Prosecutors in Sicily opened a criminal investigation on Friday following the publication of a horrific account by a journalist who disguised himself as an illegal immigrant and spent a week in detention.
Fabrizio Gatti, of the center-left news magazine L'Espresso, said he had seen immigrant detainees being humiliated and physically and verbally abused by paramilitary carabinieri officers.
His account, published yesterday, has disturbing echoes of the scandal involving the mistreatment of prisoners by American soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
After enduring seven days of dire conditions in a detention center, he was simply let go. Despite the conservative government's tough policy on immigration, the reporter's alter ego, Bilal Ibrahim el Habib, was set free, "to go and work in any city in Europe as an illegal alien."
His journey began when he jumped into the Mediterranean off the Italian island of Lampedusa and floated back ashore on a raft.
Lampedusa, midway between Malta and Tunisia, is a favorite destination for would-be immigrants from north Africa.
Gatti was picked up by a passing motorist and handed over to the carabinieri. One officer, he said, amused himself by showing a pornographic video on his mobile telephone to the mainly Muslim detainees in the reception center.
"A 30-year-old man covers his eyes with his hands," Gatti recorded in his diary. "He is one of those who led the prayers yesterday in the open-air `mosque.' The carabiniere tears his hands from his eyes and pushes the screen in front of his nose saying, `Look -- that way you'll learn.'"
The reporter said that officers had forced him to sit in liquid sewage and kept him for hours in the burning sun. He also records fascist-style straight-arm salutes being exchanged between carabinieri.
The most violent incident is said to have taken place after the arrival of about 180 migrants at the center. Gatti said several were made to strip naked and, later, the carabinieri forced them and others to run a gauntlet into a protected area he describes as "the cage." The carabinieri formed into two lines.
"A line of six foreigners to be moved into the cage passes between them and each one gets his ration of slaps. Four carabinieri each deal out four slaps apiece. Finally, [a] sergeant who at noon was imitating Mussolini turns up. But he does not reprove anyone."
One of the immigrants had earlier failed to understand an order to strip. Gatti said the sergeant turned to a colleague, saying: "This the one giving you problems?" He then punched the immigrant just below the chest.
The reporter said: "The slapping filled the air for half an hour. Then a woman police officer intervened, telling a carabinieri NCO to "see what your lads are up to because I'm hearing too much hand movement."
He said that although the government claimed that all detainees were brought before a magistrate, his own detention was entirely arbitrary. In the end, he was transferred to Agrigento, Sicily, where police gave him some documents, two bread rolls and a bottle of water, before driving him to a railway station.
There, he and the other migrants with him were told: "You've got five days to get out of Italy. You're free."
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