Prosecutors on Tuesday asked for prison terms for state officials accused of physically and mentally abusing anti-globalisation protestors being held in custody during the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001.
Forty-four police officers, prison guards and doctors at the Bolzaneto detention centre are charged with abuse, fraud, criminal coercion and inhuman and degrading treatment after 250 demonstrators said they were spat at, verbally and physically humiliated and threatened with rape. Prosecutors are seeking sentences starting from six months' imprisonment, with longer terms for higher ranking officials.
The heaviest sentence - five years and eight months - is being sought for penitentiary police inspector Antonio Biagio Gugliotta, who was responsible for security at the detention centre.
Prosecutors say Gugliotta punched, kicked and used a truncheon on detainees and failed to prevent the misconduct of other officers.
They are also hoping the court will slap Alessandro Perugini, then second-in-command of the Genoa Special Branch and the highest ranking officer present, with a sentence of three years and six months for professional misconduct.
Five medical workers, including the garrison's most senior doctor, accused of insulting detainees during their examinations, are facing possible sentences of between two and three years.
An acquittal was requested for a 45th man involved in the trial, police inspector Giuseppe Fornasiere.
More than 300,000 demonstrators converged on Genoa for the G8 summit in July 2001.
During two days of mayhem, one protestor was shot dead while attacking a Carabinieri policeman, shops and businesses were ransacked and hundreds of people injured in clashes between police and demonstrators.
In a separate ongoing trial, police in riot gear who burst into a school used as sleeping quarters by protestors during the event are also being investigated for violence.
Police arrested 93 protesters including British, French, German and other non-Italian nationals.
Most of the demonstrators were beaten during the operation, some seriously, and 63 had to be taken to hospital. Three people were left comatose.
According to protesters inside the Diaz school, they were brutally attacked by the police for no reason.
The police instead maintain that the protesters were harbouring dangerous weapons and resisting arrest and that they were forced to defend themselves.
A 2001 parliamentary inquiry into the Genoa violence exonerated the police on charges of having used excessive force but stressed that magistrates were entitled to investigate any individual instances of alleged brutality.
