ITALY: Doctors opposing immigration detention face home raids and arrest
On 16 September, Italian police carried out home raids, seizing computers and mobile phones and taking 23 doctors into police custody in multiple cities across Italy. The Public Prosecutor’s Office launched the investigations because of medical certificates by the doctors that declared migrants unfit for detention in Italy’s administrative deportation detention facilities, Centri di Permanenza per i Rimpatri (CPRs). The conditions for migrants at many of the CPRs are reported to be inhumane and causing illnesses. Prosecutors alleged the certificates were deliberately falsified by the doctors to prevent the migrants from being transferred to detention centres.
Of the doctors whose homes were raided, only Nicola Cocco, a doctor active in the No CPR Network, faces formal criminal conspiracy charges as an alleged organiser of the actions. The remaining 22 doctors, though not under investigation, were still subjected to searches and their phones and computers seized “for verification purposes.” The raids and intimidation follow the systemic criminalisation of solidarity with migrants in Italy, intensifying through the implementation of stricter migration policies across the EU and the adoption of the new EU pact on Migration and Asylum.