Italy migrants: Amnesty accuses police of torture

A leading human rights group has accused Italian police of using violent tactics to fingerprint migrants.

Amnesty International said it had 24 accounts of ill treatment, including beatings and electric shocks.

Italy's government rejected the report's findings as "totally false". There was also scepticism from the European Commission.

Police chief Franco Gabrielli denied that "violent methods are used in identifying or repatriating migrants".

Under EU rules, migrants must stay in the first country they reach, which is determined by where they give their fingerprints.

Many irregular migrants are therefore reluctant to be fingerprinted, fearing they will not be able to leave Italy.

'Beaten, slapped, electrocuted'

Amnesty said the behaviour of most Italian police officers involved was professional but it called for an independent review of the allegations.

"The European Union's pressure on Italy to 'get tough' on refugees and migrants has led to unlawful expulsions and ill treatment which in some cases may amount to torture," the organisation said.

A 25-year-old woman from Eritrea said she had been slapped repeatedly in the face by a policeman until she agreed to be fingerprinted, and a 16-year-old boy and a 27-year-old man said police had applied pain to their genitals.

The older man said: "I was on a chair made of aluminium, with an opening on the seat. They held my shoulders and legs, took my testicles with the pliers, and pulled twice. I can't say how painful it was."

Amnesty also highlighted the dangers faced by migrants who are returned to their country of origin.

The report quoted a 27-year-old man from Darfur in Sudan who said he had been put on a flight back from Italy. He said the security forces had been awaiting his arrival in Khartoum.

"They took us to a special area in the airport," he said. "I saw one man beaten…We were interrogated one by one."

The head of Italy's immigration department, Mario Morcone, said the report was bewildering and that lies had been told. He also pointed out that UN staff were based at the "hot spots" where migrants arrived in Italy.

Matteo de Bellis, Amnesty's Researcher on Italy, told the BBC that migrants had been subjected to "appalling abuse".

"I have gathered consistent testimonies of people who told me how they were beaten, slapped, but even electrocuted by means of stun batons, people who have been threatened, people who have been arbitrarily detained just to force them to give their fingerprints," he said.

Amnesty criticised the EU's so-called "hotspot" approach - designed to identify and fingerprint new arrivals to front-line EU countries such as Italy - saying it had led to violations of migrants' rights.

"The hotspot approach, designed in Brussels and executed in Italy, has increased, not decreased, the pressure on front-line states," said Mr de Bellis. "It is resulting in appalling violations of the rights of desperately vulnerable people,"

European Commission spokeswoman Natasha Bertaud said the EU's executive had no knowledge of migrants' rights being violated at the hotspots, either from European agencies or non-government bodies.

More than 150,000 migrants have been rescued from the Mediterranean and taken to Italy so far this year and more than 470,000 have reached the country by boat over the past three years.

Many thousands have died making the crossing, including at least 3,750 this year alone.

Read More

Migrant crisis: 'Hundreds dead' in shipwrecks off Libya

More than 200 migrants are believed drowned in two shipwrecks off the coast of Libya, migration officials say.

The UN refugee agency was told the news by survivors brought ashore on the Italian island of Lampedusa, spokeswoman Carlotta Sami said.

Twelve bodies have been recovered.

More than 4,200 migrants have died making the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean Sea this year, International Organization of Migration spokesman Leonard Doyle says.

The UN has warned 2016 could be the deadliest for migrants making the journey.
Nearly 330,000 migrants have crossed the sea so far this year, compared with more than one million in 2015.

Many of those killed in the latest two incidents are believed to be migrants from West Africa.
Ms Sami said a dinghy - which was reportedly carrying about 140 people including six children and about 20 women, some of them pregnant - capsized 25 miles (40km) off the Libyan coast. Twenty-nine people were rescued, she said, and 12 bodies were recovered.
In a separate rescue operation, two women found swimming at sea told rescuers that 128 other people had died in their wreck.

Smugglers who organise the treacherous journeys overload flimsy boats and often send them off in bad weather, the UN says.

Italy has seen an increase in the trafficking of migrants from Libya ever since an EU-Turkey agreement to halt migrants travelling to the Greek islands came into force in March.

Read More

Egypt will allow its currency to float freely

Egypt will float its currency in a move that is expected to see it fall by almost 50% against the dollar.

The price is expected to be around 13 to the US dollar, up from just under nine.
The country's central bank said the move was one of a list of reforms designed to strengthen confidence in the economy.

Egypt's main stock index jumped by more than 8% at the start of Thursday trading.
The central bank has also increased interest rates by 3 percentage points to 14.75%.

Banks will be allowed to open their branches until 9pm and over the weekend to allow more transactions.

Egypt has struggled to attract foreign investment since the political turmoil in 2011 during the so-called Arab Spring.

That has left the country with a shortage of hard currency as officially one dollar would only buy 8.88 Egyptian pounds while the black market priced it far lower.

The bank said in a statement it had moved to a "liberalised exchange rate... to create an environment for a reliable and sustainable supply of foreign currency".

The move is a key requirement of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), from which Egypt is asking for a $12bn loan over three years.

Egypt's economy is the second largest in the Arab world, after Saudi Arabia.

Read More

World Series baseball: Chicago Cubs end 108-year wait for win

The Chicago Cubs have won Major League Baseball's World Series, ending the longest title drought in the game.

Manager Joe Maddon's team beat the Cleveland Indians 8-7 in 10 innings to scoop the top prize in world baseball.
The Cubs, who had been 3-1 down in the best-of-seven series, blew a three-run lead in the final game but came back after a rain delay to clinch the title.
The last time they were crowned champions was in 1908, 108 years ago, when they beat the Detroit Tigers 4-1.
In 1945, a curse was placed on the team by local bar owner Billy Sianis.
He is said to have cursed the Cubs, so that they would never win a World Series game again, or even reach the World Series again (different versions of the story exist).
"There's no more curse now, the goat is history," said Cubs fan Rodrigo Gonzales moments after victory had been achieved.

US President Barack Obama, who supports city rivals the Chicago White Sox, tweeted about the win.
"It happened: @Cubs win World Series," he wrote. "That's change even this South Sider can believe in. Want to come to the White House before I leave?"
The win gave the Cubs their third World Series crown.
It also sparked wild celebrations in the streets of Chicago, with fans congregating outside the team's Wrigley Field home.
Many of them took turns writing their names and words of congratulations in various colours of chalk on Wrigley's brick walls.

"I can't even explain how I feel right now," said Dina Mansaour, a 33-year-old Cubs fan. "This is so epic. This is the most amazing feeling in the world."
Another Cubs supporter, 22-year-old Jason Nye, added: "I've been waiting my whole life for this, my grandfather has been waiting his whole life for this, everyone has been waiting for this."
Cleveland's loss leaves their fans waiting for their first World Series title since 1948.
"It's going to hurt," said Indians manager Terry Francona. "Somebody was going to win, somebody was going to lose, I wish they'd lost."
Cubs leftfielder Ben Zobrist was named most valuable player of the World Series.
It was the second consecutive year he has won the World Series after helping the Kansas City Royals to victory last season.

Read More

Obama warns fate of world at stake

President Barack Obama has urged Democrats of all ethnic backgrounds to get out and vote for Hillary Clinton, warning that the fate of the US republic - and the world - is at stake.

He said her Republican opponent Donald Trump was a threat to hard-earned civil rights.
President Obama was speaking at a rally in North Carolina.
Mr Trump said Mr Obama should stop campaigning for Mrs Clinton and focus on running the country.
"The bottom line is, no-one wants four more years of Obama," he told supporters in Pensacola, Florida.
He said Mrs Clinton had become "unhinged" in recent days.
Americans will vote for the candidate they want to see in the White House next Tuesday, with recent polls showing the race tightening between Mrs Clinton and Mr Trump.

"The fate of the republic rests on your shoulders," President Obama told supporters in the key battleground state of North Carolina.
"The fate of the world is teetering and you, North Carolina, are going to have to make sure that we push it in the right direction.
"I am not on the ballot, but I tell you what - fairness is on the ballot; decency is on the ballot; justice is on the ballot; progress is on the ballot; our democracy is on the ballot."

The FBI is now investigating new emails that may be linked to its probe into Mrs Clinton's private email server.
The agency's director, James Comey, has faced a fierce backlash for announcing the move just 11 days before the presidential election.
Earlier, Mr Obama implicitly criticised him over the new inquiry into Mrs Clinton's email use.
In an interview with website NowThisNews, published on Wednesday, Mr Obama said US investigations should not operate on the basis of "innuendo" or "incomplete information".

Mr Obama's remarks were his first public comments since Mr Comey's announcement on Friday that the FBI had discovered a new batch of emails that might or might not be relevant to an earlier, closed investigation into Mrs Clinton's handling of classified information.
"I do think that there is a norm that when there are investigations we don't operate on innuendo, we don't operate on incomplete information, we don't operate on leaks. We operate based on concrete decisions that are made," said Mr Obama.
"When this was investigated thoroughly the last time, the conclusion of the FBI, the conclusion of the justice department, the conclusion of repeated congressional investigations was that she had made some mistakes but that there wasn't anything there that was prosecutable."

Read More

Mosul battle: 'IS leader Baghdadi' urges no retreat

The so-called Islamic State group has released an audiotape which it says is from its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

If true, it would be the first public message from him in about a year and would dispel rumours that he is dead.
The voice on the audio calls on Iraqis to defend the city of Mosul against the Iraqi army, which is attempting to re-take it from the militants.
Baghdadi's whereabouts remain unknown. Some officials have said he may be inside Mosul alongside IS fighters.
It has not been independently verified that the voice in the audio belongs to Baghdadi. There have been repeated rumours of his death through the years, including last year when the Iraqi military said it had hit his convoy.
Mosul, the last IS urban stronghold in Iraq, is where Baghdadi declared a caliphate two years ago.
Iraqi special forces are consolidating their most recent gains in the offensive, with the help of Kurdish Peshmerga forces, Shia militias and Sunni Arab tribesmen.
On Wednesday they were combing the streets for any remaining IS fighters in the recently recaptured Kukjali district, in the east, before they press on into the heart of the city.
Earlier, Amnesty International said there was increasing evidence that some of the Sunni militia groups were carrying out reprisal attacks on local men and boys suspected of links to the IS jihadists.

'Wreak havoc'

In the message released early on Thursday, a voice says: "Holding your ground with honour is a thousand times easier than retreating in shame."
"Do not retreat," it says. "this total war and the great jihad only increased our firm belief, God willing, and our conviction that this is all a prelude to victory."

The voice calls on people in Nineveh, the Iraqi province where Mosul is located, to fight the "enemies of God".
It also calls for more IS sympathisers to attack other countries, saying suicide fighters should "turn the nights of the unbelievers into days, to wreak havoc in their land and make their blood flow as rivers".

A collection of Iraqi forces backed by an international coalition launched an offensive on Mosul on 17 October, the latest attempt to wrest land back from IS.


In addition to Kukjali, Iraqi counter terrorism forces retook the more built-up Karama district on Tuesday.
The BBC's Ian Pannell, who was travelling with them, says those militants who chose to stand and fight were killed while others fled deeper into the city.

Amnesty International says people suspected of having ties to IS have been beaten, given electric shocks or dragged through the streets by cars, according to eyewitnesses on the ground.
The human rights group said it was the Sunni tribesmen - specifically the Sabawi Tribal Mobilisation - who are alleged to have been involved in revenge attacks in the south-east of Mosul in recent weeks.
Lynn Maalouf from Amnesty said there was a "dangerous culture of impunity in which perpetrators of such attacks feel they have free rein to commit crimes and go unpunished".
She urged the Iraqi authorities to control the tribal militia fighters responsible for the attacks and "bring them to justice".
There are concerns for the estimated 1.2 million civilians who remain inside the city, with the Norwegian Refugee Council warning that there lives are in "grave danger" due to the fighting.
Some have fled to a camp for internally displaced people, east of Mosul.

Read More