Sources said the officers were suspended from duty via an order from a preliminary hearings judge for the crime of state torture committed inside the prison against three inmates.

They stand accused of using "cruel methods" which caused "undue physical suffering" to the three prisoners.

There have been several recent cases of mistreatment of prisoners in Italian prisons.

Meanwhile, 45 people including prison officers, doctors, officials and interim wardens of Ivrea Prison in north-western Italy have been placed under investigation on suspicion of beating and torturing inmates, sources claim.

They may face charges of torture with physical and psychological violence against numerous prisoners, making false public statements and correlated crimes.

The alleged cases of violence against inmates took place on ten occasions between 2015 and 2016, Ivrea's prisoner guarantor said.

Prisoners were allegedly frequently beaten with kicks, punches and truncheons.

When the inmates ended up in the infirmary, complicit doctors allegedly drew up false reports that they had sustained their injuries after slipping in their cells or the showers, the guarantor said.

Warders also allegedly claimed the prisoners were self-harming and their bruises proved it.

Ivrea is not the first Italian prison where inmates have been allegedly brutalised.

In July 2020 all 105 prison officers, penitentiary officials and local health agency officials were sent to trial over a brutal punitive raid on inmates at a prison near Caserta, north of Naples.

Guards allegedly went on a rampage of violence to punish inmates for rioting.

Overcrowding and COVID fears also sparked riots in several prisons at the height of the first lockdown in the spring of 2020.

Many inmates were hurt and some died, mainly from overdoses of drugs pillaged from jail infirmaries.

The defendants are accused of crimes including torture, abuse of authority, making false declarations and cooperation in the culpable homicide of an Algerian prisoner.

A preliminary investigations judge said prisoners were made to strip and kneel and beaten with guards wearing their helmets so as not to be identified in what he called "a horrible massacre".

Some 15 men were also put into solitary without any justification, the judge said.

Police reportedly found chats on the suspects' phones from before the alleged violence, saying "We'll kill them like veal calves" and "tame the beasts".

After the violence they texted, "four hours of hell for them", "no one got away", and "[we used] the Poggioreale system", referring to a tough Naples prison.

Some of the alleged rioters had their hair cut and beards shaved off.

Outgoing Justice Minister Marta Cartabia has said that CCTV footage of the violence showed that the officers had betrayed the Italian Constitution.

Last November, in the most recent case, six Italian prison officers, including the head warden at Reggio Calabria Prison, were arrested for 'torturing' an inmate at the southern Italian jail. 

ANSA