The complaint of an MSF doctor: “Signs of torture with hot iron on migrants”

Tortured with a hot iron on the thigh, burned with cigarettes all over the body, and with a bullet in the stomach. These are just some of the tragic stories collected this morning by the anesthetist Alessandro Trainito, who has been in Lampedusa for a month, following the landings of migrants for Doctors Without Borders. For years Trainito has been traveling the world, in war zones, helping those most in need of care. It was in Gaza, in Iraq, in Africa. And now he is in his Sicily, in Lampedusa. To help migrants arriving on the island’s shores. This morning there were almost 500, on a cart of the sea, all crammed one on top of the other. They were almost all male, young, from sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa, but also from Bangladesh, Yemen, Palestine, Syria. All arrived from Libya. Where before leaving they were detained and suffered violence of all kinds. And during the medical examinations on the Favaloro pier, Alessandro Trainito, as he tells in an interview with Adnkronos, found “many signs of torture”. “They were recovered from a large boat and transferred to Molo Favaloro – says the MSF anesthetist – this group said they had suffered mistreatment of various kinds. Real torture. And there were obvious signs. A boy. he had a bad wound on his thigh, and he told us he was tortured with a hot iron. ” “The wound was healing – says Trainito – but it was infected. So it must be treated immediately. On other young boys there were signs of gunshots, both old and new. One had a bullet in the abdomen, another they shot twenty days ago “. “Then there was a handful of boys from Bangladesh who had no obvious bodily marks, but they told us they were mistreated. Some had cigarette burn marks on their bodies.” And then there are those who had swollen and infected feet. “Because they put objects in his foot,” says the doctor. Others had “beaten scars”. ‘After Gaza and Iraq I wanted to have an experience in my land’ “I do war surgery – Trainito continues – I lived experiences in Gaza in 2018 during the return march, I did a period in Iraq and last year I was in Lebanon and then I was often in Africa, but as a Sicilian I am staying here, on the Lampedusa pier, it touches me directly because I have always dreamed, after having had various experiences abroad, of being able to take part in a crisis close to us certainly has an important emotional part “. Dr. Trainito has been awake for almost 24 consecutive hours and is now tired. “I’m going to rest for a while,” he says. Waiting for the next landing.