(ANSA) - ROME, JUL 19 - A detainee in the prison of the
Campania city of Salerno on Friday slashed his cellmate's throat
and killed him.
The attacker and victim, both from Maghreb, were in the prison
section for "common detainees".
The attack was due to "futile reasons", prison sources said.
The murdered inmate, who lived near Perugia, in Umbria, was
serving a sentence for drug trafficking and robbery and was set
for release in 2026.
"This is the umpteenth, extremely serious episode of violence in
an institution in Campania", said the regional secretary of the
Sappe union of penitentiary police, Tiziana Guacci, denouncing
the "state of abandonment" of prisons in the southern region.
Overall, overcrowding, low prospects of release and poor
conditions have been denounced in prisons nationwide as factors
causing the high number of suicides reported in Italy's prisons
- 60 so far this year, according to the Secretary of the Prison
Police Union (SPP) Aldo Di Giacomo.
Five prison officers have also taken their own lives in the
first half of 2024, SSP said. (ANSA).