The ECHR found Italy guilty of subjecting three Tunisian migrants to "inhumane and degrading treatment" in its reception centre in Lampedusa.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ordered Italy to compensate three Tunisian migrants for the “inhuman and degrading” treatment they were given when they stayed on the island of Lampedusa between 2017 and 2019.
The three arrived in Italy illegally and were then brought to a reception centre in Lampedusa. They stayed there for several weeks, during which the ECHR ruled they were “subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment”.
The ruling mentioned that there were only two toilets for 40 people, and some people were forced to sleep on mattresses outside because there was not enough space for everyone inside the centre.
The court also ruled that the three were being illegally detained because they had not been informed of the reasons they should be kept there.
“In the absence of any order justifying (their) detention”, the Court considers that the plaintiffs were “arbitrarily deprived of their liberty”, it wrote in three separate judgments.
Italy will now have to compensate the three plaintiffs with €5,000 each plus €4,000 for legal expenses, for a total of €9,000.