An Italian mafia boss in seclusion has won a legal battle to be allowed to listen to music in his cell.
Domenico Strisciuglio, 48, was sentenced to more than 20 years in prison under the strict prison regime of Italy for murder and other mafia-related crimes. The rules, known as section 41bis of the Prison Administration Act, allow the authorities to suspend certain prison regulations, with the aim of cutting off prisoners completely from their criminal associates.
After prison authorities denied Strisciuglio’s request to buy a CD player, his lawyer turned to the courts to allow him to expand his entertainment options rather than watching TV in his cell.
Judges in Sassari, the city of Sardinia where Strisciuglio has been in prison since 1999, agreed on Thursday that listening to music is part of the man’s constitutionally guaranteed rights.
Allowing him to have a CD player complies with ‘his primary rights to engage in a cultural activity’ which cannot be restricted by any form of detention – including Article 41-bis. the judges said in a ruling quoted by La Repubblica.
According to the magistrates, ‘denial of this ordinary habit would result in a useless restriction of the rights of the prisoners’.
They also noted that the regular TV channels Strisciuglio do not have access to programs that can satisfy anyone interested in listening to music.
Strisciuglio, who was part of a mafia family from Bari in southeastern Italy, won another case in 2019 when judges said he could be allowed to watch television after midnight.
Italy intensified prison conditions for mobsters and terrorists in the aftermath of bloody feuds in the 1980s and 1990s, which culminated in the assassination of two top Sicilian anti-mafia magistrates, Paolo Borsellino and Giovanni Falcone, in 1992. Article 41-bis banned its use of telephones, any association or correspondence with other prisoners, or meetings with third parties.
In October 2019, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg ruled that Italy’s harsh prison regimes for mafia bosses violated their human rights, citing conditions of life that subjected prisoners to inhuman and degrading treatment.
The ECHR has requested Italy to review its laws, which require life sentences for very serious crimes and exclude the reduction of sentences unless prisoners become informants.
The verdict caused an outcry among investigators, claiming it did not take into account the context and history of the mafia in Italy. According to Italian ministers, prosecutors and police chiefs, the ECHR ruling could hamper the fight against organized crime across the continent.