Madness in Italy

national | miscellaneous | news report Thursday December 12, 2002 01:07 by Marianne

I got these emails from an American friend in Italy. Her boyfriend from California has been held in a detention centre and was deported to New York today, he's not from New York, he's from California and he doesn't even have his wallet with him.

10/12/02
the police came at 4 in the morning to the house we were staying in in milano, they took dave to a detention center and they want to deport him, we have a good lawyer, we need to prove that he was in switzerland, they won't even let me see him and he didn't do anything wrong. this is our beautiful vacation in italy. i'll let you know more as soon as i know....

they searched 40 houses in italy trying to get evidence against people who were at the protest in genova, they arrested 23 people in all italy, everything is crazy here i don't know what i'm going to do.

12/12/02
today dave called me at 8 in the morning saying they were deporting him, taking him to the airport without being able to get any of his stuff (wallet, sleeping bag, etc), deporting him to new york where hes not even from and i hope he finds someone, we're still going to court next week for him

all of this is so crazy i can't believe it. we wanted to go to the airport as soon as we found out but couldn't make it on time... i saw him yesterday and they told us NOTHING

meanwhile someone planted two bombs outside the police station in genoa. they don't know who did it but already people are blaming 'anarchists' and its going to be bad for the kids who are in jail already. So much is going on but i can think only about dave getting deported. ....

i have to stay here at least a week to go testify in court for him. I won't even know when the appeal will be until friday at the earliest. i still have to go to rome too, and then i don't know what i'm going to do. at least i have such good friends... i hate to think of other people in the detention camp who don't have friends outside and maybe get deported into countries where they risk being killed... dave's story is so shitty but its so much better than a lot of other people's stories...

we want to do some kind of demonstration against the detention center but we don't really know what yet.

life is so shitty and the majority of people suck. thats the only conclusion i can come to.