Elisabetta Zamparutti

Background

Elisabetta Zamparutti was born in Cermes, in the province of Bolzano, on 1 October 1964. She is one of the founders of Hands Off Cain and a member of the General Council of the Nonviolent Radical Party, Transnational and Transparty.

From 2008 to 2013 she was a member of the Chamber of Deputies, elected as a Radical on the Democratic Party list, and a member of the Environment, Territory and Public Works Committee.

She has been the member for Italy of the Council of Europe's European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) from 2016 to 2019 and again since February 2021, reconfirmed in November 2023. The Committee visits places of detention in member states and reports to their governments.

In Hands Off Cain

She has been treasurer since 2003 and coordinates the association's database: the record, country by country and year by year, of registered executions, of the people held on death row and of the legal status of capital punishment. It is the work that the data published by the association and the annual report rest on.

Since 2016 she has run the «Spes contra spem» workshops in the high-security wings of Italian prisons. With Giovanna Reanda she presents the weekly Radio Radicale programme «Dei diritti e delle pene».