A 18-year-old Egyptian prisoner Joussef Moktar Loka Baron was burned to death during the night in his cell in the San Vittore prison in Milan, due to a fire that he and his cellmate allegedly started.
The most likely hypothesis seems to be that of a voluntary gesture. The news was given by the general secretary of the Uilpa Penitentiary Police, Gennarino De Fazio. «What happened in San Vittore – the unionist stated – once again exposes the unprecedented crisis of the penitentiary system and if the consequences were not even more serious it is only due to the prompt and professional intervention of the prison police who, depleted in staff, exhausted in strength and mortified in pride, intervened, saving the second inmate and preventing the flames from spreading to the rest of the prison”.
In the city prison of Milan, the secretary of Uilpa recalled, «1,100 inmates are literally crammed in, compared to 445 places availablewith an overcrowding of over 247%, supervised by 580 members of the penitentiary police force, distributed over several shifts and including office and service staff, compared to a requirement of at least 700, with a 17% shortage».
De Fazio then asked for government intervention: «The prison density must be immediately deflated, there are 15 thousand inmates over capacity, the prison police force needs to be strengthened, it is short of over 18 thousand units, health and psychiatric assistance must be ensured, the structures must be made healthy and safe».
Last June 7th in San Vittore another young prisoner of Moroccan origins, just over twenty years old, died after inhaling gas from a camping stove. Rather than a suicide, it was said to be an attempt to procure hallucinogenic effects that went badly wrong.
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