Police accountability and human rights at the Italian borders

Over the last twenty years Italy has developed a complex policy model for the surveillance of its maritime borders. This model entails the involvement of different agencies, acting under their own peculiar mandate and rules of engagement, as well an expanding geopolitics of border controls, taking place into a wide frontier zone which expands from the high sea to the network of processing centres near main disembarkation points. Recent policy developments, such as the adoption of a code of conduct for NGOs vessels performing search and rescue in the Strait of Sicily, the controversial cooperation with Libyan authorities and the implementation of the so called ‘hotspot approach’, have increased public concerns in relation with the risk of migrants being denied the right to seek asylum, or suffering from arbitrary detention, excessive use of force or other ill treatments. The aim of this chapter is to explore extent to which existing judicial, disciplinary and political accountability procedures are sufficient to prevent, and eventually to sanction, human rights violations committed by immigration law enforcement and security agencies during border surveillance and screening procedures at disembarkation points.