(ANSA) - A group of top-ranking officers will appear in court on Friday in the second of two trials involving alleged police brutality during the G8 international summit in Genoa in 2001.
Twenty-eight officers are accused of grievous bodily harm, planting evidence and wrongful arrest during a night-time raid on the Diaz School, which anti-globalization protestors at the Group of Eight Summit were using as sleeping quarters.
A further 45 state officials, including police officers, prison guards and doctors, are charged with physically and mentally abusing demonstrators held in a detention centre in the nearby town of Bolzaneto. The first trial opened Wednesday but was immediately adjourned.
The alleged brutality occurred after a series of largely peaceful, mass demonstrations, which drew some 200,000 people to the port city. Anarchists have since been blamed for an outbreak of violence, during which a 23-year-old activist was shot dead by a police officer, shops were ransacked and hundreds of people were injured in clashes between police and demonstrators.
On Friday, some of the highest police officials in the land will appear in court for ordering the Diaz School raid. Sixty-two demonstrators required medical treatment after the operation, in which 150 police in riot gear smashed down the doors of the school building in the early hours of July 22.
Three people were left comatose, including a freelance British journalist, Marc Covell. He was unconscious for 14 hours after the raid, which left him with a vein twisted around his spine, a shredded lung, broken fingers, ten smashed teeth and eight broken
ribs.
Police said the people injured were violent and resisted arrest. They claimed protestors were harbouring dangerous weapons and said they found two Molotov cocktails on the premises.
Charges were later dropped against all 93 demonstrators arrested that night.
Prosecutors are instead convinced that police planted the petrol bombs, the linchpin in the case against demonstrators. Police are also accused of falsifying other evidence, authorizing or inflicting grievous bodily harm, making false accusations and arrests, and fabricating the story they used to justify the raid.
Meanwhile, 45 state officials are defendants in the Bolzaneto trial, which resumes November 4. They are charged with lying, abuse, criminal coercion and inhuman and degrading treatment. Nearly 250 activists have complained they were spat at,
verbally and physically humiliated and threatened with rape. Prosecutors also claim that one woman had her head thrust down a toilet, a man was ordered to crawl around on his hands and knees and bark like a dog and detainees were forced to sing pro-Fascist songs.
Five medical workers, including the garrison's most senior doctor, Giacomo Toccafondi, are charged with insulting detainees during their examinations and failing to inform authorities after asphyxiating gas was allegedly sprayed into protestors' cells.
But prosecutors and the alleged victims are worried that despite convincing evidence - including extensive video footage - those they believe are responsible will not be punished. "Unfortunately, the delay in bringing these people to trial means that the statute of limitations will probably have expired on the worst charges," said Enrica Bartesaghi, who helped found the Committee for Truth and Justice group after her 21-year-old daughter was held at Bolzaneto.
"The abuse charges have almost have hit their five-year deadline. This means prosecutors will only be able to request convictions on the more minor charges, such as fraud and failing to allow non-Italians access to their consulates". And according to one of the prosecutors in the Bolzaneto trial, Mario Morisani, even the eight-year statute on these lesser charges might not be enough, given the number of plaintiffs, defendants and witnesses involved.
"If everything goes well, we will need some 200-250 hearings, and we have just a little over three years before the judge will be forced to close the trials," he said. There is also concern that a government-backed justice reform bill being examined by parliament would aggravate the situation.
The bill, which critics say is tailor-made to help an aide of Premier Silvio Berlusconi escape corruption charges, shortens the statute of limitations for a host of crimes. If the statute of limitations expires, both the Diaz and the Bolzaneto trials will be called to an abrupt halt. The only remaining option for those affected would be to take their case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, a process that can take years.
Meanwhile, a trial against 25 demonstrators accused of looting and ransacking shops during the summit is also under way. If found guilty, they face between 18 and 25 years in jail.
