A Regina Coeli prisoner has not woken up for at least 4 months: the complaint

In the Regina Coeli prison there is ‘the man who sleeps’, he has not woken up for at least four months. He is 28 years old, originally from Pakistan, and is nicknamed ‘the simulator’ by the staff. To tell the story Susanna Marietti, coordinator of the Antigone association, who met the man last June. “In recent months I have asked for news, explanations, solutions. But I have not managed to get to the bottom of anything”, explains Marietti. “I met him in an inpatient room in the prison clinic. He was sleeping. Or at any rate he was lying on the bed, eyes closed and motionless. The nurse explained to me that the boy always sleeps. He empties his catheter, he changes his diaper, shoves some liquid food into his mouth which the man swallows mechanically. I asked him how long the boy had been in those conditions. A few months, I was replied, “Marietti says. told this story in his blog on Il Fatto Quotidiano and which was relaunched by Antigone in a post on Facebook. “The prison staff who accompanied me on a visit referred to him as ‘simulator’. I asked why and I was told that the various medical checks – many, even outside the prison, at the Sandro Pertini hospital where the boy was hospitalized several times – never found anything objective. I tried to say – underlines Marietti – that simulation is a behavior that is carried out intentionally and that no one would simulate months of apparent death “.” The boy – adds Marietti – does not yet have a definitive sentence and in the past weeks, according to what I was told during my visit, some hearings of the trial concerning him. But the boy is asleep. When asked if he intends to forgo court attendance, he simply sleeps. He does not answer, nor does he grab a pen to sign the appropriate form. He just sleeps. And the presence at the trial is a procedural right that cannot be denied except on explicit renunciation. The man was then placed on a stretcher, taken to court and made to stand there, in the courtroom where the hearing was held, asleep and motionless, with his catheter and diaper, while the magistrates did their job, to then be taken back to his room in the prison. “” Senior figures in the prison in recent weeks have dedicated themselves with great commitment to trying to find a viable solution. But there seems to be none. And the boy is there, he sleeps. For months and maybe months. ‘Have you changed the diaper on the simulator?’, ‘The simulator cell needs to be cleaned’, ‘the simulator has to go to the hearing’. The fault lies with no one in particular. But in a system that can tolerate the presence of a man sleeping in a cell in the center of Rome, there is something that is not working “, concludes Marietti.