Amnesty says Italy abused migrants' rights under EU pressure
ROME- Italy has committed human rights abuses that may amount to torture in some isolated cases as it tries to process the details of tens of thousands of migrants arriving by boat from Africa, Amnesty International said on Thursday.
The Interior Ministry had no immediate comment on the Amnesty report, which included allegations of beatings, electric shocks and sexual humiliation in a small handful of cases involving migrants who resisted having their fingerprints taken.
Italy has become the main arrival point in Europe for people fleeing persecution and poverty in Africa, most of them crossing the Mediterranean from lawless Libya in search of a better life.
Unnerved by migrants surging through Italy into northern Europe, the European Union called in September 2015 for Italy and fellow frontier state Greece to set up "hotspots" to identify and fingerprint the migrants.
