Cent'anni di tortura dal fascismo ad oggi

Abstract

This article traces the history of institutional torture in Italy from Fascism to the present day. After the Ventennio - during which fascists specialized in the most up-to-date military techniques - torture by state actors continues to be practiced in republican Italy. The salt and water, the cassette, the mask are in fact traditional fascist techniques that continue to inhabit the rooms of Italian police still in the first decades of the Republic. Starting in the 1970s, alongside traditional techniques, new techniques are introduced that leave fewer traces of torture on the bodies of the tortured: this is the so-called “no-touch torture”. This is a form of torture based on certain basic principles: sensory deprivation, self-inflicted pain, disorientation, and humiliation. Over the years, “no-touch torture” will find institutionalization in the harshest disciplinary paths of the Italian prison system, finally taking on clear and well-defined manifestation within the 41-bis regime.