Attack highlights immigrant debate in Italy

ROME - The debate over using tough measures to fight crime was reignited in Italy over the weekend after a middle-age Dutch couple on vacation was brutally attacked in Rome.

Two Romanian shepherds were arrested Saturday and have confessed to assaulting and robbing the Dutch tourists and to raping the woman, according to a law enforcement official. The vacationing couple had pitched a tent on the outskirts of Rome where they were attacked Friday night.

Opposition lawmakers leapt on the episode as showing that the conservative government's hard-line stance on crime and illegal immigration - including the deployment of 3,000 armed soldiers to major cities earlier this month - has been little more than window dressing.

"Reality shows that there's no magic wand to resolve the security issue as the center-right government claims it is doing," Roberta Pinotti, the shadow defense minister, told the ANSA news agency.

But the mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno, has objected that it is wrong to make an example out of a single case because both local and national governments are "doing everything possible to increase security in Rome." And "we mean to do even more," he said in a telephone interview yesterday.

Since it was elected in April, the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has made fighting crime, which it largely attributes to foreigners, one of its priorities. Last month the government declared a national state of emergency to fight illegal immigration and proposed a plan to take a census and fingerprint all Roma living in camps in Italy.

The measures have been widely criticized by human rights groups, the European Union and the Vatican as potentially fueling a rise in xenophobia.

In the past, the conservative coalition has played up episodes similar to the attack that occurred in Rome over the weekend as justifying tough legislation. A second alleged rape and robbery case involving a German couple who had been camping on a beach near Naples was made public yesterday.

The Romanians arrested for the attack worked as shepherds on the outskirts of Rome.