Italian director Daniele Vicari’s drama recreates the horrific assaults on Genoa G8 protesters in Diaz: Don’t Clean Up This Blood.

Starring Claudio Santamaria, Jennifer Ulrich and Ralph Amoussou. Directed by Daniele Vicari. 127 minutes. Opens July 12 at Cineplex Yonge and Dundas. 18A

Italian writer-director Daniele Vicari’s approach is as heavy handed as the bloodthirsty cops at the heart of his dramatic recreation of 2001 assaults on Genoa G8 protesters in Diaz: Don’t Clean Up This Blood.

The brutal police raid on an unarmed group inside the Armando Diaz school, being used as a media centre and hostel for social activists in the Italian city for the world leaders’ summit, is a matter of record.

Vicari’s overlong drama opens with acts of vandalism that will ring familiar to Torontonians from the 2010 G20 — a car on fire and smashed store windows — as protesters take to the streets.

Police later square off with the crowds but Max, a cop with a cooler head (Claudio Santamaria), insists they back off rather than endanger people.

Francesco Puglisi “Jimmy” (Catania –sur de Italia-, 1974) es un anarquista que en julio de 2012 fue condenado por un tribunal de Genova a 14 de años de prisión. Esta condena fue emitida dentro del macro-juicio relativo a los disturbios ocurridos en Genova en julio de 2001 durante la cumbre del G-8 (que agrupa a los países más ricos del mundo). Desde su condena “Jimmy” ha permanecido huido de la justicia italiana hasta su detención en Barcelona el pasado 4 de junio. La “justicia” italiana emitió una euro-orden de detención en su contra y ha solicitado su extradicción a Italia argumentando, además de la condena, una surrealista vinculación del compa con el trafico de explosivos!!!

Actualmente Francesco se encuentra encarcelado en el módulo 15 (aislamiento – que acoge a presos clasificados como FIES) de la cárcel madrileña de Soto del Real, clasificado como FIES (Interno de especial Seguimiento), aislado y a la espera de que la Audiencia Nacional decida acerca de su extradicción.

Italy's supreme Court of Cassation on Friday upheld seven prison terms handed to police officers and prison doctors for brutality against protestors held at a detention centre in the Bolzaneto barracks during the 2001 Group of Eight (G8) summit in Genoa. The sentences, ranging from one to three years in jail, are connected to two days of mayhem that occurred when more than 300,000 demonstrators converged on Genoa for the G8 summit in July 2001. The court cleared four other police officers and reduced the number of plaintiffs eligible to claim damages from 44 defendants held to be civilly responsible for violence against protesters. In total, 252 demonstrators said they were spat at, verbally and physically humiliated or threatened with rape while being held at the Bolzaneto centre. The Cassation said some of these cases should be pursued in civil courts.

In January 2005, I met a clearly distressed young British journalist who told me of being beaten up by the Italian police during the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001.

Four years on, Mark Covell was still suffering from both the physical and psychological effects of that savage attack as he recounted his injuries: eight broken ribs, smashed teeth, a collapsed lung and internal bleeding. He lost consciousness and slipped into a coma.

He found it difficult to talk about what had happened and when he did try, he shook badly and often appeared close to tears. "You've never seen anything like it," he said several times.

Indeed, I had no conception of what had really happened to him and to more than 100 other young journalists and activists who decided to spend the night bedded down in the Armando Diaz school in Genoa on 21 July 2001.

‘Unspeakable behaviour’, prosecutor says

Rome, May 8 – Protesters were subjected to “violence and abuse” and “unspeakable behaviour” while being held at a police detention centre in the Bolzaneto barracks during the 2001 Group of Eight (G8) summit in Genoa, a prosecutor said Wednesday. During the first day of proceedings before Italy’s top court, Joseph Volpe asked the Court of Cassazione to uphold sentences against 44 defendants held to be civilly responsible for violence against protesters between July 20 and 22, 2001. In total, 252 demonstrators have said they were spat at, verbally and physically humiliated or threatened with rape while being held at the centre. All 44 have appealed their convictions, including compensation orders, in proceedings that are scheduled to last three days. Only seven of the group, which includes police officers and prison doctors, have been convicted on criminal charges arising from the detention of protesters. Their sentences range from one- to three years in jail in connection with the two days of mayhem that occurred when more than 300,000 demonstrators converged on Genoa for the G8 summit in July 2001.

Hearings slated to decide if other officers can volunteer

Genoa, April 30 – Three policemen found guilty by Italy’s highest appeals court in 2012 of grievous misconduct for beatings at the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa have been assigned social-service duties by a tribunal in the northern Italian port city. Massimo Mazzoni, Renzo Cerchi and Davide Di Novi will carry out volunteer work in Liguria and in Rome. Another hearing slated for December 5 will decide if other convicted officers will also be assigned to volunteer social work. The July 2012 ruling effectively truncated a significant part of the top tier of Italy’s national law enforcement with its sentence for grievous misconduct. In addition, the Italian Cassation Court the same month upheld criminal convictions of three police heads and two former high-ranking officers for aggravated perjury regarding cover-ups of police beatings during a raid at the Diaz school, used by anti-globalist protesters as sleeping quarters during the 2001 summit.

We can choose what we want to sow, but we must reap what we have sown.

Supportolegale was born in 2004 to support all the defendants of the Genoa G8 court cases. Made up of many different people, but all of whom agree on a fundamental “rule”: that all defendants must be supported without falling into the logic of divide and rule which has characterised the behaviour of too many people these last 11 years. The division of protestors into good and bad was never our thing.

Today, 11 years after the G8 summit in Genoa, we find ourselves having to pick up the thread of this belief, with 10 people convicted for the insane crime of devastation and looting – two of whom are already in prison and another who is raising her daughter awaiting imprisonment. All of us and all of you have lost – this should be clear – and today, the natural consequence of the belief that “we must defend everyone” is that we must help everyone who has got caught in the spiral of genovese repression. Not merely as a grain of sand that on its own can sabotage a machine, but as a life that is sabotaged by that very machine.

Mark Covell successful following 11-year legal battle waged after 2001 Genoa assault

Tom Kington and John Hooper in Rome

A British journalist who has fought for justice for 11 years since being brutally beaten by Italian police is to be awarded €350,000 (£280,000) compensation by the Italian government.

Mark Covell was left with eight broken ribs, smashed teeth and a shredded lung after he was assaulted outside a school during the Genoa G8 meeting in 2001.

As he slipped into a coma, police raided the school, beating scores of other activists sleeping there.

Italy’s highest court of appeal suspended senior officers from duty in July for their role in the raid.

Now, after launching a civil case for compensation, Covell will accept the sum offered out of court by the interior ministry.

This article “En Italie, une justice ambiguë”, was first published (in French) in “Mediapart” on 20 July 2012, http://blogs.mediapart.fr/edition/les-invites-de-mediapart/article/180712/en-italie-une-justice-ambigue

by Salvatore Palidda (Genoa University)
Translation by Statewatch.

Everyone recalls the violence, abuses of power and torture by numerous police officers against demonstrators during the Genoa G8, as well as the violence by the self-styled “black bloc”. Eleven years after the 20th and 21st of July 2001, the third instance of Italian justice [the Corte di Cassazione, Italy’s highest appeal court] has just issued its definitive sentence against the officers accused of beating the 93 demonstrators who were sleeping in the Diaz school and then, straight afterwards, a second verdict against ten demonstrators who were charged for “destruction and looting” and accused of being responsible for the “devastation” of the city and for seriously endagering public order.

Following the scheme that was adopted from the start, the judicial treatment of the Genoa G8 thus sought to portray a balanced image, convicting both police officers and demonstrators at the same time.

But the truth is that these two sentences (as well as the others) are extremely unbalanced. This is why:

On the 5th of July the Italian Supreme Court convicted thirteen police heads involved in the brutal raid at the Diaz-Pertini and Diaz-Pascoli schools of the 21st of July 2001. Most of them, who were previously cleared, received convictions of up to five years, even though others have been now cleared because of the 10-years-time limit that Italian law sets on trials. After eleven years, this is the very first time in which high ranking policemen have been convicted for their brutality during the anti-G8 protests in Genova. However, none of them will ever go to jail; instead, they will only be suspended from duty (Italy’s Statute of limitations) for the next five years.

The Diaz schools were used by protesters in order to do their own counter-information and, eventually, to accommodate people at night. On the night of the 21st of July a group of 400 policemen (whose names are still unknown) broke into the buildings, indiscriminately beating up those people who were inside, and leaving around 90 injured and a British journalist, whose struggle is revealing, in a coma. During the night, 75 people were moved to the nearby police station of Bolzaneto, where they were beaten again.

Francesco Puglisi and Vincenzo Vecchi, the two of the’Genoa 10′ to receive the most severe sentences for crimes of “devastation and looting” – 15 and 13 years – are untraceable since Sunday, the same day Genoa’s Supreme Tribunal ordered them to be incarcerated.

Another two, Alberto Funaro and Marina Cugnaschi, were immediately imprisoned. Ines Morasca, sentenced to 6 years and 6 months, had her prison sentence suspended due to parental duties (she has a very young child). The remaining five, as mentioned in my previous article, have been granted right to appeal against some of the charges and will have to find evidence that they carried out crimes of “devastation and looting” as a result of the influence of the ‘mob mentality’ around them.

Over the last few decades a new “political culture”, by some portrayed as “progressive”, has made its way into Italy. Its mottoes and slogans are banal and conservative: “defend legality”, “act within the law”, etc. Various political groups and parties claim that only people without any conviction have the right to get involved in politics and be given public offices. According to this “culture”, our comrades who have been recently sentenced should be forever kept away from social and political movements…?!

In the next days it is said that 5 people will go to jail:

• Ines 6 years 6 months
• Alberto 10 years
• Marina 12 years 3 months (reduction -9 months)
• Vincenzo 13 years (reduction -9 months)
• Francesco 14 years (reduction -12 months)

For others 5 the court ruled that they are able to appeal against parts of the sentence from the second instance:

• Dario 7 years
• Carlo 8 years
• Carlo 8 years
• Antonino 8 years
• Luca 10 years 9 months (reduction -12 months)

On 13 July 2012 in Rome, 10 strugglers are being tried for participation in the clashes which took place in July 2001 in Genova against the G8 summit, while they are already facing serious sentences of 10 to 15 years of imprisonment according to a verdict from a previous trial in Genova.
Today, the case of these strugglers is an attempt to strike the revolting rage against the global dictatorship of the political and financial bosses who are setting about the looting and destruction of societies and nature in every corner of the globe. Like it was struck through the murder by the Italian police of Carlos Juliani, the severe buttery of many demonstrators by the guards of the global domination in the streets of Genova and during the bloody invasion in the Diaz school used as lodging and the abuse and torturing of hundreds of arrestees in the detention centre of Bolgianetto.

Statute of limitations means none of officers guilty of beating protesters will go to jail, but many will receive suspensions

Eleven years after Italian police savagely beat scores of protesters at the Genoa G8 meeting in 2001, leaving one British activist in a coma, an Italian court has upheld the convictions of senior officers for their roles in the raid.

The decision by Italy’s cassation court, after an initial trial and an appeal, draws a definitive line underneath the violence, which Amnesty International described as the most serious suspension of democratic rights in a western country since the second world war.

The final sentences have been watered down by the statute of limitations and the accused will not be jailed, but a number of top-ranking officers now face five-year suspensions from duty.

Italy has lost some of its top police officers following a supreme court judgment that removed a group of senior investigators including those heading anti-Mafia operations, Interior Minister Anna Maria Cancellieri said.

The supreme court on Thursday upheld a previous appeal verdict against 13 senior officers convicted over a brutal attack by riot police on protesters sleeping at a school in the northwestern city of Genoa during a G8 summit in 2001.

"It's a very high price that we're paying because we're losing some of our best men," she told the Corriere della Sera newspaper. "But now we have to begin again and look ahead."

The officers were convicted for complicity in the planting of evidence including a petrol bomb and clubs to try to justify the unprovoked attack, which was widely condemned and has recently been highlighted in an Italian movie.

Italy’s highest court on Thursday upheld guilty verdicts against senior officers convicted after police beat protesters at the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa and over a subsequent cover-up.

Twenty-five policemen were convicted and sentenced in 2010 but appealed against the verdict, which centred on a late-night attack on anti-globalisation protesters at a high school that left 63 people in need of hospital treatment.

Italy’s statute of limitations, however, means that none will spend time in prison because too much time has passed since the offences were committed.

10×100: sign the call

The Public Order management during the days of the G8 Genoa back in July 2001 represents an open wound in the recent history of the Italian republic. Ten years after the murder of Carlo Giuliani, the “Mexican butchery” occurred in the Diaz school, the tortures in the Bolzaneto barracks, the violence and beatings in the streets of Genoa, the responsible have not been identified and moreover who ran the public order in Genoa led a distinguished career as Gianni De Gennaro, newly appointed Secretary of the Presidency of the Italian Council of Ministers.

While the State absolves itself from what Amnesty International has called “the biggest suspension of democratic rights in a Western country since the Second World War”, on the 13th of July 2012 ten persons are running the risk of becoming the scapegoats of this situation and see their sentence confirmed, by the Supreme Court , to a total of one hundred years in prison overall, in the name of a crime, “destruction and looting”, which is one of the many juridical leftovers of the Fascist penal code, called Code Rocco.

On 13th July the last grade of judgment against 10 comrades, convicted for having participated in the clashes occurred in Genoa in 2001 on the occasion of the G8 summit, will be held.

The comrades were given heavy sentences, ranging from 10 to 15 years, by the Court of Genoa and now their imprisonment may become executive.

Ten people are being used as scapegoat: through them, the State wants to attack the hundreds of thousands of people who took to the streets in those days, and particularly those who contributed to unleash the revolt against the arrogance of the Powerful. We won’t accept the reprisal of the State; condemning these comrades means to attack the whole movement.

In the meantime the responsible for the indiscriminate massacre, the raid at the Diaz school, the tortures in the Bolzaneto police barracks and the murder of Carlo Giuliani can sleep soundly in their beds as they were awarded for their actions of slaughter.

In July 2001 we went to Genova along with 300.000 people to shout to the powerful members of the G8 “another world is possible”.

A world where political choices would not be dictated by banks and speculators and where the voice of the many would not be shut by the arrogance of the few. We arrived in a sealed off and barricaded Genova, where not even the inhabitants could move around without permission. In 300.000 we invaded the streets with our necessities and desires. With the conviction that this capitalistic development model didn’t suit us; we faced a militarised power that had prepared a bloody protest management, that climaxed with the murder of Carlo Giuliani. The same power which was fabricating evidences in order to break into the Diaz school and which was preparing the torture chamber in the Bolzaneto prison.

Today, after 11 years, there are people who wish that only court verdicts be left of those days: the acquittal of the State and its apparatuses, and the conviction of those 10 people accused of devastation and plundering. People whom they want to pay off the bill, with 100 years of jail, for having disturbed the plans of the mighty. An offense that implies 8 to 15 years of imprisonment and that dates back to the “Rocco code,” issued during the Fascist regime and used against those who were opposing the dictatorship. Indeed the same way the justice system is applying it today, with the same intent.

The 13th of July there will be held the last grade of judgment against 10 comrades, condemned for having participated in the clashes occurred in Genova, in 2001, in occasion of the G8 summit.
The comrades have been sentenced from 10 to 15 years from the Court of Genova and now the detention may become executive.
Ten persons as sacrificial victims: through them, the State wants to attack the hundreds of thousands of persons who filled the streets those days, and particularly those who contributed to unleash the revolt against the arrogance of the Powerful. We won’t accept the reprisal of the State; condemning these comrades means attacking the whole movement.

In the meantime the responsibles of indiscriminated massacres, of the incursion in the Diaz school, of the tortures of Bolzaneto and of the assassination of Carlo Giuliani sleep peacefully and are prized for their “low” butchery actions.