«The prisoner, who had been assigned to the hospital ward for some time due to his health conditions , after barricading himself inside the detention room, apparently closed the cell's armoured door and attempted to seal the openings, effectively creating an environment saturated with smoke and combustion gases, comparable to a real "gas chamber"».

This is the reconstruction by the Uil FP Penitentiary Police union of Sassari of the dramatic moments experienced during the night between Thursday and Friday in the Bancali prison , where a Sardinian inmate – GS, 35 years old, originally from Nulvi – died due to a fire he himself started.

The man, the union states in a statement, set fire to "the furniture and the bed, rapidly feeding the flames and making the entire cell extremely dangerous and practically inaccessible."

The reconstruction continues: "Despite the prohibitive operating conditions, the Penitentiary Police personnel intervened with absolute speed, risking their own safety in a desperate attempt to put out the fire and rescue the inmate. The officers repeatedly tried to reach the man, who, in the meantime, had further barricaded himself inside the cell bathroom. The high temperatures, the thick smoke, and the flames that had now engulfed the room, however, significantly hampered the rescue operations, making any rescue attempt extremely difficult. Only after managing to access the rooms affected by the fire did the operators find the inmate, whose condition appeared serious from the outset. He subsequently died, despite the intervention of the 118 medical personnel, who intervened alongside the firefighters, presumably due to the fumes released by the fire and the burns he sustained . During the rescue operations, several members of the Penitentiary Police Force were intoxicated by the fumes released by the fire, while a couple suffered minor burns.

Following the incident, the UIL FP expressed its "deepest condolences" to the victim and its "maximum sympathy and solidarity" to the prison officers, "who faced an exceptionally serious emergency with courage, high professionalism, and a profound sense of duty, intervening from the very first moments in an attempt to save a human life and ensure the safety of the entire institution."

According to the union, "this latest serious incident requires a serious reflection on the conditions of the prison system. The constant overcrowding of institutions , the growing presence of inmates with serious health and psychiatric problems , the chronic shortage of prison police and other professionals, as well as the insufficient resources allocated to security and assistance, are leading to a progressive worsening of operating conditions within institutions. "Concrete intervention by the prison administration and the relevant institutions is urgently needed," Uil FP concludes, "to strengthen staffing, ensure adequate levels of health and psychiatric care, improve safety standards, and provide staff with the tools necessary to address increasingly frequent and complex emergencies."

Meanwhile, the Prosecutor's Office has opened an investigation into what happened to Bancali, entrusted to prosecutor Camilla Battaglini.

(Unioneonline)

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