G8 summit police to go on trial over mass beatings

[G_j]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5085100-111093,00.html

G8 summit police to go on trial over mass beatings

John Hooper in Rome
Tuesday December 14, 2004

The Guardian

A judge in Genoa yesterday ordered a full trial for 28 officers allegedly involved in a brutal mass beating of demonstrators during the G8 summit three years ago.

Almost 100 people, including five Britons, were injured after police, carabinieri and revenue guards stormed a school in Genoa that was the makeshift headquarters of an umbrella protest group. Sixty two people were taken from the Diaz school to hospital, three of them in coma. Several are still receiving medical and psychiatric treatment.

The raid followed violent clashes between police and demonstrators in which one protester was shot dead and hundreds of police were injured.

Among those indicted were several officers holding senior positions in their respective forces or at the interior ministry. They included Francesco Gratteri, who has been promoted since the Diaz school raid to become the head of the police's anti-terrorist units.
..more..

[peace4all]

1. about time!

that was really sick!

[NashVegas]

10. overdue

very overdue.

[el_gato]

2. good news

[G_j]

3. doesn't anyone remember this?

a horrifying story! Talk about police brutality!
They beat people in their sleeping bags. The floors of the school were covered with blood and teeth. It was at night and there was no provocation, no evidence that anyone at the school had committed any crimes.

It is too bad that Berlusconi is not being tried along with the rest.

[G_j]

4. Fascism in Genoa, July 22, 2001

http://starhawk.org/activism/activism-writings/genoafacism.html

Fascism in Genoa
by Starhawk

I was there when the carabinieri raided the IndyMedia Center and the Diaz school, in Genoa, at the end of the protest against the G8 meeting. We heard the shouts and screams, couldn't get out the door, ran upstairs and hid, fearing for our lives. Eventually the cops found us, but we were the lucky ones. A Member of Parliament was in our building; lawyers and media arrived. There was some obscure Italian legal reason why the police could be deterred. They withdrew.

But nothing could save our friends across the street, at the school where people were sleeping and where another section of the Independent Media were located. The police entered: the media and the politicians were kept out. And they beat people. They beat people who had been sleeping, who held up their hands in a gesture of innocence and cried out, "Pacifisti! Pacifisti!" They beat the men and the women. They broke bones, smashed teeth, shattered skulls. They left blood on the walls, on the windows, a pool of it in every spot where people had been sleeping. When they had finished their work, they brought in the ambulances. All night long we watched from across the street as the stretchers were carried out, as people were taken to the jail ward of the hospital, or simply to jail. And in the jail, many of them were tortured again, in rooms with pictures of Mussolini on the wall.

This really happened. Not back in the nineteen thirties, but on the night of July 21 and the morning of July 22, 2001. Not in some third world country, but in Italy: prosperous, civilized, sunny Italy. And most of the victims are still in the hospital or in jail, as I write this four days later.

I can't adequately describe the shock and the horror of that night. But as terrifying as it was to live through it, what is more frightening still are its implications:

..MUCH more...

[G_j]

5. kick

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

6. "brutal mass beating" kick

:kick:

[Judi Lynn]

7. Media Missing New Evidence About Genoa Violence

Media Missing New Evidence About Genoa Violence



FAIR Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, January 10, 2003


Police in Genoa, Italy have admitted to fabricating evidence against globalization activists in an attempt to justify police brutality during protests at the July 2001 G8 Summit. In searches of the Nexis database, FAIR has been unable to find a single mention of this development in any major U.S. newspapers or magazines, national television news shows or wire service stories.

According to reports from the BBC and the German wire service Deutsche Presse-Agentur (1/7/03, 1/8/03), a senior Genoa police officer, Pietro Troiani, has admitted that police planted two Molotov cocktails in a school that was serving as a dormitory for activists from the Genoa Social Forum. The bombs were apparently planted in order to justify the police force's brutal July 22 raid on the school. According to the BBC, the bombs had in fact been found elsewhere in the city, and Troijani now says planting them at the school was a "silly" thing to do.

The BBC and DPA also report that another senior officer has admitted to faking the stabbing of a police officer in order to frame protesters. These revelations have emerged over the course of a parliamentary inquiry into police conduct that was initiated by the Italian government under pressure from "domestic and international outrage over the blood-soaked G8 summit in Genoa" (London Guardian, 7/31/01). Three police chiefs have been transferred and at least 77 officers have been investigated on brutality charges.


An "Embarrassing" Inquiry

More than 100,000 people participated in the 2001 Genoa protests, most of them peacefully. Italian authorities, however, prepared for the protests by ordering 200 body bags and designating a room at the Genoa hospital as a temporary morgue (BBC, 6/21/01). Twenty thousand police and troops were on hand, armed with tear gas, water cannon and military hardware as authorities enclosed part of the city in a so-called "ring of steel," with many railways and roads closed and air traffic shut down.

The U.S. press routinely gloss over this militaristic response, instead invoking the demonstrations as proof of the threat posed by globalization activists. Even the killing of Carlo Giuliani-- a protester who was shot in the head, run over and killed by police after he threw a fire extinguisher at a police vehicle-- is recounted by U.S. media as a timely "lesson" for activists that, as Time magazine put it, "You reap what you sow" (7/30/01).
(snip/...)

http://www.carlo-giuliani.com/GenoaPoliceFabricatedEvidence.htm

/center]]

www.carlo-giuliani.com/ photos.htm

[G_j]

9. not a single mention of this development in any major U.S. news

facism covering for facism.. Nor do they pay any attention to oppressive and violent police state tactics when they happen in the US.

Not surprising Italy later supported the invasion of Iraq.

[LifeDuringWartime]

8. i dont remember this!

must have happened before i started paying attention :(