Italy: Lengthy sentences for Milan anti-fascist protestors
01 May 2006
On 18 July 2006, the trial for disturbances during an antifascist demonstration in Milan on 11 March 2006 finished, with 18 of the 27 defendants receiving four-year sentences to be served under a regime of house arrest and ten being acquitted; one had plea bargained on lesser charges, for which he was fined. 25 of the defendants had spent four months in pre-emptive custody since the demonstration to counter a march organised by the neo-fascist
Movimento Sociale – Fiamma Tricolore (MS-FT), during which disturbances occurred in Corso Buenos Aires, including the burning of cars, the setting up of a makeshift barricade, the damaging and burning of some shop entrances, a charge and the firing of teargas canisters by the police, and the throwing of stones and a flare by demonstrators. The events led to 46 people being stopped (five of whom were released), 41 of whom were placed under arrest.
Key elements in the trial included the proportionality of the charges of “devastation and sacking” and the sentences called for by the prosecuting magistrate in relation to the actual events, the use of collective punishment in response to the absence of proof of specific individuals’ active involvement in the disturbances, the positive identification of certain defendants and the nature of their arrest, and whether it was justifiable for individuals to have been present at the demonstration in response to a fascist march, or whether this presence could be construed as “contribution” to the violence.
The prosecuting magistrate (pm) illustrated charges of “contribution” (including “moral contribution”) to offences of “devastation and sacking” by arguing, beyond the merits of evidence of the involvement of specific persons in specific violent acts, that the mere, “non-neutral”, presence of the accused on the scene, near to a barricade, should be interpreted as an “essential”, “indispensable”, contribution to the commission of the “criminal” acts, by strengthening the criminal intent of its perpetrators. Demonstrators concealing their faces behind scarves or motorbike helmets, and the carrying of sticks by some of them, was deemed to be further evidence of involvement. Moreover, an anonymous message posted on Indymedia about the counter-demonstration was presented as evidence that the disturbances were pre-ordained. The pm requested eight-and-a-half year sentences for the accused, and nine for the two who were repeat offenders – these were lowered by a third (to five-and-a-half and six years respectively) because the defendants accepted to undergo fast-track judgements.
Defence lawyers including Mirko Mazzali, who took part in the defence of 24 of the 28 defendants, stressed the disproportionate nature of the charges, highlighting the seriousness of charges of “destruction and sacking”, which envisage situations such as popular insurrections or revolts during which public order is seriously undermined. These charges are increasingly being used to deal with public disturbances during demonstrations, especially since events at the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001. Mazzali noted that the incidents in question took place during a total of 38 minutes, that there was a stand-off during most of this time, that shoppers and onlookers were watching the disturbances rather than fleeing, and that a single “real” charge by the police was sufficient to control the situation and carry out arrests (a previous police charge was described as half-hearted). Mazzali also referred back to events that he considered more serious, both from the recent past (when fans took over the stadium in Avellino (Campania) at an Avellino-Napoli football match in after the death of a Napoli fan, causing widespread damage and attacking police officers), and from the decades of the 1960s and 1970s (demonstrations involving gun-toting demonstrators and the loss of control of public order by the police over sizeable areas of cities), to note that these events did not res