FROSINONE - A prison inmate who fired a gun at other prisoners had the weapon smuggled into the penitentiary by drone, prison officials said Tuesday. The 28-year-old man from Naples had been detained for offences linked to organised crime. After opening fire, he phoned his lawyer with a mobile phone and then swallowed the sim card before surrendering. The scene was captured by security cameras at the Frosinone prison.

 The prisoner in question was already in high security, separated from the rest of the prison population for disciplinary reasons. According to the Lazio prisons administrator, Carmelo Cantone, once the man took the weapon from the drone at his cell window, he asked to be allowed to go to the shower department. Once in the corridor, he pointed the weapon at a prison guard and grabbed the keys to the cells from his belt. He then fired five shots at three inmates who had recently beaten him.

 Cantone confirmed that the detainee also had a mobile phone, but it is still unclear how he managed to obtain it.

 After the incident, the man was immediately transferred to another institution, while the Minister of Justice Marta Cartabia arranged an emergency meeting to take place in the Frosinone prison.

 "The problem of drones is well present at the Department of Penitentiary Administration (DAP)," says its director Bernardo Petralia. The same method had already been used in the Taranto prison as ascertained by an investigation by the judiciary.

 "Everything that can be done with our personnel and resources, we will do it from tomorrow", he added, explaining that a law enforcement system has already been tested in a penitentiary in the south and that a special study group has been in charge of carrying out “a careful survey of all the technological systems that can overcome this problem. We will check what the market offers, we know that it is possible to adopt technologically advanced systems. The minister is perfectly aware of all this, there is a continuous direct line and everyone is committed to finding and investing all the necessary resources. It is now a question of assessing the costs and starting the administrative purchasing procedures.”

 The trade unions are protesting. Those in charge must “take firm action to re-establish control of the prison by the state" says the secretary general of the Penitary Police Union (S.PP), Aldo Di Giacomo. "We believe that it is necessary to set up a real crisis unit,” adds Gennarino De Fazio, secretary of the Uilpa Police for the National Police Force. We need "an organizational reform that is accompanied by huge investments for hiring personnel, making structures safe, purchasing technological means and equipment.”

 The Frosinone affair will also be addressed by the parliamentary anti-mafia commission "with the special committee that deals with high security", announced the Five Star Movement commissioners.

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