Italy: European committee on torture says detained migrants given psychotropic drugs

Rome: A European human rights committee has criticized the treatment and conditions of detention of foreign nationals held at pre-removal centers in Italy.

The Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) has criticized Italy’s pre-removal centers (CPRs), describing them as unsuitable. The CPT also identified “the widespread practice (of administering) unprescribed psychotropic drugs diluted in water” to migrants held at the Potenza CPR. The Italian interior ministry has denied the allegations.

The CPT’s findings included “very poor material conditions, the absence of a regime of activities, the disproportionate security approach, the variable quality of healthcare provision and the lack of transparency of the management of CPRs by private contractors.” Its report, published on December 13, called into question the application of such a model by Italy in an extra-territorial setting, such as in Albania.

The dossier was compiled after visits carried out by CPT officials between April 2 and 12 this year at four out of Italy’s nine CPRs, including the pre-removal centres in Via Corelli in Milan, Gradisca d’Isonzo, Palazzo San Gervasio in Potenza and Ponte Galeria in Rome.

The CPT said it “found several cases of alleged physical ill-treatment and excessive use of force by police officers of foreign nationals detained in the CPRs visited,” usually following a “disturbance or act of vandalism in the centers.”

The dossier also highlighted “the absence of any rigorous and independent monitoring of such interventions by the police and the lack of accurate recording of injuries sustained by detained persons or of any assessment as to their origin.”

The interior ministry responded to the dossier, saying it was based on “partial and incomplete information,” recalling that the Italian government on November 15 had already provided detailed observations in response to the report.

The same sources stressed how all health provisions for foreign nationals held at pre-repatriation centers, including the administration of medicines, are ordered by doctors and that medical facilities are also present within CPRs. They also said they were unaware of medicines being improperly provided to guests, “a circumstance which has never been the object of sentences issued by magistrates.”

Meanwhile Elly Schlein, the leader of the main opposition Democratic Party (PD), paid a surprise visit to new hosting centers Italy built in Shengjin and Gjader, in Albania. The PD, like much of the opposition, has been extremely critical of the government’s operation to process asylum seekers at the centers, which were built as part of an agreement between Rome and Tirana.

“The Italian government wanted to build these centers, wasting 800 million euros, wasting them because they are empty,” the PD leader said on social media.

“This agreement with Albania violates the fundamental rights of people and violates Italian and European laws,” she added. She described the facility in Gjader as an “empty center where very professional personnel including security forces and the managing agency welcomed us,” but added that the center was empty “and will remain empty, also because we are waiting for the decision of the European Court of Justice.”

The cabinet, however, is standing by its policy. “Shutting them would amount to doing the biggest favor to smugglers,” said the prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, adding that the centers in Albania “will work.”

“We will move forward with the Italian way of fighting illegal immigration: it took months to develop an effective strategy, but I believe the results are starting to show: -60% of landings compared to 2023, -30% compared to 2022.

“As always, fewer departures mean fewer deaths, because I will never accept getting used to these tragedies,” Meloni told her Party meeting at Atreju at the weekend. She said she was “extremely affected” by the story of a 12-year-old girl, Yasmine, the sole survivor of a shipwreck last week.

“I want to send her a hug full of affection,” Meloni said. “To her and to all the victims of human smugglers I say that we are tirelessly fighting against those criminal systems.”