A long-awaited verdict on brutality against anti-globalisation demonstrators during the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa has drawn protests from leftwing MPs and victims.
''It is an absurd and disgraceful sentence, contrary to all the evidence and unworthy of a civilised country,'' said Communist party member Pino Sgobio after the Monday night verdict that acquitted 30 of 45 state officials.
Green party member Paolo Cento said the verdict ''supplies only a half truth and leaves wholly unpunished the political responsibilities for the handling of the G8 summit''.
He renewed calls for a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the events in Genoa and called for the crime of torture to be introduced into Italy's penal code, ''as Amnesty International has requested on several occasions''.
''If that crime had been on the books before 2001 the highly serious events at (the) Bolzaneto (detention centre) would certainly have been judged differently''.
The left-leaning La Repubblica daily spoke of ''a virtual whitewash,'' noting that requested jail terms were also cut by a third, to a total of 24 years, and that no one will serve time because of the statute of limitations.
Corriere della Sera quoted one of the victims, a 25-year-old at the time of her experience at Bolzaneto, as saying ''these are ridiculous sentences''.
''That day changed my life,'' she was quoted as saying.
But Fabrizio Cicchitto, Lower House whip for Premier Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PDL) party, praised the sentence as ''objective and balanced''.
Berlusconi, who last spring swept back to power for the third time, was in the first year of his second term in office when the Genoa summit was organised.
Cicchitto said the sentence proved there was ''no systematic operation of repression or torture but mistakes by some members of the police force''.
This was the line taken immediately after the sentence by Interior Undersecretary Alfredo Mantovano, also of the PDL, who said ''the action of individuals was assessed and the concept of collective guilt was abandoned''.
Of the 15 convictions, the longest term, five years, was given to Bolzaneto head Antonio Biagio Gugliotta, found guilty of forcing detainees to stand for hours in stress positions.
Instead of torture - which is not on the Italian criminal books - the other defendants were found guilty of ''abuse of authority''.
Deputy police chief Alessandro Perugini, caught on film as he kicked a teenager in the face, was given two years and four months; Giacomo Toccafondi, a doctor accused of scores of invasive and humiliating examinations, got 14 months; and Massimo Piggozzi, a policeman who splayed a protester's fingers to breaking point, received a term of three years and two months.
The trial judges ruled that 30 of the 45 defendants either ''did not commit the crime'' or, in their case, ''the crime did not exist''.
Italy's justice and interior ministries were ordered to pay two million euros in compensation - compared to the 15 million the victims had been seeking.
The trial of the 45 state officials opened in October 2005.
The defendants were charged with abuse, fraud, criminal coercion and inhuman and degrading treatment.
In total, 252 demonstrators said they were spat at, verbally and physically humiliated and threatened with rape while being held at the Bolzaneto detention centre.
The prosecution, which wrapped up its case in March, requested jail terms totalling 76 years for police officers, prison guards and doctors working at the centre.
Of the 252 demonstrators who claimed abuse, strong evidence emerged in at least 209 cases considered during the trial.
More than 300,000 demonstrators converged on Genoa for the G8 summit in July 2001.
During two days of mayhem, a 23-year-old protestor was shot dead while attacking a policeman, shops and businesses were ransacked and hundreds of people were injured in clashes between police and demonstrators.
BOLZANETO ONE OF THREE TRIALS.
The Bolzaneto proceedings are one of three major trials to emerge from violence at the event.
In one case, 29 top-ranking police officials are being tried over a raid on a school used as sleeping quarters by protesters during the event. The charges include grievous bodily harm, planting evidence and wrongful arrest.
Most of the 93 demonstrators arrested during the operation were beaten, some seriously, and 63 had to be taken to hospital. Three people were left comatose.
In December last year, another court convicted 24 Italians for their involvement in rioting at the summit.
This was the only trial against demonstrators in connection with the event. Although police arrested dozens of people at the time, all other proceedings collapsed for lack of evidence or were dismissed by judges during preliminary hearings.
A 2001 parliamentary inquiry exonerated the police of having used excessive force but stressed that magistrates were entitled to investigate any individual instances of alleged brutality.
Critics at the time accused Berlusconi's centre-right government of a whitewash.
A second enquiry was proposed last year after a top policeman changed his earlier testimony and said he had seen officers commit ''carnage'' during the night raid.
However, the proposal was dropped after two centrist parties joined the centre-right coalition in voting against it.
