FOCUS News Agency ROME26 June 2007

The head of the Italian police, at the centre of a storm about police violence at the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa, has been fired, the government said Monday. The summit was marked by clashes between anti-globalisation protestors and police, during which one demonstrator was killed. There have been many allegations of police brutality. Last week the Italian media reported that Gianni De Gennaro, 59, was under investigation by the Genoa prosecutor’s office for “incitement to false witness” in the context of an investigation into events at the 2001 summit. Some hours before news of the replacement of De Gennaro, Prime Minister Romano Prodi had said he would not be given a further term of office once the present one expired, but gave no reasons.

Earlier this month a police officer Michelangelo Fournier, a former aide to the police chief in Rome, admitted that several of his colleagues had been guilty of excesses at the summit. He recounted how four officers had beaten up a girl with a blood-soaked head at a school where the demonstrators were sleeping. A court in Genoa is hearing charges against 29 officers accused of violence at the G8 summit.