By Giovanni Legorano
ROME (AA) - Violent protests at a repatriation center for migrants in Rome led to the arrest of 14 people accused of injuring guards, police said late Sunday.
The migrants began protesting early Sunday after a 21-year-old man from Guinea was found dead after he apparently hung himself.
The police said the irregular migrants set mattresses and a car on fire, damaged the center's furniture and clashed with policemen, injuring three of them who were trying to quell the protest.
Authorities said they had to use teargas as the protest turned increasingly violent and asked for additional personnel to stop the migrants from trying to escape the center.
They managed to get the situation under control only before 10 p.m. local time (2100 GMT). The arrested migrants are from Morocco, Pakistan, Cuba, Chile, Senegal, Tunisia, Nigeria and Gambia, all nationals from countries for which there is no automatic right to seek asylum in Italy.
They were hosted at the detention center while procedures to identify and repatriate them were completed. These procedures are often lengthy due to difficulties in identifying undocumented migrants, or for the lack of repatriation agreements with their countries of origin.
Many nongovernmental organizations and politicians have complained about the conditions of some of these centers.
“He was desperate,” said Riccardo Magi, a lawmaker from the centrist More Europe party. “He left a drawing of himself on the wall, with a text saying he couldn’t take it anymore, hoping his body could be brought back to Africa where his soul would have rested in peace.”
Magi added that “these places are a black hole in [the application] of laws, they are hell under any point of view. They must be shut.”
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who came to power in 2022 after vowing to crack down on illegal immigration, has sought gestures of solidarity from fellow EU nations to help it handle the tens of thousands of migrants who arrive each year.