The applicant, a Moroccan national, was issued an expulsion order on 25 July 2025. On 1 November 2025, his detention was ordered pursuant to Article 14(1) of Legislative Decree 286/1998, after the Administration excluded the possibility of applying Article 14(1-bis) of the same decree. This detention order was validated on 4 November 2025 by the Justice of the Peace. The applicant then expressed his intention to apply for international protection. Consequently, on 11 November 2025, the Rome Chief of Police ordered his detention pursuant to Article 6(3) of Legislative Decree 142/2015, considering the application to be instrumental within the meaning of that provision, as “due to the circumstances of time and place” it appeared aimed solely at delaying or preventing the execution of the expulsion, and finding the conditions under Article 6(2) to be met. On the same day, the Rome Police Headquarters requested the Court of Appeal of Rome validation of this new detention order for the applicant at the Repatriation Detention Centres (CPR) of Ponte Galeria.

The applicant’s lawyer submitted a memorandum stating that the applicant was a habitual drug user and had a severe addiction, previous drug-related convictions, and psychiatric vulnerabilities for which he had been treated with psychotropic medication while detained in Velletri prison, making any interruption of treatment dangerous. He noted that no updated medical assessment had been carried out despite his requests and contested the adequacy of the medical certificate used to assess his fitness for detention. He cited the Council of State judgment in ASGI,Cittadinanzattiva APS v Ministry of the Interior (Ministero dell'Interno) (N. 7839/2025, 25 September 2025), which found the CPR tender specifications partially unlawful and criticised initial fitness-for-detention examinations for focusing solely on infectious diseases while overlooking psychiatric disorders and chronic conditions incompatible with detention.

The Court of Appeal rejected the request for validation of the detention order due to the likely existence of a condition of vulnerability within the meaning of Article 17(1) of Legislative Decree 142/2015, which made the applicant’s detention in a CPR incompatible with his health needs. It noted that the information gathered by the applicant’s lawyer and the medical staff provided serious and consistent indications of psychiatric disorders and substance-dependence issues that were likely incompatible with detention. The court further observed that the applicant himself had confirmed habitual use of narcotic substances and the intake of psychotropic medication (specifically Seroquel), whose sudden and uncontrolled interruption could entail serious risks, including suicide. Moreover, the court held that the medical certificate attesting to the compatibility of the applicant’s health with detention in the CPR could not be regarded as decisive, since his specific conditions had not been duly considered and no specialist examinations had been carried out, despite these health concerns having been promptly reported by the defence to both the doctor of the managing entity and the Local Health Authority (ASL) Roma 3. As a result, it considered that the case file did not contain an adequate medical certificate attesting to such compatibility.

The court reiterated that a medical assessment constitutes an essential precondition for the validity of detention and must be carried out before the validation of the measure. It further held that this requirement was all the more relevant in light of the Constitutional Court judgment in Justice of the Peace of Rome (96/2025, 9 June 2025), which identified serious constitutional shortcomings in the legal framework governing detention in CPRs. The court noted that, although the rules on administrative detention remain formally in force, their application must take account of the principles set out by the Constitutional Court whenever the legality of an individual detention measure is reviewed. In particular, where the circumstances of a specific case reveal a potential violation of fundamental rights, and in the absence of a legal framework ensuring adequate provision of services and personal care, detention cannot be validated and must be considered unlawful.

The court found that, in the present case, the absence of a specific legal framework governing the methods of detention had a concrete impact on a fundamental right, namely the right to health, whose protection is currently left to regulatory and discretionary administrative acts. This resulted in a specific violation of that right, already apparent at the validation stage, and rendered the administrative detention unlawful.

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