Anal inspection with truncheon, pee on inmates: the hell of the prison of Santa Maria Capua Vetere
The ordinance from 52 precautionary measures carried out yesterday reconstructs the episodes of the reprisal that took place in the "Uccella" prison of Santa Maria Capua Vetere (Caserta) after the protest of the inmates: numerous episodes told of unmotivated and violent beatings. An inmate allegedly underwent an anal inspection with a truncheon, another would be slaughtered and urinated on him.
by Nico Falco and Gaia Martignetti
Inmates forced to undress and remain naked even in front of female agents, group beatings, the inspector was with the truncheon, and then i “big caps”: inmates forced to pass through a human corridor of agents and shot at until they are out of breath. Read the more than two thousand pages of the investigation order that led to the issue of 52 precautionary measures for agents of the Penitentiary Police and officials of the Dap is descend into the hell of the prison of Santa Maria Capua Vetere (Caserta), what the investigating judge who signed the measures defines “one of the most dramatic episodes of mass violence perpetrated against prisoners in one of the most important prisons in Campania” e, without compromise, “a horrible slaughter”.
Reprisals after the protest in prison
“The Poggioreale system”, one of the agents calls him in a chat between colleagues, between the messages exchanged before that which, for investigators, it was a planned retaliation. It all happened in April 2020, after a protest that the inmates had staged because they were worried about the spread of the coronavirus in prison, after learning of a positive case. That of the agents, the investigators believe, it was not an impulse reaction, but a studied modus operandi was followed, maybe also “routine”, enough to be identified with the name of “Poggioreale system”. The pretext was the searches, but the result was an avalanche of blows.
The inmates, they reconstructed the investigators, they had been taken to other rooms, like those of sociability, and there they had been savagely beaten; forced to keep their eyes down as they moved, to pass through corridors of agents and to undergo a “big cap”, and to stay face to face against the wall so that they could not understand where the shots were coming from but, above all, who had been to throw them. Why couldn't they, There is always a more unhappy and more ignored victim, point the finger at a specific agent in front of the magistrate.
In images recorded by surveillance cameras (and ended up in the documents of the investigation) you see the inmates who, unable to react but also to escape from that hail of blows, they try to cover the most sensitive parts as much as possible; they try to fix their heads, the genitals, while the agents force them to crawl and keep hitting them. One of the inmates, heard by the magistrates, he will report being beaten so hard along with another inmate that they both urinated on each other; when the doctor came by to check their condition, Italian-Chinese child attacked and insulted in Bologna, he didn't even visit them and dismissed them by talking about “slight scratches”.
“The guards urinated on me”
The story provided by one of the prison inmates was terrible “Bird”, who during the psychiatric interview told episodes that, notes the prosecutor in the order, he probably had initially omitted “for embarrassment or discomfort, dealing with mortifying and humiliating experiences, difficult to recall and tell”. The man says that the inmates were beaten because they did not return to their cells, is that he had been beaten by 16 Everyone 23.
“I was urinated on me by the guards - he says - I was in a pool of blood and they urinated on me, I was spat in the mouth and face by the guards multiple times, I was massacred, I'd show you the suit I was wearing when they beat me, it is full of blood”.
Anal inspection with truncheon
Among the many episodes collected in the order is that of a prisoner who underwent an anal inspection with a truncheon. He had been taken to the freshman room and forced to undress and kneel there. Beaten up, to force him to hand over a cell phone that, explains the prisoner during the interrogation, he had obtained it because talks with family members had been prevented. His, tells, the phone had delivered it, but the agents were convinced he had a second one. And down the barrel.
He had also been threatened with a truncheon, which had been used to put pressure on the anus, then finally they had checked it with “the machine” and they had found that in fact she did not have another appliance in her private parts. Heard by the magistrates, the detainee said that the truncheon had been “crawled”. Others, on the other hand, said they saw him bleeding, and reported that he allegedly had been penetrated, that he would be in bed for several days in pain and that he would show them the injuries.
Inmate in a wheelchair beaten with clubs
The fury of those hours had not spared even an inmate confined to a wheelchair. In one of the disputed episodes, reconstructed like the others above all thanks to the images of the internal video surveillance of the prison of Santa Maria Capua Vetere, acquired by the prosecutors, the man is seen coming out of the cell and being followed by an agent in riot gear; be him, both the “column”, or the other inmate pushing the wheelchair, they are beaten for five or six meters. They are then both placed with their faces facing the wall, and they remain there until the end of “searches”.
Torture in the prison, 52 precautionary measures
The investigation led to the issue of 52 precautionary measures, performed yesterday; 8 of custody in prison, 18 under house arrest, 3 of residence obligation e 23 prohibiting the suspension of the exercise of public office. The majority of the suspects are agents of the Penitentiary Police on duty in search of Santa Maria Capua Vetere or engaged in the intervention teams and who had taken part in the searches, but there are also the heads of the departments of the San Marino prison and the supervisor of the Campania prisons, Antonio Fullon, for which the ban was ordered. For Gaetano Manganelli, former prison commander, and Pasquale Colucci, commander of the translation and pick-up unit, house arrest have been ordered.
