Italy Court To Rule On G8 Police Brutality In 2001

An Italian court will hand down verdicts on Thursday on 29 policemen, including several high-ranking officers, over the beatings of scores of protesters at a G8 summit in 2001, court officials said.

The clashes around the Group of Eight summit in Genoa seven years ago were among the most violent at any meeting of the club of rich nations. The talks are regularly dogged by protests by anti-globalisation groups and leftist demonstrators.

One protester was killed during the three-day meeting. But the subsequent investigation into police brutality focused on a police charge into a high school which had been turned into the headquarters of protesters staging an alternative "summit".

Eighty-two demonstrators, some of whom had travelled from other countries, were injured during the raid on the night of July 21-22, 2001 at the Diaz High School, and 63 had to be treated in hospital. Police said at the time the protesters had attacked security forces shortly before the raid, and that weapons had been found at the school.

But the investigation showed that the protesters, many of whom were sleeping when the police broke into the school, were defenceless and had not reacted violently.

It said two molotov cocktails, which the police said had been found at the school, had been taken there by the security forces themselves.

"I saw cops lay into injured people on the ground. it was like a butcher's in there," the former deputy police chief of Genoa, Michelangelo Fournier, said in evidence to court last year.

He said he had kept quiet until then "out of shame and a spirit of comradeship" with police colleagues.

The public prosecutor has asked for 28 of the defendants to be sentenced to a combined total of nearly 110 years in jail for offences ranging from aggravated assault to defamation and false testimony. The prosecutor has asked for one to be acquitted.

The defendants say they were acting lawfully at a time of great pressure from demonstrators who were often violent.

Many of the policemen on trial are still in service and some have since been promoted. Two are currently senior officers in Italy's anti-terrorism unit and the secret services.