Migrants ‘being treated like animals’ in Italian centres
THREE migrant detention centres in Sicily are to be closed after a teenager told authorities that arrivals were “being treated like animals” in conditions worse than the boats of Mediterranean people-traffickers.
Wurry Jallow, 19, who came across by sea from Libya a year ago, wrote to the regional council in Trapani after he and his fellow immigrants were alleg- edly forced to live in a room “akin to a pigsty” and sleep on “stinking mattresses” with as many as seven others.
Carabinieri officers sent to inspect the centre in Partanna, south-western Sicily, and two others nearby, found they failed to meet required standards.
The properties, which are all managed by Societa Cooperativa Onlus Solidarieta, a voluntary association based in Trapani, have been seized while in- vestigations are carried out. Director Valerio Ingoglia, 38, is being investigated for abuse.
The association gets £700 a month per migrant from the state to run the three secondary centres, which house around 80 migrants waiting for asylum requests to be processed.
Mr Jallow, who originally comes from Gambia, said he “curses the day he made a request for asylum” in Italy.
He told La Repubblica: “I thought I had seen everything when I got on that boat a year ago from Libya to Palermo. But it was not even close to this.”
Mr Jallow added: “They treated us like animals, in those dirty rooms in which seven of us were clumped together, with stinking mattresses, hot water that never came, and meals that weren’t enough to go round.”
The migrants are still waiting to be given a place elsewhere.
Last year, a vast corruption ring was uncovered in Rome and Salvatore Buzzi, president of the Eriches cooperative consortium that handles reception centres around the capital, was arrested. He was accused of bribing an official to win contracts to house migrants and failing to provide basic care.
‘Seven of us were clumped together, with stinking mattresses and meals that weren’t enough to go round’