Torture at the Beccaria, “bloody scenes” filmed by internal cameras

The internal cameras of the Beccaria juvenile prison in Milan recorded the “bloody scene” of a beating on a 15-year-old inmate. This is what appears written in a note dated March 15th drawn up by the regional investigative unit of the Penitentiary Police, now in the records of the investigation by the Milan Prosecutor’s Office as part of the investigations into alleged torture and mistreatment. With this accusation, a week ago 13 officers were taken to prison and eight other colleagues were suspended.

The beating

The episode in question, also accompanied by stills taken from surveillance camera videos, dates back to 8 March. The minor protagonist is a 15-year-old who had previously suffered cuts “on his arms” and who was first “led out of the cell” by four officers and then dragged down the stairs, “also pulling him by the bleeding arm”, by one of They. Two of the officers then, according to the charges, pushed him “against the wall” and hit him “repeatedly in the head and chest” until “he fell to the ground”. At that point one of the officers hit him, when he was on the ground, still “with numerous kicks”. In the note, filed in the investigation documents by the deputy Letizia Mannella and the prosecutors Rosaria Stagnaro and Cecilia Vassena and also conducted by the Flying Squad, the phases of the alleged violence are reconstructed frame by frame and it is stated that the four agents were “in civilian clothes”, i.e. without uniforms.

Officers arrested or suspended

The annotation also indicates the names of the four officers, who were later arrested or suspended. Around 7.10pm the cameras film the 15-year-old returning to the cell with a bandage on his arm, after having been treated in the infirmary. The “gory” scene, among other things, is also “partially displayed” by a camera near the infirmary: we see “a mattress positioned on the ground” onto which the boy “falls”. We then also see “four people, probably healthcare workers, who, having heard the commotion, move to the infirmary room”, where the prisoner entered. Finally, we read again, after being taken back to the cell and after going to the infirmary, the 15-year-old is “picked up again” by two officers and taken to an “office on the ground floor” where he will remain “for about eight minutes”. There, however, according to the note, there would have been no further “violent” conduct.

Former commander questioned

The former commander of the penitentiary police in the Beccaria juvenile prison, Francesco Ferone, appeared before the Milan investigating judge Stefania Donadeo today for the warrant interrogation. The man, accused of falsifying reports to cover up violence by colleagues, spoke for almost two hours. After last week’s interrogations of the 13 policemen arrested for charges ranging from mistreatment to injuries to torture, today four of the eight suspended officers were questioned, including Ferone, suspended as a precautionary measure for the charge of forgery. Today three responded to the judge’s questions, while one exercised the right not to respond. The other four will be heard tomorrow.

The words of a beaten inmate

“I know him (…) He took part in the attack, he was wearing black gloves and was slapping me in the face, but I couldn’t feel them because the others were hitting me everywhere. In the following days he asked me to apologize, he tried to attack me other times too but he didn’t succeed.” Thus a 17-year-old, who was detained in the Beccaria juvenile prison in Milan, identified one of the seven penitentiary police officers who allegedly beat him on 18 November 2022. This is one of the episodes already known to investigators. The boy would have been accused of starting a fire in the structure and then “punished” for it. In the report, in the investigation documents, dated 20 March, before the prosecutors and the investigators, the young man, among other things assisted by a lawyer because he was himself accused of resisting a public official, makes photographic recognitions of the agents who would have took part in the attack. Of some officers, whose photos are shown one after another, the boy says “this is a good person.” Of another, however, he specifies: “he slapped two or three times some Egyptian boys who were only supposed to stay for a month (…) I heard the sound of the slaps”. And so on with the photos of other agents.