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Italian police officers investigated for beatings and torture of suspects

Five police officers in northern Italy have been placed under house arrest pending an inquiry into allegations they beat and tortured detainees, most of them foreign nationals, newspapers reported on Wednesday.

Published: 7 June 2023 17:26 CEST

AFP file photo of an Italian police car.

AFP file photo of an Italian police car. Photo: Andreas SOLARO / AFP

An inspector and four officers in Verona, northeast Italy, are accused of beating and insulting people held in custody, La Stampa daily reported.

A dozen of their colleagues are also under investigation for having allegedly done nothing to stop the abuse, the report added.

La Stampa cited a former prisoner, a Romanian, who said officers had forced him to urinate in a corner of his cell at a police station in Verona, having refused to let him use the toilet.

Afterwards, they beat him up and dragged him over the floor where he had had to urinate, to punish him.

“If these facts are confirmed, it would be enormously serious,” Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said Wednesday.

READ ALSO: ‘Treated like a dog’: Transgender woman sues over Italian police brutality

Such conduct damaged “not just the dignity of the victims but also the honour and the reputation” of thousands of honest police officers, he added.

Late last month, a Brazilian transgender woman sued police officers in Milan for alleged brutality, after they beat her in an incident recorded in a video that went viral online.

It showed three officers using their batons to strike the 41-year-old on the head and in the ribs while spraying her with tear gas as she sat in the street, her hands raised.

Prosecutors have opened an investigation into the incident.

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Sicilian mafia boss Messina Denaro dies after long illness

Matteo Messina Denaro, known as the ‘last godfather’ of the Cosa Nostra mafia and accused of a long series of heinous crimes, died in the early hours of Monday, Italian news agency Ansa announced overnight.

The 61-year-old had colon cancer, for which he had sought treatment while on the run – a decision that reportedly brought him to the attention of the authorities, who arrested him at a clinic in Palermo.

Messina Denaro was one of the most ruthless bosses in Cosa Nostra, the real-life Sicilian crime syndicate depicted in the Godfather movies.

He was convicted by the courts of involvement in the murder of anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone in 1992 and in deadly bombings in Rome, Florence and Milan in 1993.

One of his six life sentences was also handed down for the kidnapping and subsequent murder of the 12-year-old son of a witness in the Falcone case.

Messina Denaro disappeared in the summer of 1993, and spent the next 30 years on the run as the Italian state cracked down on the Sicilian mob.

READ ALSO: Messina Denaro: How Italy caught ‘most wanted’ mafia boss after 30 years

But he remained the top name on Italy’s most-wanted list and, increasingly became a figure of legend.

He was arrested on January 16th as he visited a health clinic where he was being treated using a fake identity.

Mafia boss hideout in Sicily

Police officers prevent access to mafia boss Messina Denaro’s hideout in Campobello di Mazara, Sicily. Photo by Miguel MEDINA / AFP)

He was detained in a high-security jail in L’Aquila, central Italy, where he continued treatment for his cancer in his cell.

In August, Messina Denaro was moved to the inmates’ ward of the local hospital, where his condition had declined in recent days.

This weekend, media reports said he was in an “irreversible coma”. Medics had stopped feeding him and he had asked not to be resuscitated, they added.

His arrest may have brought some relief for his victims, but the mob boss always maintained his silence.

In interviews in custody since being arrested, Messina Denaro even denied he was a member of the Cosa Nostra.

Wiretaps

After Messina Denaro went on the run, there was intense speculation that he had gone abroad – and he likely did.

But in the end, he was found to have been staying near his hometown of Castelvetrano in western Sicily.

READ ALSO: Police arrest dozens in major raid on Italy’s youngest mafia

Preparations are already under way for his burial in the family tomb in the town, alongside his father, Don Ciccio, according to the Corriere della Sera newspaper.

Don Ciccio was also head of the local clan. He was said to have died of a heart attack while on the run, his body left in the countryside, dressed for the funeral.

Investigators had been combing the Sicilian countryside for Messina Denaro for years, searching for hideouts and wiretapping members of his family and his friends.

They were heard discussing the medical problems of an unnamed person who suffered from cancer, as well as eye problems – a person who detectives became sure was Messina Denaro.

They used a national health system database to search for male patients of the right age and medical history, and eventually closed in.

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