Italy: Sedative substances found in the blood of migrants inside the detention center in Bologna

(2004)

Tegretol 200, Gardenale, fenibarbital, carbamazepina these are the sedative and antiepileptic substances found in the blood of three migrants that since december 2003 are shut in the detention center of Bologna. The new has been circulating for long time among associations, comitees, observators and lawyers. Everyone knows that inside these lager are used barbiturates to calm migrants waiting for deportation but it’s not easy to collect the witnesses as they are people that go out from the centre only to be deported. But this time there are evidences so that the power of attorney has made an inquiry that has brought to five hour searching inside the structure. This has brought to investigate on the food given in the centre. The detention centre under charge is already under inquiry for the charges of heavy beatings from the police after that some migrants tried to escape on 2nd March 2003. From that time no one has tried to escape anymore, and suddenly all the migrants became gentle. The three migrants (one of them was called the mummy because he didn’t react to anyone) this time have not been deported and could tell their story inside the structure, denouncing to their lawyers the sanitary situation, about food and denied assistance but most of all, of headache, nausea, reduced sensibility of the perceptive capacities and of a strange sleeping sense after having eaten at lunch or dinner. The detention centre is administrated by the Red Cross, police and carabinieri have to keep order and control. Obviously the leadings of the structure deny each charge. In the afternoon on the 20 January some desobedients have occupied the office of the Red Cross in Bologna to denounce this situation and the heavy responsabilities of the people who manage the centre.
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