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| - Graphic video images surfaced Wednesday of dozens of Italian prison guards beating unarmed inmates with truncheons and fists in the aftermath of a coronavirus-related protest last year. The April 6, 2020 incident at the Santa Maria Capua Vetere prison north of Naples was captured on surveillance footage and published by Italian daily Domani on Wednesday, prompting outrage but also calls of solidarity with the guards. Prosecutors launched an investigation last year following complaints by prisoners of retaliatory beatings carried out over four hours the day after an inmate protest prompted by news that an inmate had tested positive for Covid-19. Fifty-two people working in the prison network faced arrest or legal action in the case this week, accused variously of torture, violence and abuse of office, with a total of over 110 people under investigation. They include eight guards arrested and another 18 placed under house arrest on Monday, including the local penitentiary police commander, two commissioners and three inspectors. The regional director of prisons has been suspended. In the more than six minutes of footage compiled by Domani, filmed in various corridors and stairwells inside one of the prison wings, dozens of prison guards, many of them in helmets and carrying shields, can be seen setting upon inmates. Prisoners are seen covering their heads as they hurry through a human corridor of guards, receiving slaps on the head, kicks and beatings with truncheons as they pass. In other images, prisoners -- some of them limping and in visible pain -- can be seen climbing a stairway where guards on a landing slap them or beat them with their batons. The images also show an inmate in a wheelchair being hit on the back, and at least three men who have fallen to the ground being beaten and kicked. At least 150 inmates barricaded themselves inside their cells during the Santa Maria Capua Vetere protest last year, according to news reports, nearly a month after a wave of riots in Italian prisons spurred by demands for Covid-19 tests and anger at the banning of family visits during the coronavirus lockdown. During the April 6 violence in the medium and high-security prison that holds more than 900 people, some inmates were made to strip before being beaten, while others were arbitrarily placed into solitary confinement, according to witness testimony cited by prosecutors. Text messages between guards revealed that the operation, which involved over 280 penitentiary police, was planned and retaliatory in nature, prosecutors said. "Tomorrow with wrench and pickaxe in hand, we'll cull them like calves," wrote one guard in a chat, according to prosecutors, who determined that a follow-up prison report that blamed inmates for resisting guards was false. Publication of the video images prompted diverging reaction, with the head of Italy's left-leaning Democratic Party, Enrico Letta, denouncing the guards' actions as "intolerable" and calling on the justice minister to address parliament on the matter. After initially expressing their solidarity with the prison guards after news of the arrests Monday, Italy's far-right parties Wednesday pointed a finger at the newspaper Domani for disseminating photos of accused guards. Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right League party, told Radio CRC he planned to visit the prison on Thursday. ams/ar/lc
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