Street art commemorating Holocaust survivors vandalised in Milan
Street art in Milan commemorating Holocaust survivors Edith Bruck, Liliana Segre and Sami Modiano has been vandalised in an anti-Semitic attack, artist aleXsandro Palombo said on Monday, according to Italian media reports.
The murals had been unveiled on January 27th to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi extermination camp of Auschwitz.
As-yet unidentified vandals removed the Israeli flag from a portrait of Bruck, while also defacing the Stars of David in another artwork, which portrays Bruck, Segre and Modiano together with Pope Francis.
Palombo expressed outrage over the attacks, saying that the vandalisation of artworks dedicated to Holocaust survivors “doesn’t just bring infinite bitterness” but also shows “the very real danger to the values of democracy and freedom”.
“Those who remain indifferent to these repeated acts of anti-Semitism are complicit in this terrible trend,” he added.
The defacement of the murals came after another artwork created by Palombo in honour of Segre and Modiani was targeted by an act of vandalism last November.
The mural has since been restored and is part of the permanent collection at the Shoah Museum in Rome, according to Palombo.
Italian PM Meloni named in complaint over Libyan war crimes suspect
A man who says he was tortured by a Libyan war crimes suspect has filed a complaint with Italian prosecutors claiming that Italy’s PM Giorgia Meloni allowed him to walk free, AFP reported.
Lam Magok, from South Sudan, alleges that he was imprisoned in a Tripoli detention centre run by Osama ‘Almasri’ Najim – who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges including murder, rape and torture.
Najim was arrested in the northern Italian city of Turin on January 19th on an ICC warrant, only to be released and flown home to Tripoli on an Italian air force plane two days later.
Magok claims he was beaten and kicked by the police chief and his guards when he and other migrants tried to flee the Mitiga detention centre run by Najim.
In a press conference in parliament last week, Magok said that Najim "beat us, tortured us for days," according to Italian news agency Ansa.
"The Italian government has made me a victim twice, nullifying the possibility of obtaining justice for all the people like me who survived his violence," Magok wrote, according to passages of the complaint published by local media.
Najim's repatriation has caused a major political row in Italy, and a special court has launched an investigation into Meloni and her justice and interior ministers for their role in the suspect’s release.
Italian government figures, including Meloni, said that Italy released Najim because the relevant ICC warrant had not been correctly filed with the Italian Justice Ministry, making the arrest invalid.
Italy sees spike in migrant arrivals in January
Some 3,479 migrants landed on Italy's coasts in January, up by 54 percent compared to the same month in 2024, a report from the United Nations’ Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said on Monday, according to Ansa.
This also marked a 13-percent increase against December 2024, the UNHCR said.
Around 99 percent of the migrants that arrived in Italy by sea in January departed from Libya’s coast.
Approximately 83 percent landed on the island of Lampedusa – Italy's southernmost island, located some 113 kilometres away from Tunisia.
The UNHCR said that 35 percent of migrants who arrived in Italy in January were of Bangladeshi nationality.
Pakistani (22 percent) and Syrian (13 percent) were the second and third most common nationalities.
The UNHCR report was released only three days after Italian judges refused to sign off on the detention of a third group of migrants in Albanian processing centres, dealing yet another blow to PM Giorgia Meloni's contested migration deal with Tirana.
An Italian government summit said on Wednesday that the increase in migrant landings recorded in recent weeks was linked to a “power vacuum” on the western coast of Libya.
According to the summit, rebel militias took control of some Libyan ports earlier this year and have been sending out a large number of migrant boats within days to maximise profits.
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