Brutal sex attack forces Italy to make laws for kicking out EU migrants

The move came amid outrage over the sex attack murder of an admiral's wife by a Romanian migrant.

Previously, EU citizens could only be sent home if they could be shown to pose a threat to the state, usually interpreted as a terrorist.

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Now they can be kicked out if they are 'a threat to society', which allows more scope.

The change, and fears of a backlash over the murder, led to an immediate exodus of Romanians by bus.

The ruling was rushed through after RE teacher Giovanna Reggiani, 47, was beaten with a rock in a sex attack by a Romanian migrant and her body dumped in a ditch. She died two days after the attack in a suburb of northern Rome.

Nicolae Mailat, 24, from Transylvania, was arrested in his ramshackle hovel at a nearby gipsy camp a short while later.

He had two previous convictions for theft in his home country.

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The new Italian law has echoes of the legal turmoil in Britain over Italian-born Learco Chindamo, the murderer of headmaster Stephen Lawrence.

The government wanted to expel him at the end of his sentence, but were refused by a High Court judge who said that would infringe EU law. Experts say this may not be the case now.

But Chindamo would also be protected by the Human Rights Act, which protects the right to family life as he has spent most of his life in Britain.

Italy argues this does not apply to its law as it is aimed at recently-arrived migrants.

Before the new laws, Italian expulsion orders were lengthy and complicated. Now any EU citizen who has a conviction, or was under investigation, or was otherwise deemed a threat to society, could be held.

Each case would then go before a magistrate who would make a decision on expulsion within 48 hours. There is no appeal.

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Officials in Brussels said Italy appeared to be working within the directive of EU legislation which states that: "The personal conduct of the individual concerned must represent a genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat affecting one of the fundamental interests of society."

Romanians have been blamed for 76 murders in the last 18 months, half of all rapes and a surge in people trafficking and prostitution.

At the same time, crime in Romania has fallen by 26 per cent.

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Yesterday, camps and ramshackle homes were dismantled by masked police using tractors.

Dozens of Romanians were rounded up.

Many others headed home on buses. One woman burst into tears at Rome's bus station and said: "I've just spent 60 euros on a one-way ticket. We can't stay here. Everyone hated us before, now we are hated even more."