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“I was handcuffed for no reason for a very long time”
The respondent is a young man living in Italy who was arrested by the PAF (police aux frontières) at 6 a.m. in the morning when he was travelling by car on the highway to Nice. He was on his way to work. In the car were also colleagues of his who did not get arrested and could continue their journey.When stopping their car and checking them, the PAF claimed that the young man does not have the right documents to be in France.
Menton PAF post; the police station where the person was detained
At 6 a.m. the young man was first briefly taken to the hotel de police near Nice and then transferred to the border police post in Menton at the french-italian border. Here he was handcuffed for a very long time. The young man was relased at 10 a.m. on the same day at the border police post in Menton and felt troubled stating that his “memory was disturbed”. He did not exactly remember for how long time he was handcuffed but said that it “was a very long time for no reason”.
At 10 a.m. when the young man was released and told to walk up the steep road to Ventimiglia which is the next city in Italy and about 9 km away, his hands were still very swollen and red mark were visible in the place where the handcuffs had been very tight on his skin.
