Italy: High ranking police officers acquitted in sentence for brutal G8 Diaz school raid

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On 13 November 2008, Genoa tribunal acquitted 16 out of 29 defendants for the violent police raid against demonstrators in the Diaz school where they were staying during the G8 on the evening of 21 July 2001. After seven years, 13 officers were found guilty and received sentences of between one month and four years, for a total of 35 years and seven months. The entire sentences to ten of the officers have been confirmed, as have two years of the four-year sentence passed against Vincenzo Canterini, head of the unit to which most of those found guilty belonged. Canterini was found guilty of falsehood and defamation in association with others, whereas Michelangelo Fournier (two years) and eight others were found guilty of causing personal and continued bodily harm, the latter eight receiving three-year sentences. Pietro Troiani and Michele Burgio were sentenced to three years and two-and-a-half years respectively. The higher echelons of the police involved in those events emerged unscathed with acquittals, including Giovanni Luperi, now head of the analysis department of Aisi (the internal intelligence service established following the latest reform of the secret services in August 2007, see Statewatch news online, September 2007) and Francesco Gratteri, head of the central directorate against crime.

Sources

www.repubblica.it , 13.11.2008

Videos are available on the Repubblica website, containing the reading of the sentence, and reactions from people present in the court (including Carlo Giuliani's mother, Haidi) and victims of the police brutality (including Marc Covell, whose spine was damaged), and lawyer Massimo Pastore's reconstruction of the movement of the molotov cocktail planted in the school to justify the raid, at:
http://tv.repubblica.it/copertina/diaz-assolti-i-vertici-della-polizia/26317?video 

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