Turin's CIE - International University College of Turin

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E.’S STORY (INTERVIEW 22)
Today, E. is only eighteen years old. He was born in Libya, where he lived with his family. E.’s
father was Libyan and his mother is Tunisian: “I escaped from Libya because of the war and I
went to Tunisia. From Tunisia I left to Italy”. Conflict and instability have claimed the lives of
people who were close to E. - his father was recently killed and his brother was shot and
thrown into the sea. E.’s mother was also seriously injured and their house was destroyed.
E. paid 5,000 euros for the twelve-day boat journey to Italy: “I put my life at risk. We were
about two hundred people. It happened that they threw some people overboard who had died
on the ship. I saw that with my eyes”. E. arrived in Sicily in 2010, as a child without
documentation. E. underwent fingerprinting and a wrist x-ray to demonstrate his youth and
he was then taken to a residence for unaccompanied minors: “I stayed there for about nine
months. But over there they didn't feed me and I was beaten up. After a while I got sick and
doctors took me to hospital and I escaped from there”. E. reached Switzerland where he ended
up in a centre for migrants. Shortly after E. was sent back to Italy because his fingerprints
were registered in Italy: “They led me to Milan. I spent seven hours there inside the airport's
immigration office. They brought me some papers and they made me sign those. But I could not
read in Italian, so I just signed some papers without knowing what was written on them. There
wasn’t anyone able to translate them into Arabic. No interpreters, no lawyers. Nothing. I
realised that the documents were for my expulsion just now, during my detention in Turin’s CIE.
I have never had problems with justice and I have never been to prison. I want freedom but here
there isn't. I want to go out. Why am I still here?”
E.’s vulnerability and distress was evident from first contact. We had telephoned another
detainee, “F.”, to participate in this study. F. was happy to have contact from the outside
world, and he frantically tried to explain that he was worried about a young man in his cell, E.
E. speaks very little Italian, however fortunately F. was able to translate fluently from Arabic
for us. E. was detained in Turin’s CIE a mere twelve days after his eighteenth birthday. We
first spoke to E. on his 27 th day of detention and we tried to understand if E. had applied for
asylum before being detained in CIE, however E. could not answer this question because he
did not understand what we were talking about because he did not even seem to understand
the legal concept of a right to asylum. When we asked E. if his attorney had advised him
about his rights, he answered: “I only saw my lawyer at the hearing together with the judge,
that's it. They didn't tell me anything. That lawyer never called me back again and I do not have
his phone number so I cannot contact him”. In light of these circumstances, we paused the
research in order to urgently find a lawyer to advise and represent E. with an interpreter.
Due to the language barrier and the priority of getting E. legal representation, part of E.’s
interview remains incomplete and there are some facts missing. Following the interview, E.’s
new lawyer assisted him to make an application for international humanitarian protection.
E.’s application was rejected by Turin’s Comissione Territoriale. According to a later
conversation with F., the grounds that E. received for the rejection were that when E. had
first arrived in Italy, he had said that he was a Libyan. However, in Switzerland E. told the
authorities that he was Tunisian. So, his story appeared to be incoherent and untrustworthy
to the Comissione Territoriale. Yet, it also seems possible that E. could identify as being both
Tunisian and Libyan, since he had a Libyan father and a Tunisian mother.
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