(Courthouse News) Italy is illegally sending asylum seekers who cross its borders back into the Balkans, where they are routinely beaten and mistreated by police, according to an Italian judge.
In a ruling this week, Judge Silvia Albano with the Court of Rome found that Italian authorities illegally expelled a 27-year-old gay Pakistani man last July without processing his claim for asylum after he was picked up by police in Trieste, a city near the border with Slovenia. He said he was fleeing persecution for his sexual orientation in Pakistan.
The judge’s ruling, available only in Italian, is significant because it comes amid allegations the European Union’s border agency, Frontex, and national authorities are banishing asylum seekers without giving them a chance to have their claims for humanitarian protection heard.
