Italy: Demonstrators convicted for G8 clashes
01 January 2008
On 14 December 2007, 24 of the 25 demonstrators on trial in Genoa were found guilty for the violence and damage caused during the G8 summit in Genoa in July 2001, and only one was acquitted. Fourteen were convicted for their involvement in clashes in via Tolemaide, with sentences for all but one of them running from 5 months to two and a half years; the remaining defendant received a longer 5-year sentence for bodily harm inflicted on the driver of a Defender vehicle, a
carabiniere. For three defendants, resistance to police charges was not deemed to be of penal significance, as it was interpreted as a reaction to an arbitrary act, although subsequent violence and damage were punished. Charges of "destruction and looting" against the fourteen were dropped, but not for ten others who were convicted of this offence in relation to the damage caused by the so-called "black block" during attacks on a supermarket and a prison in the Marassi neighbourhood. They received sentences ranging from six to eleven years, which, for four of them, will also involve a further three years probation and exclusion from exercising public functions. Those sentenced will reportedly benefit from a three-year tariff discount resulting from the
indulto (a mini-pardon entailing a shortening of prison sentences and early release scheme adopted to relieve the problem of overcrowding in prisons).
The trial has also thrown up the possibility of four officers (two carabinieri, captain Antonio Bruno and lieutenant Paolo Fredda and police officials Angelo Gaggiano and Mario Mondelli) facing charges of providing false testimony, after their declarations were passed on to investigating magistrates. Their reconstruction of events in the lead-up to some of the heaviest police charges on 21 July 2001 appeared not to match other information examined by the court.
The
Genoa Legal Forum has produced a video that is enlightening in this respect, collating images from security cameras with communications between units of carabinieri and the operative command centre, that shows a battalion not following instructions about their route to Marassi and about avoiding an encounter with demonstrators on via Tolemaide as it could have resulted in disturbances (see
Statewatch, vol. 17 no. 2). The fines to be imposed on the defendants for damage caused to property will be established in a subsequent civil lawsuit, as is also the case for non-patrimonial damage (to Italy's image) payments of 2.5 million euro that the government is demanding. Thus, the court accepted the argument that it was the demonstrators who harmed Italy's image, rather than the indiscriminate police brutality whose images were seen worldwide, and felt on their bodies by demonstrators from several countries.
Supporto Legale, an organisation that has been involved in the defence of demonstrators and in disseminating information drawn from its meticulous work around the trial, including transcripts of hearings, responded with a press release that describes the cumulative sentence of 110 years decreed by the judges as "the price that must be paid for expressing one's ideas and opposing the current state of affairs". The three judges presiding over the trial are accused of "not having the courage to oppose the fierce reconstruction of events" by prosecutors, and the possibility of officers being charged for false testimony is dismissed as a "pittance in which we are not interested".
It criticises the use of the offence typified as "destruction and looting" for events deriving from a political demonstration because it "clears the way for a dangerous operation" seeking to make people "supine" in relation to the choices of governments, "helpless when faced by the daily injustices of a system that is in the midst of a democratic crisis". The use of charges of "destruction and looting", devised for situations involving a popular insurrection in the absence of public