Asylum seekers: Forensic remarks regarding 185 cases

Abstract

The medical examination of asylum seekers plays a significant role in helping them to obtain any form of international protection (refugee status or subsidiary or humanitarian protection). The Brescia Institute of Forensic Medicine has been increasingly involved in the medical examination of alleged victims of torture. Based on the Istanbul Protocol, the purpose of this study was to correlate the degree of consistency between the information provided by asylum seekers and the results of clinical examinations. A total of 185 asylum seekers were examined between September 2008 and September 2017. Almost all of the victims were male (94.0%) and aged between 11 and 30 years old (89.2%). Most victims were from Nigeria (23.2%), Gambia (16.2%) and Mali (10.8%), and the majority of the aggressions happened in Nigeria (18.9%), Gambia (14.5%) and Libya (12.9%). More than half of the instances of torture were related to political motives (57.3%); in 22% of cases, the victims referred to more than one act of aggression at different times. Blunt instruments were the most frequent means of injury (33.8%), followed by sharp instruments (23.3%). The most commonly involved anatomical regions were the lower and the upper limbs (23.6% and 20.5%, respectively). In terms of the degree of consistency between the lesion and the alleged torture, 50.4% of lesions were consistent with the information provided by the asylum seekers.