(ANSA) - Rome, November 3 - Justice Minister Angelino Alfano on Tuesday promised the death of a 31-year-old man from injuries and severe dehydration following seven days in police custody would be investigated fully.

Addressing the Senate, Alfano said ''every effort possible would be made to identify who was responsible'' for the death of Stefano Cucchi last month, ''either by acting or by failing to act''. Alfano said there would be ''no allowance made for anyone found responsible'' and promised the public would be given ''every detail of the truth''.

Cucchi, 31, was arrested late on October 15 for possession of a small quantity of drugs and detained in a Rome prison.

His parents said he was in good health when he was arrested but he appeared at court the next day with black eyes and his face covered with bruises.

Following the hearing, he remained in custody and was admitted to a prison hospital for six days, during which period his parents were refused access to see him and denied any information about his condition.

Cucchi died during the night between October 22 and 23.

His parents, called in to identify the body, said their son's face was ''destroyed''.

The Rome Public Prosecutor's Office has opened an investigation into the death, which Alfano said would follow two key strands.

''One will focus on Cucchi's injuries to assess whether these were deliberate or accidental,'' he said, referring to his previous claim that that Cucchi had injured himself falling down the stairs. ''The other will look into a possible lack of food and water''. A preliminary post-mortem concluded that Cucchi's injuries, including two broken vertebrae, were not fatal but said that blood in his stomach and urethra indicated damage to internal organs. Alfano said Cucchi's parents been refused access to their son because they failed to produce the proper visitors permit on the two occasions they visited. They had not been given any details about his health because Cucchi signed a form refusing to authorize staff to release this information to relatives, the minister added. According to Alfano, Cucchi had been ''uncooperative'' during his time in custody, ''refusing an ophthalmological visit and several further X-rays''. But Cucchi's sister Ilaria, who attended the Senate hearing, said that during his speech Alfano had said ''numerous things that were not true''.

''I want to see this piece of paper supposedly signed by my brother, in which he refused to authorize staff to give us information about his health,'' she said. She also denied that her family had only made two requests to visit her brother in hospital. ''We were there every single day,'' she said. Opposition Senator Stefano Pedica, of the small Italy of Values party, said Alfano's speech left numerous questions unanswered and discrepancies unexplained.

He pointed to conflicting accounts of the time of arrest, the fact Cucchi had not been allowed to contact his lawyer and the fact his parents were only informed of their son's death several hours after it occurred, when an autopsy had already been authorized. Cucchi's death is one of three cases in recent weeks to raise questions about conditions in Italian prisons.

A high-profile prisoner convicted of terrorism and kept in isolation, Diana Blefari Melazzi, hung herself on Saturday evening, despite repeated applications from her lawyers to have her transferred to a psychiatric hospital. In a separate incident, prosecutors have opened an investigation after obtaining an audio recording of a graphic conversation between two prison guards indicating inmates were regularly subject to physical abuse by staff.

Prisoners groups blame the problems on chronic overcrowding and the lack of either an effective complaints system or public funding for prison lawyers representing inmates' rights. On Tuesday, Alfano, said he would unveil details of a plan to deal with overcrowding ''within the next two cabinet meetings'', likely to take place by the end of November at latest. The plan, which has been in the pipeline for a number of months, has already been postponed several times due to lack of funds. Intended to cope with a prison population that is growing by around 800 people a month, the plan envisions the construction of 24 new prisons at a cost of 1.4 billion euros and suggests making greater use of house arrest. The Italian prison population currently numbers over 65,000. Its official capacity is 43,262, with temporary room for up to 63,568 in emergency situations.

According to prisoners association Ristretti Orizzonti, 146 inmates have died in prison since the start of this year, of which 59 committed suicide. The association said that on average, 150 people have died in Italian prisons each year since 1992, around a third of whom took their own life.

photo: Alfano