A "cage of lions" was how the lawyer Gabriele Terranova, head of the repatriation centers commission of the criminal chambers union in Italy's southern port city of Bari, referred to the repatriation center of Bari-Palese.

Terranova and a delegation from the Bari criminal chambers visited the repatriation center on September 8.

"These places will remain places of suffering and violence," Terranova said, with the "lions", meaning those hosted, "that pace back and forth in the small amount of space allocated to them, with a guard watching them from afar and who approaches with a great deal of caution."

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'Detention and useless deprivation of personal freedom'

In the Bari-Palese repatriation center in the Puglia region, a total of 99 people are currently detained, but this number may rise sharply soon, said deputy chairman of the Bari criminal chambers Filippo Castellaneta.

"What we saw was part of detention and useless deprivation of personal freedom," said Castellaneta.

Useless, he continued, because "only a small fraction" of migrants detained are later repatriated, and this means that "most of them are being detained illegitimately".

Both Terranova and Castellaneta called repatriation centers "detention" centers, in which "little or nothing is done".

In the one in Bari, Castellaneta noted, "there is no activity that can be carried out. There is a football field that is not being used due to security reasons."

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Lack of information leads to tension

The lawyers noted that the visit was to verify whether human rights were respected inside the facilities, including the right to legal defense, and to verify whether the migrants hosted are actually informed of their rights and the reasons why they are being detained.

"We noted a very low awareness on the part of those detained about the length and conditions of their detention," Terranova said.

A lack of information is one of the reasons for "incidents of tension" that occur at times inside the centers. The latest in the Bari center was on July 7, when some migrants protested against living conditions inside the facilities.

Those hosted in the center were given a questionnaire to be filled out anonymously on their living conditions in the facility.

Despite the delegation having been allowed to see only a limited part of the center, the lawyers noted several issues in terms of poor sanitary conditions that those hosted suffer.

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