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Stripsearched in florence national |
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 Thursday November 14, 2002 11:57 by Rory Hearne - swp hearner at yahoo dot co dot uk
 Last Friday while making my way to the European Social Forum (ESF) in Florence, Italy, where a million people (according to the organisers)peacefully marched against the imminent war against Iraq I experienced at first hand the lack of democracy and respect for human rights within the EU. The Schengan Agreement is supposed to guarantee the free movement of all EU citizens within EU states. However, the bus I was travelling in, which was part of the mobilisation for the ESF from Spain, was stopped at the French-Italian border. Our passports were taken by the border police and within 15 minutes they returned and asked for me to leave the bus and go with them. I was then stripsearched, the contents of my bags emptied on the floor, and later photographed. Completely confused and startled I asked the police why all this was being done to me. They gave no reason. Later,
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Comments (5 of 5)
Jump To Comment: 5 4 3 2 1just to ve specific, I was stopped on french-italian border heading to italy from france. Was detained, searched (not invasively but had to remove all clothing) and then photograpged by the police. I was given a document to record my search by the police.
Are you sure that you were actually strip-searched? You were completely without clothes? Or were you frisked? I think you could make a reasonably compelling case for harrasment if you were strip-searched, possibly with significant damages.
The searches were conducted by the Italian Polizia.
On the regular night train from Paris to Florence on Tuesday 6th, entire carriages were woken up at 3am in the morning, and their bags were searched. It was extremely heavy-handed, and tourists were woken as well as those going to the Social Forum.
One individual, who was learning Arabic for a Anthropological study he was doing in Morocco, was accused of having Islamic terrorist propaganda.
In the end the train ran over four hours late due to the delay.
It should also be said that those working for the train companies involved were very good and provided free food because of the delay, despite having to work longer hours unvoluntarily.
by French or Italin police?
was your passport or identity documents marked?
were you given or offered a record of the search?
was the search invasive?
did the officers identify themselves before the search and offer reasons?
Many people travelling to Firenze were stopped and serched and hassled the majority on the French border. The French and British have the worst record on these things. Shengen shenanignas give "freedom of movement" between member states of the EU, they don´t guarantee "freedom from hassle", if you had been turned back and refused entry to Italy you´d have a case. This article seems unfinished will you expand the details.
Several groups are collating data on border-stops and border searches last week as always and there is an ongoing campaign to stop such "handle with care" behaviour. so...
Do you know of any reason why you my have "handle with care" status?
I hope you finish this article and if any other Irish citizens had the same or similar experiences they tell indymedia ireland about it. Protesters and campaigners and activists are currently preparing to go to Prague for the NATO summit and that state being outside the EU, lot of "handle with care" is expected.