State torture: The endurance of denial narratives in Italy

Despite the introduction of a law against torture in 2017, Italy is a State which remains unprepared to face ‘its own’ torture. One way to understand such an issue better is to analyse how Italy has dealt with torture in the past. This case study analyses the only trial on torture ever held in Italy, which involved an accomplice to a terrorist group and a team of State torturers. Adopting the theoretical approach of legal storytelling, the legal process has been analysed using a qualitative method. The analysis showed that events have been construed in two different ways. The first is a story of “literal denial”: the Italian public were told that torture was never used by any of the country's authorities, and the story of the torture victim was not believed and was instead convicted. The second is a story of “interpretative denial”. When a few policemen partially acknowledged the use of torture, denying it was no longer possible. This led to the authorities trying to neutralise the negativity which arose by adopting strategies of moral disengagement. Torture is almost never mentioned; the term is replaced with labels which are not so morally disturbing, such as common crime. These two stories have been spread by mass media, making dominant a storytelling characterised by literal and interpretative denial. This can be the precursor for a society to be led toward “implicatory denial”: “torture does not concern us”.