(ANSA) - Italy's largest ever trial into police brutality resumed here on Thursday, with witnesses for the prosecution describing how officers had beaten protestors during an international summit in 2001.
A media activist and a doctor took the stand, recalling events during a night-time police raid on a school building being used by anti-globalization protestors during the Group of Eight summit.
"I saw the police arrive: a man on the street in front of the building raised his arms. They began beating him with tonfa batons," said Massimo Costantini, a volunteer doctor, who was watching from an upstairs window.
"He fell to the ground and a policeman started kicking him in the stomach [...] The attack was so brutal that I called a lawyer I knew and told him: 'Come, hurry! They're going to beat us to a pulp!'"
Ronnie Brusetti, who organized an alternative media centre during the summit, was on the ground floor of the Diaz School when the police arrived shortly before midnight.
"They smashed down the door and I started to scream: 'What are you doing? We aren't resisting you!' I lifted my arms up but they immediately set to beating people. They kept telling us this wasn't an American film and that they would kill us all."
Costantini said that later, an officer had come upstairs looking for a doctor to treat the wounded on the ground floor.
"I said I'd go but only if the officer accompanied me. I was scared - I didn't know what would happen," he said. Although 150 officers took part in the raid, anti-riot helmets and unmarked uniforms made it impossible to identify individuals allegedly involved.
Prosecutors have instead brought charges against 29 top-ranking police officials, who ordered and oversaw the operation.
They stand accused of grievous bodily harm, planting evidence and wrongful arrest.
The police say the protesters were harbouring dangerous weapons and that they resisted arrest, responding with violence.
Sixty-two demonstrators required medical treatment after the operation and three people were left comatose, including a freelance British journalist, the man described by Costantini.
Mark Covell 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.
In separate proceedings, a further 45 state officials, including police officers, prison guards and doctors, have been charged with physically and mentally abusing demonstrators held in a detention centre in the nearby town of Bolzaneto.
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.
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.
