schnews - GENOA A GOOD LAWYER?

More senior Italian police have been sentenced for their part in the infamous violent Carabinieri police raids during the G8 in Genoa on the night of July 21st 2001 (see www.schnews.org.uk/archive/news314-5.htm). Since then it's been a nine-year legal effort to bring justice for the many who were mercilessly beaten while sleeping, arrested, denied medical attention, laid with false charges, and more, during the raid of the two schools being used as protest bases and accommodation. 93 were arrested that night, with 28 of those being hospitalised, three of them critically injured – one of them, Mark Covell, from UK Indymedia, who was in a coma for two days. It was an attack which was pre-planned and then covered-up by the police and state. Tensions were already high before the raid, as the day before, the Carabinieri had murdered protester Carlo Giuliani.

Two trials against the police held in 2008 were only conditional victories with mainly lower-rank officers getting convictions, but those in commanding roles walking free. Fifteen police were convicted – and 30 cleared - after the July 2008 'Bolzaneto' trial, which focused on police brutality of the arrestees in the cells (see SchNEWS 640). Camp commander Antonio Gugliotta got five years, while the others got up to 28 months. Now, after the appeal, 25 of the 27 defendants in the November 2008 'Diaz' trial – which focused on the raid itself - have been convicted, getting sentences up to five years.

Some of the names who lost the appeal include Giovanni Luperi – who was since promoted to chief of the Italian equivalent of MI5, and two of the country's most senior detectives - Gilberto Calderozzi and Francesco Gratteri, who went onto a senior intelligence job after Genoa. They all got four years. The head of the riot squad unit that lead the raid got five years, and the two who planted the Molotov cocktails in the building were each sentenced to three years and nine months. The evidence against the commanding officers of the raid included video footage of them outside the building as it happened.

Unfortunately these convicted police will not be imprisoned because their offences will expire under a statute of limitation, but they have also got five-year disqualifications from public office (as if a police officer who's been sentenced to prison but hasn't been made to go inside should remain in the job).

* For indepth coverage of Genoa see www.schnews.org.uk/sotw/genoa-eyewitness.htm