, "Annuario Sociale 2001", Gruppo Abele, Feltrinelli, May 2001, available from Gruppo Abele, via Giolitti 21 - 00123 Torino, Italia.