ITALY: Raids on anarchists, anti-fascists and social centres
01 August 2001
Anarchists and social centres were blamed by the Italian government and law enforcement agencies for clashes in Genoa during the G8 summit on 19-20 July 2001, they have now experienced police raids, searches and arrests, as well as suspected attacks by fascist groups.
Investigations by Milan investigating magistrate Stefano Dambruoso led to hundreds of raids on anarchist social centres and activists' homes throughout Italy under article 270 bis (associations with the aim of terrorism and subverting the democratic order), as well as the arrest of three anti-fascists. A number of social centres and anarchist offices were vandalised, including the burning down of the Pinelli social centre in Genoa on 15 September. In the wake of the 11 September attacks Prime Minister Berlusconi claimed there were "peculiar similarities" between Islamic terrorists and anti-G8 protesters, a sentiment later echoed in the UK by International Development minister, Clare Short.
Anti-fascists arrested in Milan
On 12 September 2001 Antonio Noe, Elio Lupoli and Mario Daprati were arrested, as their homes and the social centres (Vittoria and via Gola squatted house) they frequent were searched. They are accused of causing serious bodily harm to two fascists laying a wreath in piazzale Loreto in Milan, where Mussolini was hanged in 1945, on 25 April, the feast for Italy's liberation from the nazis. The three were kept in preventative custody because they were considered a "social danger" and to prevent them from repeating the offence. Vittoria social centre stressed that the laying of the wreath was a provocation in its call for a demonstration to demand their release - 3,000 people took part on 15 September. They argued that fascists carried out attacks, including a stabbing and bottle-throwing, during the afternoon. The three were detained for nine days and were subsequently placed under house arrest. Noe, Lupoli and Daprati wrote a letter criticising conditions in Milan's San Vittore prison, adding that their arrest was an effort to silence and divide the movement that manifested itself in Genoa "through criminalisation, intimidation, arrests and state terrorism".
Pinelli social centre burnt down
On the night of 15-16 September the Pinelli anarchist social centre (named after the anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli, who "fell" out of a window in 1969 during questioning in relation to the Piazza Fontana bombing while in police superintendent Luigi Calabresi's custody, see Statewatch vol 11 no 3/4) in Genoa was burned down in an attack during which molotov cocktails were thrown. The centre was the headquarters for the "Anarchists against the G8" Coordination network, hosting anarchists prior and during the G8 summit. On that occasion, it was the object of preventative dawn raids by police in search of weapons and those present had their identities taken, as part of a host of raids aimed at social centres throughout Italy in the build-up to the G8 (see: Statewatch vol 11 no 3/4 and Statewatch news online, July 2001). A memorial to Carlo Giuliani was also vandalised on the night of the attack, in which the Pinelli's theatre area, library, practice and recording studio for local bands, IT centre, reception and meeting point for children and the mentally disabled were destroyed.
Nationwide investigations and raids
On 18 September nationwide raids against anarchist centres and activists resulted from Dambruoso's investigations into three bombings in Milan: one in Sant'Ambrogio basilica on 28 June 2000 (unexploded), one in the Duomo on 18 December 2000 (unexploded), and another involving a letter bomb containing 150 grams of explosive sent to the Musocco-Milano carabinieri station (which was defused) on 26 October 1999. An organisation called Solidarieta Internazionale (International Solidarity) claimed responsibility for the Duomo device in a letter sent to Rome daily Il Messaggero in which they also criticised prison conditions in top security units in<