73 officers to face charges for Genoa policing
01 August 2003
Prosecutors investigating events during the G8 summit in Genoa in July 2001 have charged 73 people including police officers, prison officers and officials over the violent raid on the Diaz and Pascoli schools and the abuses perpetrated against detainees in the Bolzaneto police barracks, which was equipped as a detention centre for demonstrators. The investigators came to the conclusion that the abuses were not the result of actions by a few individuals and the prosecutors singled out the officers in charge, in both the raids and at the Bolzaneto barracks. The judge for preliminary investigations will decide whether to bring charges against the accused in a pre-trial hearing.
In the case of the raid on the schools where activists were staying and where an independent media centre had been set up, prosecutors argue that there was an attempt:
to put together a collection of evidence against those arrested and, thus, to commit the crimes of slander and of abuse of their position, as well as to justify the violence [that was] used
The raid resulted in 93 arrests, and 61 of the occupants were injured. The fabrication of evidence to justify the arrests and violence has also surfaced: two molotov cocktails were planted and a knife attack on a police officer turned out to have been self-inflicted. The occupants of the school were also alleged to have violently resisted the raid.
The molotov cocktails, which police officer Michele Burgio confessed to taking. and planting. in the school on orders from Pietro Troiana, the deputy police chief in Genoa, were used to charge the occupants with possession of explosives. Each of the 93 people arrested were falsely accused of a series of crimes including criminal association to commit destruction and looting, obstructing public officers in the exercise of their duty and possessing explosives and illegal weapons. One of them who was not identified was accused of attempted murder in relation to the alleged stabbing attempt.
The prosecuting team deemed that ten officials are to be charged for signing the arrest orders, and the order to authorise the search and raid. The heads of the different flying squad units that were brought in from Rome have been identified as well as the head of the Rome flying squads, Vincenzo Canterini and his deputy Michelangelo Fournier, and they may face charges of participating in causing serious injuries. They are accused of:
causing various personal injuries, sometimes serious, to the persons who were present inside the building, struck with the ordnance truncheons or with other violent acts, committing these acts or otherwise not preventing others from such behaviour, which was criminally in excess of the limit on the legitimate use of means of physical restraint ...striking the mentioned persons with violence, all of whom were in an obviously unoffensive and resigned attitude, sometimes striking them repeatedly while they were on the floor.
They are accused of acting in association with other officers (estimated at more than 200) who have not been identified. The police officer who alleged that he was stabbed (Massimo Nucera) and another who backed his story, also face possible charges of falsehood and slander. Further charges may be brought in relation to the search, which saw the confiscation of hard discs and the destruction of computers used by the independent media centre in the Pascoli school.
While prosecutors are looking to charge 30 people for events during the search and raid in the Diaz/Pascoli schools, 43 may face charges in relation to events in the temporary detention centre that was set up in the national police barracks in Bolzaneto, including prison medical staff. Five people have been identified as the authors of violent acts, and issuing threats and insults against detainees. The top police officer in Bolzaneto, Alessandro Perugini, the deputy head of the Genoa Digos (Direzione generale operazioni